For many churches, September’s schedule includes “Welcome Back Sunday” or “Back to Church Sunday,” an initiative that started 17 years ago. The idea is to welcome back regular attendees, as well as to invite people who may not have been to church for years or who may have never regularly attended. On that day, we try to ensure it is a special experience for those who are there, in the hope that they will return.
But why? Why do we want people to come back? To what are we inviting people?
In answer to those questions, I have fears, and I have hopes.
My fear is that sometimes, in the Church, we look for bodies. We have this idea that our success is measured by the numbers in our pews. Or we think that if we get enough people, it will help us with the financial burden of running a parish. This means that those who come are valued for what they bring to us, not for who they are. When that is the case, the Church becomes a transactional institution rather than a true church, an institution or an organization that exists merely for its own survival. That’s not a value judgment; it’s simply a fact.
The Church is undoubtedly an institution. It needs to be, since so much of what we rely on comes from it (our liturgy, our hymnody, our structure), all of which gives us the shape and form that makes us distinctly Anglican.
But the Church must also be more than an institution. It is a community of people who are bound together, not so much by what we have in common, but by a common faith and belief in a loving God whom we come to know through Jesus Christ. In Jesus, we see the face of God. We see someone who showed love and compassion to everyone, who did not look at status or place in society, and who saw each person as an individual worthy of attention, not because of what they could give, but simply because of who they are.
To be a church means to live that reality in everything we do. It is why we uphold people in prayer, why we take time to visit those who are sick, why we help feed those who are hungry, and why we minister to those who are unhoused.
My hope is that we see those who come through our doors, on Back to Church Sunday and on every Sunday, as belonging to our church community. This is a community of people from all walks of life: young and old, rich and poor, ordinary and extraordinary. All people of God coming together to hear the word of God, to pray for and support one another, and to be encouraged as we try our best to negotiate this complicated thing called life, relying on the gift of God’s Spirit to make it through, knowing that it is God’s love that gives us the strength and power to do so.