How does your ministry feel as a community? How hard is it for people to become part of the community? How hard do they have to work to break in? Likewise, how do the members of your community treat each other? Do they trust one another? Do they care for one another? Do they forgive one another?
In small communities, the challenge is how you deal with “rejection” – that is when someone remains “aloof”. Often in smaller communitiesk, a new person chooses to remain aloof, until they have made some internal committment to the community. It might appear to members of the community, that this person is “snooty”, or “superior”, or “thinks alot of themselves”, but in reality, they may be anxious, or fearful of judgement, or rejection, and this is a “mask” they are wearing. They are in fact, rejecting the community, before the community has a chance to reject them. In larger communities, this behavior often goes unnoticed, and as the community is more diverse, the new person simply settles in without feeling either particularly welcomed or rejected. In smaller communities, the already established friendships and family ties make it much easier to ignore the new person, especially when they don’t appear to want to “join in”. In reality, many are simply waiting for an invitation or an opportunity to enter into the community, and if that invitation is not forthcoming, they feel personally rejected, and their aloofness is justified.
In larger communities, the challenge is how you deal with “inclusion” – that is how to get people to spend time with each other. While smaller communities have great cohesion, so that at times it feels hard to “break the circle” – with larger organizations, there is no apparent circle to break into. There is no apparent community to be a part of, and what is observable appears very superficial, very shallow. Large communities, often therefore go out of their way to welcome new people. They spend resources communicating how new people can get involved, but either new people are “herded” into starter communities (small groups), or they are pressed into service (hands ministries) as a means of getting them introduced to others within the community. The problem with either of those two methods (and many others) is that unless you (the newcomer) fit the target profile of the ministry there is a low probability that you will connect with others with similar interests, and so many outliers bounce.
In smaller communities, it would be useful if there were a couple of “connectors” – people who maintain a network of relationships – who were in a ministry of connecting people together. Help me find someone else “like me” that I can connect to.
In larger communities, it might be useful to employ a “match.com” approach to grouping people into service or community roles. As our ministry communities grow geographically more dispersed, it can be useful to sponsor community events around your geographical population centers – by town, school district, neighborhood, etc.
Most churches tend to program by demographics (men, women, kids, etc.) – but other aspects of demographics may be more powerful – (singles, couples, families, empty nesters vs. professionals, tradesmen, entrepreneurs, working women, homemakers). MOPS (mothers of pre schoolers) is a great long time example of this.
What is your community about, and how easy is it to become connected, involved, engaged, committed, supported?