A question that is often posed to churches to try and move them out of focusing only on their member-centered programs is “If your church closed down tomorrow, would anyone outside of the church even notice?”

We got a partial answer to this during our annual (except for 2020) Selfies with Santa event. One after another, we saw families who have been coming every year with their children. One family even brought a thank you card filled with photos from each year. They told us how happy they were to see us this year, and how much they missed us last year.

We’d like to build on that for next year, and turn “Selfies” into a full holiday festival with a bake sale, craft fair, and whatever else we can dream up. We also know that December is a super-busy time for everyone, so we want to break this into small pieces with a lot of helpers. (Are you willing to organize the bakers or the crafters? – please let me know!)

But the larger picture of this is the question, “How can we best serve our local “parish”? What is needed in our area?

I know of a church, Methodist, that was planting a new congregation and wanted to know the answers to those questions. Being Methodists, they went door to door, asking neighbors, “What would you like for us to pray for, for you?” There was an honesty that came out in answering the question, and they discovered that in that neighborhood, hunger and loneliness were significant. So they did something about that, having a community breakfast for all, not just church members, every Sunday. They included an omelet bar, because at the very least, you would have to have a conversation with someone when you told them what you wanted in your omelet.

Now, I’m not suggesting we do either of those things. Asking what we should pray for would feel artificial to most of us, and I’m not sure the significant problems in that community are the same here.

So how do we find out what is needed?