Bucking the Trend
News
Broadway UMC
Like most churches, Plattsburg shut down in March 2020 and reopened in June. Throughout the pandemic, the church employed various safety measures through multiple shutdowns and restarts, including a reservation system and mask mandates. On three different occasions, the church surveyed its congregation to find out how they felt about precautions being taken, with some people preferring a less restrictive environment and others urging more caution. They were able to navigate that divide well. Some precautions were kept in place longer than they were in many other places. The church didn’t drop its mask mandate until late spring of this year.
“No one had a mask mandate here anymore, not even the school,” Rev. Cassie O’Brien Graham said.
Some people expected a jump in attendance numbers when the mask mandate was dropped, but it actually had little impact. The church is now averaging about 52 in attendance, with 10 to 15 of those being online. To count an online person in attendance, they must engage in direct interaction, like filling out an online attendance card or commenting during the service.
Before the pandemic, the church was posting worship services online but without any engagement. It is now intentional about reaching out to online worship participants.
O’Brien Graham is thankful for her great tech volunteer and for grants the church received from the Missouri United Methodist Foundation and from Congregational Excellence. They started out live streaming on an iPhone but upgraded to two cameras, so they would have a closeup and a wider shot, and use ProPresenter to stream the service. In addition to the tech guy running the cameras and live stream, an online hospitality coordinator moderates the chat and logs people down for follow-up engagement.
The church has added about five new families during the pandemic. There are four new members on the board, and three of those are fairly new to the church.
The church also experienced some significant losses during the last two years, including the tragic loss of life of multiple people in circumstances unrelated to the pandemic.
One of the church’s big events, Forever Christmas, has become a community event. It takes place the first weekend in December. In 2020 it happened in a limited scope, with a parade and soup-to-go on Friday night. The church made about a third of what it usually does. In 2021 it was back up to full scale, and it may have been the biggest year ever for the event.
The church mails a newsletter called the Salt Shaker monthly to about 25 people. One of its recepients is a member who moved to another state. The person said she likes seeing everything the church is doing and sent a check for $25,000.
A memorial for a beloved church member who loved to cook has raised $30,000 for a kitchen remodel. The church is considering starting a community meal after the remodel is completed.
The church partners with a local school and with the food bank, which originated in the church. Mission work has resumed in full swing. The youth group partnered with Cameron to work on the local mission last year, and this year went on a mission trip to South Dakota at the end of June.
Burlington Junction & Wilcox
When Lay Speaker Marsha Martin first started serving her two churches in January 2019, Wilcox was averaging about eight in attendance, and Burlington Junction had around 18. There were few youth attendees.The churches followed the guidance from the Conference regarding whether to be closed or open for worship during the onset of the pandemic. When they first closed the building, they were livestreaming worship on the Burlington Junction Facebook page for both churches, but later, Wilcox got its own Facebook page.
“We did it at my home, and my husband was the cameraman,” Martin said. She did the whole worship service, including prayers and children’s
Since they’ve been doing worship on Facebook, some people from outside the church have made monetary contributions to the church. The
One boost to the churches came from the closing of a legacy church nearby. When Clairmont closed, people from that church started attending
“People are more faithful about coming now. I think they missed being able to get together for in-person worship,” Martin said. “Now they attend with more consistency, and if they can’t make it, they will call me before Sunday and let me know why.”
Both churches normally host a Lord’s Acre sale in early October. Instead, in 2020 Burlington Junction had a bake sale, and Wilcox had a sale of homemade pies and noodles. In 2021 the Lord’s Acre sales were back to normal and went very well.
Oakton UMC
Oakton UMC has found itself dealing with the same pandemic issues as many churches, but it has also started and stopped new campuses and continued to move forward with its multicultural ministries. Rev. Kent Garfield said the church has been busy in ministry and is in a stronger position financially than it was a few years ago. Tithing remained strong through the pandemic and is up more this year, and special designated giving has also been strong.“Our numbers aren’t through the roof, but we’re not going backward, and we’re doing a lot of new ministries,” Garfield said.
“All 10 houses,” he adds. “Barton County only has about 12,000 people in it.”
Lamar is the nearest town, with a population of 4,200 and an active United Methodist Church of its own, so Oakton draws from a large, rural area. Members of the Oakton youth group come from several different schools. Garfield says being together at church helps bridge the gap between neighboring town rivalries.
Oakton is a very mission-oriented church. It is deeply involved in international missions, building one of the first Christian churches in Albania. It was initiated so quickly after the collapse of communism that it was initially unclear how the congregation could go about owning land because, previously, all land was owned by the government. In Liberia, it is involved in education by supporting teachers there.
Garfield enjoys and relates to rural Missouri, but his ability to bridge the rural/urban divide was instilled in him from his early childhood. Although he grew up in an all-white community, his mother would take him and his brother to a boy’s camp in Kansas City in the summer when they were children.
“We were the only two white kids there,” Garfield said. They endured all kinds of teasing but also formed strong friendships.
Mission trips to Liberia, Albania and even Kansas City were put on hold during the pandemic and that hurt.
“Working in mission not only builds the kingdom, but it also builds your church,” Garfield said. “When you’re in ministry with people on a mission trip, you get tight. You build rapport. You get close.”
“They hadn’t had a baptism there in 20 years, and we had two in the time we were there,” he said.
Oakton has been working to establish a new campus in Golden City, where the previous United Methodist Church closed. It is now a video venue, with a live video stream from the central campus in Oakton and a campus pastor on site.
“They are part of everything we do online, as we do it,” Garfield said. “When we take tithes and offerings, they take tithes and offerings there. When we have altar time, they have altar time.”
The church is participating in the town festival, Golden Harvest Days, and did a free diaper distribution day there on July 16.
For several years Oakton has had a Spanish language campus in Carthage. The church relates to their Hispanic ministry in Carthage as a part of their church, like the youth group, not as a mission project.
“We treat everyone the same,” Garfield said.
Oakton UMC used to have separate Spanish and English services at the campuses, but they have now merged into one service. The translation to this went even smoother than Garfield had hoped for.
“I had prepared all these answers for questions I expected, but the questions were never asked,” he said.
The service alternates between Spanish and English, and translation is available for either language, using an in-person translator in the cry-room in the back of the sanctuary, which is translating through a transmitter with people in the congregation wearing audio receivers if they need the translation. They had tried using a translator upfront before but found it broke the flow of the sermon. With this system, the translator’s words are just right behind the preacher.
The church had blended services on Wednesday nights and Sunday nights before, but having Sunday morning worship bilingual was taking things to another level. It was all worth it for Garfield when the first Sunday that he preached, a man who didn’t speak any English, came forward during his altar call.
“He was there because he understood me,” Garfield said.
Recently when Garfield looked back on an old picture of the Methodist church in Oakton, he noticed the Baptist church in the background. That church isn’t there anymore. He attributes that not to any denominational or theological difference but to the will of the congregation and their desire to be obedient and follow God.
“They chose to make a difference in their community,” he said. “The Lord will do this for anyone.”
Garfield said the pandemic hit his community hard because they are primarily blue-collar, and they were required to keep working through it all, with many putting in even more hours than they were before, while much of the rest of the country had a time of respite.
Garfield believes the blue-collar nature of his community has helped bridge what may be a cultural divide in many areas.
“I think that’s why merging the services went so well. We all work together here through the week,” he said. “We are one.”
The unity Garfield has seen in his church and community could be used as a bridge elsewhere.
“I believe the Lord can use us to show the world how to get along,” he said.