I think you are right that posting sermons would be beneficial to those who were unable to attend and to expose a wider audience to the word as we proclaim it at SMLC.

Where the Staff wants to challenge the congregation is to move away from consumers of worship to become both participants in worship and in the community that is formed when we gather together.

We had a great discussion at our Special Council meeting as to why people come to SMLC? Clearly they come for good preaching and good music but one voice made it very clear our family comes for the sense of fellowship and community that SMLC offers our household.

What is wonderful about being Lutheran is we can live in a both/and world. We just want to error on the side of inviting people to make a deeper commitment to being a part of the community.

1) A lot of people (especially younger generation) are using technology on a daily basis (sometimes ALL day) to get information that is of interest to them.
2) Sermons are of interest to people, but they also want the “instant gratification” that you spoke of above. This usually means not scheduling time to attend sermons in-person.
3) How do you get the message to these people when they don’t have or make time to attend services?

Does SMLC currently record sermons (video and/or audio)? If not, do we have the equipment to do so and have it in some kind of digital format? If so, I think it would be fantastic to post these pieces of media to SMLC’s website, Facebook site & any other social media outlets (Twitter? YouTube?) for immediate consumption by the masses.

You could take this one step further and put a link to the electronic donation site SMLC has in place, on these respective pages (website, Facebook, etc). This way, if people like listening to/watching the sermons, they have a way to donate easily & immediately.

Some might argue that this type of initiative would drive attendance down because people don’t have to be there anymore. To some extent, this might be true. However, I believe that given the option, this would actually increase attendance because you get people actively engaged in the church that wouldn’t ordinarily show up at all (thereby missing out on the Good News altogether!). Once you have these people “hooked” (so-to-speak), you will see attendance rise as people like what they hear and MAKE the time to attend in-person.

Please let me know your thoughts. I’d love to hear any kind of feedback on these suggestions – positive or negative. There could be obvious things I’m missing…I know I’m not perfect. But I think this is a good start to get the ideas flowing, if nothing else. I know we’ve got a lot of smart people at SMLC!