Good Weather is Bad for Religion

By Mark Bergin

Maybe all those contemporary praise and worship songs calling for revival to rain down are onto something more than just catchy choruses. Maybe they’ve tapped into the next new rage in missional strategy. After all, sunshine is no friend to religion. Church attendance dips as summer temperatures rise and Mars Hill is not immune from that inescapable law of American ecclesiology.

Community groups feel the squeeze on a smaller scale. By June, family vacations, summer concerts and double-shot margaritas have often trumped Bible study, leaving some leaders to facilitate discussion in a group the size of a beach volleyball team though usually better dressed.

So it is that many leaders choose to cancel regular meetings for the summer, opting instead for the occasional community group barbeque or sending their people to one of Mars Hill’s weekly outdoor parties scattered throughout the city. That plan seems agreeable enough, but what about sin? People still do that when it’s warm, right? How are leaders to shepherd their mini-flocks apart from regular contact and group prayer?

Here’s a thought: Use that weeknight usually devoted to community group to invite one family or individual over for dinner. Then poke and prod into their lives until you find some junk, smack them in the face with the gospel a few times and send them home with a summer assignment all in humility and love, of course.

Just because community groups are taking the summer off doesn’t mean Christians get to. It’s grow time. And if you’re people resist, pray for rain.