One of the questions we often ask of people who are in the process of joining the church is: "what are you looking for?" Over these last 9 years, when asked this question, people universally say that they have come to find a "sense of community." This is not to say that people aren't drawn here for religious reasons: good preaching, good teaching, good liturgy and the like. But only to acknowledge that people have a "felt need" for belonging and for connection. I suspect that this is a change from a few decades ago and is fueled by a number of factors:

1. People are more mobile than ever. People are raised in one community, educated in another, find a mate from another and make their home in yet another from which they will move several times. A firm sense of home grounded in a long term connection with one place and with one people is all but gone in American life.

2. People, in their work, often do not have close friends. This is a factor of corporate downsizing and outsourcing. The lack of job security means that many people are reluctant to trust co-workers with whom they compete for a place at the table. Demands for increased productivity means that there is less leisure time and a less leisurely pace at work to develop relationships. Many workplaces are not experienced as being safe.

3. Our neighborhoods are less and less places in which people are known. Part of this may be due to mobility but it also can be a conscious choice. I recall a new resident in our condo building that was saddened by the fact that she was unable to develop close relationships with the other residents but realized that there was a real danger in making friends and then falling out with them and having to continue to see them daily. Thus, relationships among those who share the same address can be rather formal and superficial.

4. Organizations which once filled the need for deeper relationships are fading in American culture. The book Bowling Alone some years ago, documented how people are joining social organizations less often because they simply don't have the time and energy to put into them. Many organizations today are more functionally oriented (networking groups for example) rather than relationally oriented (fraternities and sororities for example). Exhausted and overwhelmed, many people come home after a long day and want nothing better than to "cocoon" with their families before a big screen TV set.

The church may be the last organization in the world which holds out the promise of connection and familiarity among people who are quite different than ones self. Indeed, other than large sporting events, some concerts and shopping malls; Americans rarely gather with people from other backgrounds and histories. And so today, I want to explore the nature of church as community.

To a large extent, the experience of connection in church is shaped by church size. Some years ago, some research was done about church development which was dubbed "size theory." Churches come in four sizes: Family, Pastoral, Program and Corporation size. The Family sized church is one that has an average Sunday attendance of fewer than 50 people. In such churches, there is typically a matriarch or a patriarch who runs the church and is the connective glue which holds the place together, as the name implies, like a "family." The clergy in such congregations typically perform the role of a chaplain. Indeed, the turnover of pastors in such small churches is a given as such places rarely can hold onto clergypersons long given their marginal financial resources. Another name for such churches is a "single cell church" because everyone is a part of the one, single cell in the organization.

The next size is the pastoral sized church, which has an average Sunday attendance of 51-150. In such churches, the role of the matriarch/patriarch is replaced with that of the full time professional minister who acts as the glue that holds the center. Most clergy can relate to about 125 people (remember their names, meet their pastoral needs and so on). In such churches, the pastor is the program. The overwhelming majority of protestant churches in America have fewer than 150 people on a Sunday. It is a size in which there is still a stronger sense of connection, in which people know one another's names and faces. For this reason, it is exceeding difficult to grow beyond 150 for all churches because as the church grows, there is a sense of loss of connection as people feel themselves to be strangers in their own homes as additional worship services are added, new groups emerge, people no longer see their friends and so on.

The next size is the program sized church. It has a Sunday attendance of 151-350. It can be diagramed in this way. The pastor still has a central role but that is more and more the work of coordination rather than direct ministry. The shift in the pastor's role can be painful and disorienting for the clergyperson as well as the people. Peoples need for affiliation is met in smaller groups, typically with a "lay pastor" who extends a sense of caring and connection. Because this is such a different organization structure, all denominations report a "glass ceiling" known as the "200 boundary" in which pastoral churches grow up to 200 and then decline as the barrier of change depresses growth.

The transition from a program sized church to a corporation sized church (over 350) is much less difficult. What emerges is simply greater complexity in which the senior pastor primarily pastors a full time lay and clergy staff who in turn supervise the small-group lay pastors whom themselves directly extend caring and connection to the membership.

St. Augustine's has lived with the "200 barrier" for two decades. If you talk to people who have been here for a generation, you discover that St. A's experiences growth for a time, followed by a period of decline. It is an interesting question to ask: do conflicts which lead to decline happen as a byproduct of growing pains or do these emerge independently? Churches are amazingly static institutions in which homeostasis is a key unseen force. As such, the presenting issues in conflict may be secondary to the forces which necessitate conflict in the first place so that balance can be maintained. The question for all churches is not "will we have conflict?" - conflict is a given in human institutions – but rather the question is: "Under what guise will old conflicts emerge in the future?" And, can we choose to function in new ways to minimize loss?

This brings us to the question of intentionality.

St. A's average Sunday attendance hovers around 130-140 or so. We are a pastoral sized church that needs to become, if we are to move forward, a program sized church. This is because each year we take in new members and retain about half of them because people find it difficult to find a place of connection. Groups like the altar guild, men's and women's fellowship groups, women's book groups, the 20/30 something's, the "swinging seniors", the new downtown youth group, the healing team, a newly proposed film group and even the Vestry and so on are all places in which people have the potential to know others and to be known. That theme song from the TV show "Cheers" says it well: "(I want to be in a place) where everybody knows your name and you're really glad you came."

But here is the conundrum. What if we seek to be a program structured church but the majority of people don't have time to participate in the programs?

I recall well a new member who, when joining the church, said that she was hoping to find a real sense of community here but when pressed, admitted that with her work schedule, she could likely only be here one Sunday a month. Clearly, the expectation of community and the reality of her occupation were incompatible with one another. For the benefit of busy people, we have tried to offer "episodic" experiences of community for those unable to make a regular commitment (the men's and women's retreats, the Julian weekend) but the truth is that we have been less successful in attracting new people to these events than we might hope. The once monthly breakfasts are also attempts at mediating a sense of connection for the general church community. While these episodic events are helpful, they may be, by their very nature, unable to facilitate the deeper intimacy people crave but are too busy to claim.

And so we have our on-going fellowship groups; some of which are stronger than others but all of which have enormous potential to strengthen community here. Developmentally, I believe that the next step is for effective lay pastors to emerge in these groups who understand that the task of leadership is not about the tasks primarily but about the relationships. Corazon is a great example.

We may well be effective in traveling to Mexico to build a house for the poor and those who participate in that event may well come away with a sense of satisfaction and gratitude but unless some effort is made to integrate the experience in an on-going process of Christian formation, a great opportunity will have been missed. The question for the Corazon leaders is not simply "how can we get enough people together to pull off this build?" – a critical question to be sure – but it also is: "How can we deepen our sense of knowing one another through this shared experience?" and we, as humans, primarily do that by sharing not just our time together but our stories together as well.

Churches are funny institutions. We are not, in spite of the language some churches sometimes use: like brother and sister; we are not a family. Some might argue that the use of family metaphors is indeed a dangerous thing as far too many Americans come out of dysfunctional and even toxic families. But the larger problem is that the use of such language encourages inappropriate expectations and the transfer of needs rightly addressed by our families to the church. But on the other hand, we are not simply a task force made up of a society of strangers. We are here not simply to remedy our aloneness and alienation. We are a particular kind of community.

We are here because we share a common purpose: to praise God, to seek both solace and strength, comfort and renewal and to share with one another this spiritual journey in which we seek to become more and more Christ-like for the world. We are a community which exists primarily for persons outside of ourselves as we engage in mission and charity. As the hymn "Come Labor On" is written, the gospel mission's claim: "is a high calling even angels cannot share!" But we do not pursue that mission alone.

Even Jesus knew the value of creating a community of followers in calling the Twelve (even though through conflict even he lost one!). Christian fellowship is the essential foundation for the work of ministry. The stronger that foundation, the more lives will be shaped and transformed by God's love and God's joy fulfilled, for as Ireaneus reminded us: "the glory of God are human beings fully alive."