One of my objectives this year is to establish a dedicated fellowship time that bridges our two worship services, providing a consistent space for members to build relationships, share refreshments, and strengthen our congregational unity. Not just coffee in the corner before you find your seat. Real time. Time to connect with people you love, meet people you don’t know yet, and feel like you actually belong to something together.
To help figure out what that looks like, I put together a team. Haley Hogan, Lynn Striepe, Dan Myers, Dave Olsen, Robbie Hopkins, Maureen Witwer, and Randy Nunley have been meeting with me to think through this carefully. Together they represent all the different areas of church life on a Sunday morning here at FUMCWP.
Before we talk about schedules or logistics, we wanted to answer some foundational questions first. What do we actually want people to walk away with on a Sunday morning? Why does fellowship time matter? What does fellowship look like when it is working?
We met on June 17 and worked through these questions together. Here is what we landed on:
We want people to leave Sunday morning with a sense of community and belonging, feeling spiritually renewed and equipped with biblical knowledge, and informed about the life of the church.
And when we asked ourselves why fellowship time matters, here is what we said:
Fellowship time on Sunday morning is important because we need to connect with the people we love, welcome those we do not yet know, and build the kind of intergenerational community that holds us together and makes us want to come back.
We also began working through our third question: what does Sunday morning actually look like with a real fellowship time built in? We are not going to pretend that is a simple question. It may mean changes to our Sunday morning schedule, and we know that affects a lot of people. No decisions have been made. We are taking this seriously, listening carefully, and working toward something that works for everyone. But we are already on the same page about a few things we find to be very important: fellowship time needs a dedicated block, it needs to be prioritized, it needs a central location, and it needs to be designed so that no one feels left out, whether you are a longtime member, a first-time visitor, or somewhere in between.
We meet again on July 9 to keep working through these questions.
Sunday mornings matter because they are one of the rare times when everyone gathers in the same place, and we don’t want to waste that opportunity. Our goal is to grow not just in numbers but in cultivating a deep, lasting community that loves Jesus with their whole hearts. Achieving this requires intentional effort, clear structure, and a collective willingness to ask tough questions about how we utilize our time together. It also involves viewing this challenge from a broader perspective beyond individual ministry programs, looking at the life of the entire church rather than fighting for personal programs. We appreciate the team’s efforts and are grateful for the work ahead.
We want to keep this process transparent and open. I will keep you posted as we go.