It was a cool windy day last April as I drove across the Burlington Skyway towards Stoney Creek, Ont. I arrived at a non-descript building completed in 1991, in a suburban enclave of bungalows and cul de sacs. Back in the day, this was prime church planting territory and Heritage Green Presbyterian Church did well for a while. (Please see a profile of the church written by Connie Wardle, senior writer for the Record.)
Then for the longest while it didn’t do well. The remaining members of congregation were considering closing the doors.
Yet it was fertile ground for God’s work, and God “initiated and dropped a vision on” Rev. Alex Douglas and Rev. David Moody. This wasn’t going to be a paint job but a complete gutting and rebuilding project; and not with one minister, or something part-time, or something in a cluster, but with two full-time ministers.
That started a process for both of them of “discernment, prayer and seeking God’s guidance through the gifts, resources and people God put around us.”
I let them talk, nudging only now and then, mostly engaged in their passion. And that’s the word for it: Passion. These are two very passionate ministers. And thoughtful. —Andrew Faiz, senior editor
DAVID MOODY: We had a six-year plan roughly sketched out. We had a detailed plan up till Easter of last year, with milestones. We wanted to hit rough dates and a budget for how it was going to happen and how we were going to pay for this in the course of six years, how we plan to stay financially stable.
I come from a software development background. I was an executive of a software development company and I understand the finances, money, timelines and the importance of tracking those things. I think that’s something people hadn’t seen before, the level of detail and vision in terms of why we’re doing it, the intentionality of something new. We put in the homework that really let people say, “OK, this is more than just a pipe dream, we can actually track stuff here.” A lot of people, people with business backgrounds, would say, “This actually makes sense to me; if this were an IPO or a start up, I can actually see myself investing in this.”
ALEX DOUGLAS: You know, all of us want to see the Church grow. Reggie Joiner, who is a family ministry advocate speaker in the U.S. [in his book Think Orange], talks about how every church has beautiful mission statements and nobody questions those. What separates most churches from the rest are those who have actually planned how to see it happen. This was very important to us—that it wasn’t going to be something like we’re leaping off the roof of a temple saying, “It’s a great idea,” and God is saying, “It’s a great idea but you’re still being stupid.”
DAVID MOODY: We had a detailed plan and we had an anxiety about timing. The plan was based on a specific start date, too. It was important to us to have something to aim towards and Christmas and Easter were great leverage points.
We designed a timeline of what we want to accomplish by September, by Christmas; here is how we’re going to progress towards Easter and the general sense of the year. That plan gave us a reason to start on a certain date.
When all the financing came through, the presbytery was very responsive. The Futures Taskforce of the presbytery was able to do stuff in between meetings so by the time we got to the meetings, all they [the presbytery] had to do was to understand it and say yes or no.
I started on it as a consultant at the church in May just to get it ready. One of the things we were worried about was that everybody involved needed to be fully informed. There is a habit in presbyteries of not telling churches about what they’re doing because “they won’t understand, they would push back, they’ll be upset.”
ALEX DOUGLAS: We said, “If this is going to be Heritage Green’s mission, they need to understand better than anyone. If they’re left out of the loop, then guess what, it’ll flop.” So, we spent two months and spoke to everyone. We went to every single person in the church, whether they were attending now, or had been in the past; we met with them in their homes. We started a weekly communication in the bulletin about what was happening and why. We brought a letter, pictures, a real description of the vision and mission, our story and our background. It was a ton of communicating. We came to visit them here in the church and saw a struggling congregation. It was a draining time; most people were like, “You know this isn’t going to work, right?” They just didn’t have a habit for communication.
DAVID MOODY: They didn’t have a habit for vision either. We discovered that pretty quickly. A number of people said, “Oh, that’s so nice, best of luck.” But really no faith in where it was going.
ANDREW FAIZ: We’ve been beaten so much that we’ve given up.
ALEX DOUGLAS: Absolutely. And that was something we’ve encountered a lot even when we began; we saw it as earning trust through small victories.
DAVID MOODY: Basically following through with what we said, which sometimes doesn’t happen. We were very intentional about setting deadlines and hitting them, and then communicating that they’ve been hit. Building trust, building relationship. That was a big first step.
ALEX DOUGLAS: We did what we’ve said we’re going to do. What we presented wasn’t general; it was very specific about how it was going to play out. When it played out, and people were like, “Oh—that’s different!”
DAVID MOODY: I think the fear from some folks was: If you tell them what you’re aiming for, they’d be scared and wouldn’t want to do it.
My fear was we’d show up and they’d say, “It’s not what we expected.” So, we were very explicit and said, “We’re aiming towards a family-focused church. We’re aiming for a church where we do actions during the songs, have fun and everyone is participating because we’re all supporting the kids. We’re looking at a church where, at the beginning of the service while the kids are with us, we are absolutely focused around them understanding and being part of the service.”
It came out from Alex’s understanding of family ministry, which I learned a ton from. The idea that the music is going to be contemporary because we’re reaching out to families who have no interest in organ, no interest in hymns, they don’t know anything about it and they need music they can connect with. We said, “It’s a family, we honour our history, but we expect the music to be absolutely geared towards the families who are coming, not the people who are here. You’re becoming the soil, so that God can create something new.”
ANDREW FAIZ: From my conversations with other ministers over the years, congregations say, “Yeah, we’d like change.” And then change happens, “but that’s not the change we wanted.” So, almost immediate pushback. It’s often from the stalwarts of the congregations, often from the founding members, or their kids who, like immigrants, become more hardline about what it used to be like.
DAVID MOODY: Basically, we told them what it was going to be like, and expected a level of ownership in the mission that I don’t think they ever had before. We said to them, “The church won’t happen if you’re not there to receive the new families, if you’re not there to love them, to inspire them, to disciple them. If you’re not there, there is no soil, you don’t get to replant without soil. Even though it’s not for you, you’re crucial to the success of it.” And that was different thinking, too.
ALEX DOUGLAS: One incredibly difficult and delicate challenge for David and me was that we invited seed families to come and be missionaries to our church for the replant. [Seed families were involved with other churches in the presbytery but agreed to attend and be involved in the life of Heritage Green for one year.] And we realized early on that these seed families, because they’re responding to a mission from God, would likely—and we discovered very much so—have a much deeper experience of hands-on faith than the families that were already here.
If another church had come to Heritage Green asking for missionaries to do something like this, it’s likely that no one from our congregation would have responded because of the place of health they were in.
So, how do you manage that? If there is a group that is vital to the reception of these families and the integration of these families, and yet, they are not the mature members of the body? They’re mature in years and in experience of church but not necessarily in faith and in trusting God.
DAVID MOODY: Part of our first work was just spending time and discipling—weekly Bible study, seeking to develop an understanding of our role as disciples. I love that our original congregation stepped up. They said yes, which was amazing. They said, “If that’s true that we’re all Jesus’s disciples, all of us together, then we have to learn!” And they did, and that’s pretty amazing. I’m so proud of them.
ALEX DOUGLAS: And the session in particular. In the PCC, typically sessions step down for the summer time; our elders would meet sometimes twice a week to do the business side of things and then just Bible study.
ANDREW FAIZ: What do you see, in your experience in this process, as a role for Canadian Ministries? How can Canadian Ministries facilitate this kind of thing on an ongoing basis? And the same question about the presbytery. Do you think you have something that could be templated?
ALEX DOUGLAS: That was part of the process from Day One. It is something we would document to be shared. Early on we chatted with Ian [Ross-McDonald, then associate secretary of Canadian Ministries, and now the general secretary of the Life and Mission Agency]. His response was, “Whatever comes out of this, try and bear in mind: What does this mean for a church in Toronto? What does this mean for a church in St. John’s? Is there something that is specific to one church or is it a universal church context?”
It’s been on our mind the entire time. The idea of re-planting with intention is something that can be applied anyplace.
With regards to what Canadian Ministries and presbyteries can be doing, I think it’s empowering leaders to dream. That’s something we’ve been struck by in the past. I think that this ministry happened in the PCC almost despite the PCC.
David and I have hearts and faith that are grounded in Reformed understanding of scripture and love, and recognized the value of our Presbyterian structure. That is a gospel representation. In many ways, if we’re doing this on an independent model, the buy-in would be much less as there isn’t the same ownership, there isn’t that shared responsibility that comes through who God has made us to be. When we look at who we are, what the role of Canadian Ministries played in getting us here, and presbytery, it’s that it forced us to draw in others. It was their support more than anything but they didn’t give us an automatic yes. They required us to explain.
DAVID MOODY: Another thing that came out of this is providing us with a mentor. We got involved in a coaching program for new church developments even though we’re technically not new church; we’re close enough. We have a mentor, Tim Archibald, from Nova Scotia, so we get the benefit of his experience of the past 20 years to help us through the hurdles we’re hitting. He always has some wisdom, always brings God into the equation. We have some other mentors and if we didn’t have that, we would be flailing. How would you know what you don’t know?
It would be cool to look at the Canadian Ministries as a three-part thing. One is to challenge people to define what they’re going to do with the money. Two is to provide the money. And three is to coach what to do with it afterwards. That would be a really cool trifecta in terms of a role for them. The first one is harder but …
ANDREW FAIZ: Tell me about the Futures Task Force, which may be unique to the Hamilton presbytery.
ALEX DOUGLAS: Nine years ago, they started having visioning days. I don’t know if it still is, but the Presbytery of Hamilton was then the largest presbytery in Canada in terms of the number of churches in one area. A trend started of reduction, amalgamation, closures. So, there were these visioning days. It was just sitting down and listening on Saturdays, and asking: Why are we doing what are we doing? What are we supposed to be doing?
I think it was in those first days that I heard people saying, “We need to go back to who we’re supposed to be, who we are on the paper.” That is, a church that is trying to grow the kingdom. Somebody mentioned something to the effect of: We need our new ministers to know we will support you in what you want to do.
At that time, it went in and out because I wasn’t there yet but I think that certainly got used as a catalyst within me. I’ve never been somebody who would sit back and go kind of, am I in the cruising lane yet because I just can’t wait to get there.
There is a neat article David and I read recently about the need for apostles in the Church. It’s good to have shepherds, but there’s a disproportionate number of shepherds to apostles.
Apostles are people that push the boundaries and grow the kingdom in the way that it needs to be grown. Whereas shepherds are more about maintaining and nurturing. That was very empowering for us to read. We thought, you know what? There is something special that God has put into our hearts here and who we are as leaders; we’re not satisfied to maintain. So those seeds were there in the presbytery.
A few years ago, the Futures Task Force came to the realization that it had a short-term mandate to examine the viability—as crude a word it is for what they’re doing—but examine viability of some churches of the downtown core. There was a small group of churches that were struggling and the writing was on the wall that the day would be coming when all of them would be gone. Heritage Green was on that list as a sort of a secondary because they weren’t geographically close. The thought was that the three or four downtown churches could work together to keep their faith.
DAVID MOODY: The presbytery’s general sense was that we should have a group of people dedicated to thinking about the future with concrete plans coming out of it. And when Alex came, it was a perfect time because the committee was asking, “What can we do with Heritage Green? We need a leader there, somebody with a vision for that place.”
Then in walks Alex with “Hey, God put a vision on my heart for HG!”
So, I think it was perfect timing that got the foundation in place, and presbytery was faithful in putting this group together saying, “Let’s respond to this.” They’ve played a key part in thinking through the big part of it and making the connections with Canadian Ministries, understanding the protocol required in order to get this through the various hoops, but also willing to short-circuit stuff in order to make it happen.
ALEX DOUGLAS: They’ve done a great job with the due diligence and asking basic questions: “Is this right? Is this okay to do within who we are?”
We’re not here to subvert the process but it was a new approach to mission. It was a mission related to church. For us to do it, from a congregational perspective, we contacted the clerk’s office and they said, “Absolutely, it’s not a conflict at all, it’s just new.”
So, it was great for our presbytery to play that role, to ask those questions, and ask those tough questions: If you’re going to do this, and this is different–because they recognized the potential to change the trend–then there are a lot of churches that could change. They were basically saying, “If you open up the door with a new idea, we’ll listen to it!”
DAVID MOODY: From there, we started off by reaching out and talking with the congregation that was already here. So, we connected with everybody who’d been to the church in the past 20 years. We talked to the ones living close by and invited them back. We started with a group of people who were curious enough to come. Then we started designing a service for the families with a small number of kids (which doubled when we brought our own kids) around the idea of being a family-friendly church.
We said, “Guys, here’s what we’re going to do together: We’re going out to other churches and we’ll be inviting families to be join us as seed families, as missionaries to our area.” Then we followed Jesus’s example in sending out the disciples. We closed down Heritage Green for one week, and we sent out teams to all the different churches in the area, the ones that would allow us, and we shared the story: “Here is what we’re looking for, we’re looking for families willing to spend a year on mission with us and be missionaries for Stony Creek to bring people to know Jesus.” We put it on Facebook, on social media. Alex wrote a blog about what it means to be a seed family, so we threw the net as wide as we can.
Then we had what we called the Seed Family Saturday. About half a dozen families came. We gave them a form to fill out. We followed up, got together with some of them and shared why we’re doing it, our faith story. We gave them till after Christmas to decide. And all except one came back, feeling it was God calling them.
We ended up with seven families and we started worshiping together. We’ve seen the church grow from 15-20 before we came, into the 30s before Christmas, to 50s in January and now 60s and 70s. Last Sunday, we broke the 50 mark in adults; we had 51 adults and 24 kids; we’re maintaining the 2:1 ratio adults to kids.
As part of the service in the morning Alex gives the kids a task, an activity. It’s part of the service, and it draws them into the theme. Then they go back and work on it while we sing worship songs. When they come back to the front, they interact and Alex who teaches the Big God Story, which basically is teaching the story of scripture from Genesis to Revelation every year and picking up on a different story. So, every year, the entire congregation goes through the Bible, chronologically.
ANDREW FAIZ: How does that differ from lectionary?
DAVID MOODY: It’s not a church year; it’s chronological.
ALEX DOUGLAS: The only guarantees are Creation, Christmas, Easter and the Second Coming. It’s grounded in our curriculum that provides the arc, so we utilize that resource and its philosophy, which is completely family-focused as a template for most of the morning, including worship and then develop secondary scriptures that teach adults.
DAVID MOODY: In most churches, you start with the sermon and work your way backwards. In our church, we start with the family message, then the sermon flows out of that. And the series flows out of what we’re going to work on with the families. We spend a ton of time thinking about how we’re going to engage our families and kids. We spend up to three hours every week with myself, Alex, and Nancy, our worship leader, thinking and deciding.
Out of that flows the rest of our planning. So, it’s really cool how our energy pours into the kids and the families. In this church, the most important thing is the family time.
Sometimes we stay together; sometimes we have an adult service where the kids leave really early; but the standard is the first 40 minutes is all family time. Then we have our scripture, sermon, offerings and then the kids come back for our final song and blessing. When the kids are here, the music is geared towards something they can get.
ALEX DOUGLAS: Instead of Sunday school, we call it our Explore Application Time. The same way that adults will, in a message, explore, that’s the same thing we’re doing with the kids [on their level]. Again, what Sunday time is, it’s not just the Christian education piece but also the spiritual formation piece. The big part is the idea of responding to God. We want to create space and opportunities for worship while we’re here to respond to God. So, for our kids, a big piece of that is just leaving space. It’s neat to see this culture develop.
DAVID MOODY: Eventually we’ll be getting rid of the standard bulletin. But this basically is our service every week. We begin with our Anticipate time—basically, our approach to God.
ALEX DOUGLAS: It’s a neat way God is drawing in some of these new families.
DAVID MOODY: Alex teaches what it means that Jesus chooses us and then we teach out of the scripture, the Story of the Week. And as the kids leave, there is a greeting time. Then we dig in, sing a song, pray, read scripture, explore the message, and then during the offering we’re responding. Sometimes we have them come forward, so the response is not just financial. At the end the kids come back in, we sing a song, bless the family.
This is the pattern every week: Anticipate, Celebrate, Discover, Explore, Respond and Bless. Those are the elements of our service.
Check out the service from January 10, 2016 on YouTube
ANDREW FAIZ: What’s bringing these people into the church? What’s pulling them here?
ALEX DOUGLAS: Basically, we recognize that Sunday is our best real estate as a church, so we take Sunday and use it for the purpose of opening up the church to new families. We’re committed to making Sunday our most accessible ministry; anything else will flow out of that.
ANDREW FAIZ: What’s the canvassing you’ve been doing?
DAVID MOODY: We’re trusting church research: 85-90 per cent of people come because they’re invited. People who tend to invite the most are the people who’re the newest. If one family comes, that can translate into two more families in three weeks from now. Our goal is when the family comes in, they have an awesome experience, they feel welcome, that we connect, we know their kids’ names, their names, we invite them into what church can be and trust that investing in those people will multiply. And that’s what’s happening. It’s not quick but when it starts, it’s exponential.
ANDREW FAIZ: David, you did a study of growing churches within the PCC; what did you find?
DAVID MOODY: Right—I sent out a survey to a number of growing churches, and discovered the big things happening out there. I’d like to do a follow up study because I think I’ve got better questions to ask now. There are some key ministries that all of them are focusing on, and knowing those things and realizing those are the pieces. Like great preaching, great music, local mission, a sense of your target “audience.”
What I also learned is that a lot of churches get stuck in the complaining phase, the “Why are things changing, what’s going on?” phase. What I discovered is that the more strategic you are—the more you’re pushing deadlines and setting goals—the less time people have for complaining. So, you can’t cure it by talking about it forever. But if you’re busy attracting new families and you’ve got a goal, a target, jobs to do, nobody has time to complain. And the complainers just get lost in the noise. Recently we heard a bit of the complaining start up again, and that was our cue that it was time to begin phase two. If you’ve got lots of time to twiddle your thumbs, you’ll figure something to complain about, but if you’re busy…
ALEX DOUGLAS: Like the model of parenting: Bored kids are kids who get into trouble. Idle minds are the devil’s playground.
DAVID MOODY: Let’s set an ambitious goal and reach for it.
That takes us back to the very beginning of our conversation. If it were just one of us, it wouldn’t work. Neither of us has the gifts to pull off the whole picture. Alex’s gift with the families and the ability to pull together that whole family-focused ministry of the church is absolutely crucial. My gift in strategy and moving the church forward is essential.
We have a long-term vision that’s based on reality, which is awesome because it forces us to do it but it’s also based on belief that “we don’t want to run out of pots.” Remember the story of Elisha and the widow? When she ran out of pots, the oil stopped flowing.
ALEX DOUGLAS: The testimony of the scripture is that God definitely wants to pour more oil but that the vessels are few …
DAVID MOODY: Our scripture for the first phase of our replant was the parable of the good soil. We called our congregation to be that good soil.
Our scripture for the second phase is that God is pouring oil and we want to have the vessels ready. We don’t want to run out of vessels. That means being prepared and open to what God will do next.
ANDREW FAIZ: You seem to be taking people right back to the God journey, right back to the story and people responding to that. What do the sermons sound like?
DAVID MOODY: Preaching Jesus, preaching Christ crucified. One of the leadership people I listen to is Carrie Nieuwhof. He talks to a lot of cool leaders so I learn a lot from watching him learn. One of the things they’ve been hearing is that the millennials, young families, aren’t interested in lukewarm teachers. They want people who believe passionately; the phrase is like: “They’ll come from miles to watch somebody burn” … somebody who has the fire for Jesus. They may not believe, may not subscribe but they want to see people who are passionate. So, we’ve taken up on that.
This Sunday, we asked the question, why does it matter that Jesus is alive? Why does it matter and how does it affect you going to work, raising your kids? If it doesn’t matter, let’s go home. Our sin has consequences but he’s carrying it for us. And our seed families are showing the way. One of the families God brought in, this is a couple who had led multiple mission trips to multiple third-world countries. They can’t wait for us to start living out the gospel in all kinds of different functional ways.
ALEX DOUGLAS: And it’s catching. The church is now saying, “When are we replacing the sign so the community knows we’re here?” And we say, “When we’re ready.” Right now, there is internal health that needs to be taken care of, when the time will come, we’ll repaint the sign and let people know we are here.
DAVID MOODY: Same thing with the mission. Right now, it’s entirely focused on becoming a church that blesses young families and allows them to grow in faith. That’s our laser focus.
ANDREW FAIZ: What’s your mean age?
DAVID MOODY: Tough to say. If you got 60 people last week, 20 of them would be under 15. I’d say today that a third is seniors, a third parents, a third kids.
ALEX DOUGLAS: The average age is probably 45, if you take away the kids. For churches that want a church full of 30-year-olds, be careful what you wish for—there is a ton of stuff that doesn’t get done. Again, it’s a smaller church than other churches I’ve served in but it’s a much more functional unit because it’s the understanding of who we are, the unity.
DAVID MOODY: It’s interesting. Our focus is on young families, which doesn’t mean the whole church is made up with just young families. It means whenever we make a decision we ask “How is this going to benefit our families with raising kids, how does that play into it?” You end up with grandparents and young families coming, a mix. I imagine we’ll get young couples who are planning for a family and who would like to start coming here in anticipation.
We’re about: “You’re raising a family? What kind of challenges are you facing? We want to bless you in those areas.” Our mission is to make Sunday awesome for that. But even more than that, what can we do during the week that will support for your family so that couples stay together, parents work together, and instead being frustrated by their kids, they’re turning into mentors? That’s what we’re focusing on, being missional to those families.
Our next phase, part of it, is just spending time with young families and asking: What are the struggles that you have? What kind of things do you need?
For example: One of the biggest pressures in this community is on couples where one or both work in Toronto or the GTA. So, what kind of pressure is that for a couple? Huge! How many divorces are going to happen because of too much workload, no balance, friendships, community breakdowns, and all of a sudden, a family dissolves. So, we’re asking, “How can we support you as a couple?” Because one of the best things you can do for your kids is to be a healthy couple. If your parents are healthy, you feel safer as a child and can grow developmentally. So, focusing on helping couples. Is it babysitting during the week to give you a night off? Is it offering parenting time? Is it just giving you other parents to talk to? Is it bringing in experts on bullying or anxiety in children? We don’t know yet.
ALEX DOUGLAS: We envision for Phase Two that who we are as a church starts with the families; moves into what their actual needs are; then have ministries that come out of that. So that’s what makes up our church.
DAVID MOODY: Imagine a sign, if the top is the family and then comes their needs, the ministry hangs off the need. If the need goes away, there is nothing to hold the ministry. So, we won’t have the zombie ministries; ministries have to flow out of the need.
ALEX DOUGLAS: That’s my job to figure out what those needs are through sessions, create a team. We’re sitting here after Easter and thinking, “You know, how many churches can be saying that they’re planning towards something for two years?” And yet, that’s what we’ve been doing.
Easter morning … so joyful … 120 people worshiping together. People said numerous times they’ve never seen this many people in our church before. It is God’s vessel and it is full.
DAVID MOODY: I think what usually happens is that churches tend to grow in plateaus. So, you have an event, then you burst and come down, but where you come down to is higher than where you started. That’s what’s hoped and expected. It’s still growing since Easter and we’re kind of—let’s hope it stops for a bit because we don’t have enough chairs. Ha ha. Awesome problem … When you get to 80 per cent full, you stop growing. You’re basically turning people away when they come and have a hard time finding a seat.
ALEX DOUGLAS: I think it’s the accessible and real, it’s not the holy façade. Part of it is the language we use. Very early on, when we do communion, we have people come to the front, they break it off, and part of the process is the Apostle’s Creed. We did it first time by the book and one of our seed families, who came from the Pentecostal background, texted us later in the afternoon and asked, “What’s up with the whole Catholic Church bit?” And I said, “Ah, you know, it means Global Church.” The next day I said to David, “We need to say Global Church or something else, because that word means nothing and it’s not time to teach it.” So, David did the legwork and we wrote it in vernacular and now we do it as people speak today.
ANDREW FAIZ: These new people, how are they giving?
DAVID MOODY: Our seed families are awesome givers. Our new families, we don’t know. Part of what we’re doing, we have to teach about giving at an appropriate time. There are models, some realistic ideas about how many families turns into how much money. So, we’ve modelled our growth based on what we believe a family would give over a period of time. We recognize that we have to grow into that size before the end of that time because you have to develop all those people. We’ve got a financial model and we’ll find out if it works in a year.
ALEX DOUGLAS: Typically, you’re taught that the younger families give less; the older families give more. The 80 per cent of the giving comes from the 20 per cent of the people. Those things don’t seem to stand true for us. Our younger families seem to give much more than what the older families do as a whole, and it’s a much larger giving base than you’d typically find in an average church.
ANDREW FAIZ: Because it’s still a young church.
DAVID MOODY: We’ve got missional families and the early adopters are the people who are the most passionate. Other things we learned about U.S. churches that grew quickly is that you can expect a family to come once every 4-6 weeks. A young family won’t attend weekly. So, 250 on a Sunday looks like about 500 people connected to your church.
ALEX DOUGLAS: We’re very eager to figure out what our norm is. For instance, we got a new family that’s never been to church before. Since they’ve started attending, altogether I think they’ve only missed 4 Sundays. So, is that normal or are they weird?
