Volleyball was to start at 7 P.M., and I steered my VW Bug into the nearly empty parking lot right on the hour. Pulling in behind me were the Johnsons, first-time visitors I had invited on Sunday.
“Hi, Pastor!” they called as they tumbled out of their car, decked out in the latest Puma fashions and eager to play. “Where is everybody?”
“We already have enough for a good time, and more are on the way!” I replied with a salesman’s smile. But inside I was furious and embarrassed. Eventually a few more people arrived, but the letdown’s damage was done.
The Johnsons stuck it out for six months and then left. I sadly made that “We missed you” phone call that followed the “We missed you” note. They said they didn’t want to get stuck with all the church work others had evaded.
Disappointing participation. We’ve all known it. A chairperson begins the meeting with those deadly words, “Let’s wait for a few more people to get here.” Or the question, “Are there any volunteers?” is met by bowed heads and silence. I began to seriously wonder, How can I energize a lethargic church?
Energy in relationships
My question drove me to a church consultant, who suggested I analyze the social networks of the membership. Friendships were functioning among members; people were getting together some on their own. Perhaps these networks could benefit the church.
The idea of fellowship along friendship lines is not new. Many of those closest to Jesus were relatives or friends of one another. Seven of the twelve disciples shared the same occupation.
Studies show today’s flourishing churches have strong relational networks. One study showed relatives accounted for 52 percent of new recruits; another 29 percent were close friends, and the remainder had some kind of tie such as a neighborhood or business connection. And numerous studies show people who drop out of church do so because of strain in their associational ties or because sufficient ties never developed.
I also learned about sociometry, a sociological science pioneered earlier in this century by J. L. Moreno that studies these relational patterns. He looked at the way a person selects potential friends and discovered interpersonal bonds in a group by counting the number of times a person is selected as a friend, charting the choice patterns, and noting mutual choices.
I wondered if the same type of study could help energize our fellowship. Armed with my new-found knowledge, I set out to analyze the younger middle-aged couples. I knew their social network had potential; they shared common values, interests, concerns, and friendships. But I had already made four futile attempts at starting a fellowship group among them.
My goal was to find leaders among them who could galvanize the group and draw in new members. I put together a list of fifteen couples and arranged to interview them in their homes. I introduced my purpose as a personal attempt to understand friendship patterns in order to help plan a fellowship group. Then I asked three questions:
-Whom would you enjoy spending time with in a fellowship group?
-Confidentially speaking, whom would you avoid?
-Whom among your unchurched friends would you feel comfortable inviting?
These were not easy questions, and sometimes I felt like a detective delicately interviewing key witnesses. I needed to be tactful, but I also had to probe enough to elicit sufficient and truthful information. Fortunately each couple was cooperative and congenial. My hour visit rarely concluded on time.
As you can imagine, most people were reluctant to answer the second question about whom they would avoid. But I clarified the question by explaining the difference between avoidance and hatred. Reluctant respondents then opened up, and some named more than one person they definitely would not seek out. The third question about inviting “outsiders” was the real stumper. I heard many say, “I don’t have any idea.”
I charted the results in a diagram similar to diagram 1. Couples were listed twice, once down the side and once across the top. Starting with couple A on the side, I scanned across the line and checked off the columns representing the couples they chose. The final column on the right is the number of selections each couple made. The bottom line represents the number of times a couple was chosen.
I thought after several years in the congregation I would know the pulse of member interaction, but my hunches fared poorly. My wife and I received the most friendship votes, but I imagine the scores were somewhat biased with me as scorekeeper as well as player. But the biggest surprise was next.
The first runner-up couple had been attending only nine months! But they were friendly and socially adept, and they embodied the values of the group. Just behind them was another outgoing couple, who had attended for only a year. The three top couples had mutually chosen one another, indicating the strongest friendship bond. None received any negative choices.
When I plotted the friendship connections, I discovered two subgroups among the couples. I also saw a few isolates, couples who received no friendship votes. In diagram 2, the center circle depicts the highest number of times chosen-for this limited example, twice. The next ring is for those chosen once. Arrows are drawn from one couple to another to show friendship ties. Mutual choices appear as a double line. In this way, the subgroups, the loners, the mutual choices, and the key leaders to connect them all appeared before my eyes.
Sociometry uncovered another surprise, which answered why the group had failed up to that point. In each previous attempt to begin a fellowship, I had asked four couples to each host a meeting. I chose them because they were long-time members, ostensibly loyal and with well-developed church friendships. But the analysis showed these people in the bottom half of popularity, and some were in the negative-choice group. Rarely does one of them attend the fellowship group even now!
Energy at work
Fortunately the newly discovered leaders were willing to lead a fellowship group. The group’s style and program was easily established because the leaders were the core of the social network. Each meeting averaged half of the fifteen couples I originally interviewed, and the enthusiasm of this group sparked two more groups to begin.
Sociometry is not without its hazards. I had to be careful not to engender a feeling of cliquishness or social superiority. That’s why I ruled out questionnaires. I needed to interpret the rather stark questions with pastoral concern. Tact, understanding, and patient explanation had to dominate my interviews. And of course, I showed no one my diagrams.
In churches with rapid turnover, the results of sociometry might have too short a shelf life. But for us it was worth the time and care. Finding the right social mix, we now have a thriving couples group. Yes, occasionally symptoms of lethargy still echo around the church. But like my one-time TV repairman brother, now I first check to be sure the social network is plugged in.
-Gary Ricart
Grace Presbyterian Church
Wayne, New Jersey
Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
