NESTLED IN GERMANY'S NORTHWESTERN CORNER, Oldenburg, a city of about 150,000, is home to our small—or should I say, steadily growing—Christian Science congregation.
But our small Christian Science Society has only recently experienced this growth and expansion. In fact, decades passed without a single person applying for membership. That is, until a year ago.
Feeling drained because of the decline in membership and low attendance at church services, we finally decided to call a meeting. Each member contributed metaphysical ideas on how to achieve our goal of reaching out more to the community. We started by endeavoring to see Church as a complete spiritual idea, not as a conglomeration of people.
We gained inspiration from a couple of ideas in Science and Health where Mary Baker Eddy used the word fragmentary: "... Christ's teachings ... are not theoretical and fragmentary, but practical and complete; and being practical and complete, they are not deprived of their essential vitality" (p. 98). Also, "Principle is not to be found in fragmentary ideas" (p. 302). So we saw our congregation, the proponent of "Christ's teachings," not as lacking in people or anything else, but as already the full expression of its true nature.
We saw the silent-prayer portion of the service as an ideal time to pray about membership concerns.
One question we had been asking ourselves was whether or not we would have to limit our weekly Wednesday evening testimony meetings to once a month. Because of lack of members, this question seemed only natural. Yet, cutting back was the last thing we truly wanted to do. With new inspiration that our Christian Science Society wasn't a fragmentary idea, we ultimately kept our Wednesday services going on a weekly basis. For one thing, we felt that a weekly meeting nourished the members themselves and ultimately knew that none of us would want to miss out. We also took to heart the idea of Wednesday meetings as being one leaf of the tree for "the healing of the nations" (Rev. 22:2), and we did not want to let a single leaf fall to the ground unused.
But there was still the question of just how to keep weekly services going with so few members. In order to make the task as practical as possible, we found a creative solution: We decided that five members would share the task of compiling the Bible readings and conducting meetings. That way, the task would not fall to one member alone, but several members would cooperate to help us realize our goal. This solution felt right, making it practical in every way for us to continue with our weekly meetings.
The decision regarding Wednesday meetings was only one way we addressed our concerns of membership. We also decided to give specific prayer for the congregation. Aware of the Manual of The Mother Church's By-Law, "The prayers in Christian Science churches shall be offered for the congregations collectively and exclusively" (p. 42), we saw the silent-prayer portion of the service as an ideal time to pray about our membership concerns. So we made an important adjustment in the service. Instead of spending only a half minute or so praying silently, we extended the time for the prayer to three or four minutes. This added time gave us the opportunity to really pray for every aspect of membership—including the ideas that Church is complete and that we weren't lacking in anything.
A short time after starting this practice, all kinds of people began taking an interest in our society. One long-standing visitor expressed interest in teaching Sunday School and helping the congregation he loved. So he applied for membership. Since then, he has been helping not only with teaching Sunday School, but with ushering and serving as a substitute Reader.
Many others have also joined. Two newcomers to Christian Science felt the impetus to apply for membership. One of them said she suddenly felt so attracted to our society that she just wanted to be part of it and support Christian Science.
A member who had not been attending for some time came to a service and soon after began coming regularly. She gave a testimony saying how grateful she was to have felt the urge to be an active part of our society once again.
Then out of nowhere many visitors began showing up bit by bit. One woman came who had just learned about Christian Science in a different town. She comes fairly regularly, bringing her son to Sunday School and sometimes helping out as organist. Another woman started coming after one of our new members invited her to our lecture. She brings two of her kids to Sunday School. (She even invited all the members and visitors for apple cake one day after a service!) One Sunday recently, we had ten Sunday School students, while before we only had one pupil for a long time. One of the students even recently asked for an application to become a member.
This evidence that our Christian Science Society is gaining both in members and visitors is merely a visible sign of our goal to see the true idea of Church as spiritually complete. And we are carrying on with our prayers for Church. Ultimately, it's not quantity that counts, but quality.
We have learned how to function better as a congregation, feeling closer to each member, like a family. When one of the members has a good idea, we no longer hold a special meeting to officially vote on the idea. We just go ahead with the idea when we're assured that the others agree.
We also allow more for a loving spontaneity to guide our interactions with others. When we do find the need to hold meetings, for example, they are always uplifting, and we laugh a lot. When a Sunday School student plays the solo on Sunday, he will get a big round of applause. And if the organist finds a solo especially pleasant, he will spontaneously ask the soloist after the service to sing it again as the postlude with everyone joining in.
Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health, "Love for God and man is the true incentive in both healing and teaching" (p. 454). As a Christian Science family, we have proved this statement. Our desire to see Church as a complete spiritual idea and at the same time to meet the healing needs of our community have been keys to our progress.
