[Image: Last year, St. Thomas’, Sanford, set up a Lenten prayer cross and gathered prayer requests from passersby. Photos courtesy of the Rev. Ken Kroohs]
How churches can use what they have to reach their communities
The Rev. Ken Kroohs is a “theoretically retired” Episcopal priest living in High Point. His retirement is theoretical because he spends his days working with churches pro bono to develop ways to interact with their local communities both in-person and online through outward-facing events and intentional visitor follow-up. He partners with TryTank, a ministry of Virginia Theological Seminary, to teach classes and run experiments with churches willing to try something new in order to reach out into their communities.
Kroohs sat down with Summerlee Walter of the Disciple to explore the ways churches can use the ministries and traditions they already have to invite people into church.
Summerlee Walter: What is the biggest challenge churches face?
Ken Kroohs: That’s the easiest question you can ask. It’s discouragement. Churches are discouraged. They don’t believe anything will work. They believe the shrinkage of churches is inevitable, so why bother?
Then if they do bother, they get discouraged because things don’t turn around overnight. They get discouraged when I can’t give them a silver bullet. And what I tell them over and over again is that it took decades for the church to get to this position. It’s going to take a while to turn things around.
SW: This is clearly something you’re passionate about, helping churches with that turnaround and bringing people back in. Where does that passion come from?
KK: Actually, it began in the wrong place. It began as church growth. When I got to my first church [as a parochial priest], I found out they were expected to stay open another few weeks and then close. They were completely bankrupt. So church growth became kind of important.
It was only later that I began to understand that it isn’t about growing the church; it’s about helping people grow closer to God. And if we do that, some of those people are likely to begin attending, but that’s a nice fringe benefit. It’s not the goal.
SW: You currently assist churches in reaching out to the community. How did you get started with that work?
KK: I’ve been trying to remember how I first got in touch with TryTank. I don’t remember exactly, but we got to talking, and they asked me to do a webinar. It turned out to be a three-part webinar on the Blessing of the Animals. I used some lessons I learned at St. Christopher’s in High Point and All Saints in Greensboro in the webinar, and it was very well received. Then I did one for Advent and Christmas, then one for Lent and Easter. Then I started to do some others. It gradually has built.
SW: Can you tell me a few success stories from churches that have worked with you?
KK: There’s a number of them. Again, it’s important to understand it’s not instant. It takes time.
There’s a church in New Jersey, which is one of my favorites because they really work hard at it. They do something called Messy Church, which is a Sunday school program, but not on Sunday. They do it quarterly on a Saturday. They have a bigger congregation there than they do on Sunday morning. They also do a first Friday free lunch and service, and that congregation is big. They’re reaching out to people and not worrying about getting them there on Sunday specifically.
Just in the last couple months—this is after years—they’ve begun to see people whose first contact was these other things starting to show up on Sunday.
Trinity in Mount Airy also has done a lot of good things. Trinity in Fuquay-Varina has been really active. They put on a couple of the best Blessings of the Animals I’ve ever seen. At Epiphany in Eden, [the Rev. Linda Nye] does a lot of great outreach. So there’s a number of churches you can point to that are…not discouraged. How about that?
SW: I love that! You mentioned the Blessing of the Animals. Why is that such a good outreach for churches?
KK: It’s a great way to pull in people who have pets. You do a very short service, so there’s a church component, and then you bless the animals. If done well, you have a chance to get to know the people, to interact with them, to invite them to other things. It feels safe to them.
Asking someone who is unchurched or hasn’t been to church in quite a while to come on Sunday morning is a big ask because it feels like they’re being asked to commit to something. Inviting them to come to a one-time event feels safer. And we’ve had great interaction through those.
SW: Can you share some tips for churches that want to start inviting people to the church in ways that are not as formal as Sunday morning?
KK: First of all, focus on what’s already happening and improve that. Don’t try to start everything new all over. Look at the blood drive, the yard sale, the Sunday service, all of that, and evaluate every one of them with two questions. First, how are you meeting new people through this activity—not just seeing them but meeting them? Second, what does the guest know about the church when they leave that they didn’t know when they arrived? We have all these people who circulate through our property for a blood drive or a yard sale, and they leave knowing nothing about the church that they didn’t know walking in.
Typically the church is already doing lots of things that are internal but would make great community events. One of my favorite examples is the blessing of the backpacks—I will be offering a webinar on this soon. That’s usually three to five minutes in the middle of a service on the last Sunday in August, and it’s just the church’s own people. Why not take that and make it a Sunday afternoon event with ice cream and some other things, and you invite every teacher in the nearby schools and school staff to attend? You’re not going to match the huge church that’s handing out a thousand backpacks full of supplies, but we can accomplish other things.
This time of year I’m working with several churches on the burning of the palms to make ashes for Ash Wednesday. Often it’s not even done within the congregation; it’s done in the clergy’s backyard with a frying pan. That’s such a deep spiritual moment. Expand it. Make it a community event. There’s lots of things we’re doing that we can start doing more broadly.
Shrove Tuesday pancakes is a good example. Ash Wednesday, particularly for inactive Roman Catholics, is a good example. We don’t go out of our way to announce it and to let people know they’re welcome and that they can receive communion.
Anything like a summer hamburgers and ice cream event, something informal, is a good option. There’s the plant sale, the yard sale, anything that would encourage somebody who isn’t likely to walk on the property to walk on the property. The key thing, particularly for small churches, is to find what interests your people. If your people have an interest in showing off old cars, have a drive-in of old cars. At St. Christopher’s, we had a man who used to go on these charity motorcycle rides, and he had them stop in at church one Sunday. We had a bunch of bikers taking communion.
The key point in all of this is always to be assertive, never aggressive. I use the phrase from stewardship training: If you don’t ask, you won’t get it. The same thing applies here.
[Image: The Rev. Linda Nye at Epiphany, Eden, blessed a unicorn at the church’s Blessing of the Animals in 2023.]
SW: You made two distinctions in that last answer that I want to follow up on. You alluded to the difference between seeing and meeting and also to the difference between being assertive and aggressive. Could you speak a little bit more about each of those differences?
KK: Meeting, to me, means you’ve at least exchanged first names. That’s the minimum, but hopefully you’ve gotten contact information. That’s the goal.
Assertive versus aggressive is a little harder to determine. You ask, but you don’t demand. The best image of demanding that I can come up with is when the usher mentions the guest book and then stands over your shoulder to make sure you fill it out. That’s aggressive. Assertive is mentioning the guest book and turning away.
You know, some churches get really, really pushy and that’s a turnoff most of the time. I think most people who come to an Episcopal church aren’t expecting the push.
SW: This is a nice segue into the next question. How do you remain in contact with the people who you meet in a way that’s inviting, not aggressive?
KK: It’s all about communication, which requires us to get visitors’ contact information. One of the things I did in the webinar series I just finished was ask, “How many of the people who were guests last Christmas are churches still in communication with?” Most churches don’t even know who the guests were last Christmas, much less stay in communication with them.
I’ve found texting works better than email or written communication, but you use what you have. If all you’ve got is a guest’s physical address, you send them a note. If we don’t have their contact information, we cannot communicate, which means we cannot influence. That’s the key word there: influence. We want to influence their decision whether or not to build a relationship with the church. What we do most of the time is ghost our guests. They leave, and that’s the end of it.
SW: I like to think about it with a dating metaphor. You don’t want to be ghosted by the person who you just had coffee with, but you also don’t want them to propose marriage to you in that first meeting. What would an appropriate, inviting follow-up look like?
KK: If you’ve got their number, I send them a text that basically just says thank you for being with us. If they’ve left a prayer request, I say thank you for honoring me with your prayer request. That’s the way I look at it. It’s an honor to be asked.
Then I say we will send you occasional texts about things going on. Once a week, they get a text. Very seldom is it about the coming Sunday service, unless there’s something special happening, because if all they needed to know was what time the service was, they’d be there anyway.
A lot of people are much more interested in helping with the food pantry than coming on Sunday. So invite them to that. Invite them to a one-time thing: Hey, we need some extra hands at the food pantry this week. Can you help? Then they might get involved. Invite them to special events like a summer cookout or anything like that. If you do want to invite them to a Sunday service, invite them when there’s something special going on, like Mother’s Day.
SW: Before you even get to the point of following up, what are some tools you suggest to churches for gathering contact information?
KK: Again, be assertive, not aggressive. Give people lots of opportunities to connect. At the yard sale [in a former church], every 30 minutes there was a drawing for $5 off anything you bought. The entry form to the drawing was a contact card, on which there was a do not contact option. Probably 80% of the people didn’t opt out. We did something similar at a plant sale. At every activity that goes on at the church—the blood drive, voting, whatever—a prayer booth is appropriate. Ask people if they want to stop and have prayer, and afterwards ask if they would like to stay in touch, very gently.
As far as the Sunday service goes, there’s a wonderful moment between the peace and the offertory when people are still milling around a little bit. A great way to bring that to a close and stay within the concept of the peace is for the priest to thank everybody who is new and invite them to fill out the contact form, fill out the guest book, however it’s done at your church. It is really important that the leader show an interest.
SW: Is there anything else you want to offer as a final thought to folks who have read this interview and now are wondering about a next step for their church?
KK: One, it’s possible. Don’t give up. Two, everything I offer is free. In fact, I can even show where you can get some tiny grants to help with some stuff. I offer a number of different workshops. I do workshops for vestries, for the congregational teams. However I can be of help, just let me know. You can contact me.
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