After a summer full of beach vacations, outdoor festivals, cookouts, baseball games, fireworks, and all of the other activities we fill our short summers with, we find ourselves on the cusp of my favorite season: autumn.
The fall. Time for football, pumpkin spice latte (actually, pumpkin spice everything!), cold crisp mornings (maybe even a frost), cool afternoons, leaves changing colors and falling, geese heading south…and returning to church.
There is something about the shorter and cooler days that seems to point people back to worship. And data gathered by organizations such as Pew Research supports that. The reasons are not clear; perhaps culturally we need to stop with a routine periodically, but then welcome a return to ‘normal’ after some time. We are conditioned that way with our traditional school year after all.
God, certainly, is everywhere, so the break from church isn’t a break from God necessarily. But it is a break from the many advantages that gathering together provides.
There are many ways in which returning to church is beneficial after a break. Returning to church provides the opportunity to reconnect with the values that you share with your congregation: spiritual values, moral, and ethical values. Also, studies show that individuals who regularly engage in prayer and Bible study have reported a positive impact on their mental and emotional well-being.
If you have been away for a while we would like to invite you to consider a return to First Baptist of East Aurora.