Faith+Values: Pews fill again as summer winds down

Churches have various names for the first Sunday after Labor Day. Rally Sunday is the most common designation, but it's also known as Welcome Sunday, Kick-Off Sunday and Homecoming Sunday.

The names don't really matter, anyway. They're just a politically correct way of saying the same thing: Summer Is Over So Get Your Butt Back in the Pew Sunday.

"In one way, I guess, that's exactly what it is," said John Cionca, professor of ministry leadership at Bethel Seminary, with a laugh.

Though it's not an official church holiday, Rally Sunday often generates crowds that rival those at Easter and Christmas.

"It's one of our biggest turnouts of the year," said the Rev. Paul Youngdahl, senior pastor at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis.

It's a big day figuratively, too: "There's an excitement to it," Youngdahl said. "You can feel the energy in the church pick up again."

Most churches throttle down for the summer. Sunday school goes on hiatus. Choirs are replaced by soloists. Ministers take vacation. And, either as a cause or an effect, attendance drops.

When the end of summer rolls around, churches need a way to kick-start many of their programs. Rally Sunday fills the bill perfectly, Cionca said. It's a merger of two things that we relate to and respond to: cycles and marketing.

"We're cyclical by nature," he said. "Be it the start of a new week or a new month or a new year, we live in cycles. Rally Sunday is a way of kicking off a new church year."

More of a new year than New Year's

Many people already are thinking in "new" terms, anyway. For them, September represents more of a new year than New Year's does.

"For people with families, our personal cycles start with the start of the school year," Cionca said.

A natural outgrowth of that is making connections -- or remaking them, in the case of people who spent summer weekends at their cabins.

Rally Sunday "is a good time to celebrate the coming together of the community again," said Lynne Lorenzen, a religion professor at Augsburg College and part-time pastor at St. Paul-Reformation Church in St. Paul. "Most congregations return to a full schedule of committee meetings, activities and more worship services than occur during the summer."

The history of Rally Sunday has been traced back more than a century. In researching church bulletins and other materials for her yet-to-be-published book, "A Brief History of Christian Education," the Rev. Joyce Martin Emery, a Presbyterian synod executive, uncovered references dated as early as 1903.

By the end of the decade, she writes, it had become "a strong recruitment tool. ... If the exuberant vitality of youth was channeled wisely, this was a great opportunity to diffuse energy and zeal throughout every department. Rally Day could counter the stagnation and listlessness of the summer heat."

Many churches top off their Rally Sundays with special events like ice cream socials or barbecues. That's fine, Cionca said, but he cautions his students at the seminary that there's a line they have to be careful not to cross: Don't make such a big deal out of welcoming people back that the folks who have been attending during the summer feel slighted.

"You don't want this attitude of, 'You've been coming to church all summer! What's the matter with you?' " he said. "You have to be careful that you're not sending out a message that validates ditching church for the summer."

Cionca also suspects that Rally Sunday is losing some of its oomph, at least in terms of attracting new members.

"Nowadays we talk about 'front-door ministries' and 'side-door ministries,'" he said. "Front-door ministries are the worship services. That used to be the way everyone checked out a new church. But more and more, we're seeing people check out a church through side-door ministries -- Bible study classes, kids' groups, softball teams, things like that. Churches no longer need to have a one-and-only big push."

But Rally Sunday isn't about to fade away. It's still the major way churches get out the word to their members that a new church year is at hand. At Mount Olivet, for instance, each of the 6,000 members should have heard this week from one of 500 volunteers who worked the phones leading up to tomorrow's services.

"Every member has gotten a call reminding them about Rally Sunday," Youngdahl said. "This is a busy time around here."

Jeff Strickler • 612-673-7392

Jeff Strickler • jstrickler@startribune.com