Rare News Desk
The flash mob fad, where scores of people show up for some kind of communal experience at a location communicated via social media, has donned a homily.
Videos by Rare
In urban areas such as Buffalo and Detroit, Mass mobs have spiked Catholic Church attendance dramatically. Fox News reported:
Mobs of Buffalo-area Roman Catholics have been filling pews and lifting spirits at some of the city’s original, now often sparsely attended, churches.
It works this way: On a given Sunday, participants attend Mass en masse at a church they’ve picked in an online vote and promoted through Facebook and Twitter. Visitors experience the architecture, heritage and spirit of the aging houses of worship and the churches once again see the numbers they were built for, along with a helpful bump in donations when the collection baskets are passed.
The latest Buffalo Mass mob was this past Sunday.
This Buffalo trend, which started in November 2013, begat the Detroit one. Every month, the group Detroit Mass Mob selects a Catholic church and announces it on Facebook. The response has been overwhelming in a really good way. NPR reports:
St. Florian Catholic church is an eight-story, red-brick church built in 1908… seats 1,500 people, but normally only about 200 people attend noon Mass. On a recent Sunday, Thom Mann, an organizer with Detroit Mass Mob … had to get here early because, he says, “there’ll be standing room only.”
“People are upset that the churches are closing, but the simple reason is, people don’t go,” Mann says. “When you have a church that seats 1,500 people, and there’s 100 people there or less, how are they going to keep them open?”
This Mass mob may just be the answer to their prayers.
The Blaze reports about the Detroit efforts, “While the first Mass mob attracted 150 people, the crowd grew at subsequent events, with 2,000 participants showing up to the most recent endeavor,” at St. Florian.
The priest, the Rev. Mirek Frankowski – who also doubles as music director — [told NPR] the crowd nearly brought him to tears.
“Because, I mean, such a big crowd, it’s impossible to see these days in any of the churches. But thanks to the mob Mass we have this feeling of what it was so many years ago, when the churches were filled with people,” he says.
The Bible emphasizes the importance of church in the life of a believer. This regular fellowship is purposed as worship for the Lord, service towards others, and essential soul food for the body of Christ:
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:19-22)
This Mass mob is a praiseworthy enterprise, incorporating modern innovation to revive timeless principles, like the importance of getting folks to go to church. God bless it.
