Incredibly,
TEC started only three new churches in 2012, the last year for which data is
available according to research by the Rev. Susan
Snook (she
planted, and is now rector of, a thriving parish in the Diocese of Arizona). Jim
Naughton, reporting Snook's research at the Episcopal Café (Why
doesn't the Episcopal Church plant more churches?) wondered why The Episcopal
Church (TEC) plants so few new churches. Two factors, one demographic and the
other theological, underscore the poignancy of his question.
First, the
US population grew from just under 180 million people in 1960 to 308 million in
2010. That significant growth suggests that a flourishing church would also
have been a growing church during those five decades. Yet the increase in US
population sharply contrasts with TEC's decline from 3.4 million members in
1960 to fewer than 2 million today. In other words, during the last five
decades, the US population increased about 70% and TEC's membership declined by
roughly 42%.
Second,
God calls Christians to be a missionary people. In previous generations, the
missionary impulse may have derived much momentum from people believing that
the only way to experience the fullness of God's love was through Christ. Thankfully,
many Episcopalians no longer believe that Christ is the exclusive path to God.
Yet that
shift in beliefs does not leave us bereft of a missionary impetus. We value
both TEC and our local congregations, an assessment obvious from hundreds of
posts on the internet (including the Episcopal Café!) and comments from people
in thousands of pews across the country. We Episcopalians find our liturgy and
communal life personally helps us to connect with God and enriches our lives. If
words really indicate how Episcopalians feel, why don't we extend a warmer and more
persuasive invitation to family, friends, and even acquaintances to explore – if
not to join – the religious tradition and community that we allegedly value so highly?
The
claim that TEC has a shortage of clergy is a bogus explanation of why TEC is
failing to plant new churches. In 2009, TEC had 17,868 clergy compared to 9079
in 1960, or about twice as many as when we had one-third more members. In spite
of a sizable number of clergy retirees, we still have ample numbers of active clergy.
However, TEC does have a clergy distribution problem. Rural and small town TEC
congregations often struggle, both to raise the funds needed to pay a full-time
priest and to find clergy willing to serve in those locales (a majority of our
clergy, based on their choices about where to reside, apparently prefers to
live in more urban areas).
Although
we have plenty of congregations, they, like our clergy, are maldistributed. Our
approximately 6,700 congregations – if they had an average of 750 members –
would comprise a Church of five million. Unfortunately, the US is experiencing
significant internal demographic shifts. These changes have left many Episcopal
congregations in locations with a static or even diminishing population.
Meanwhile, numerous areas with growing populations lack a conveniently located TEC
congregation.
So, why
doesn't TEC plant more new congregations to proclaim the good news to the
growing US population? Scripture plainly depicts Jesus enjoining his disciples
to make disciples. At least two impediments exist.
First,
TEC utilizes its resources inefficiently and ineffectively. We waste much
effort and money keeping small congregations in geographic places with
diminishing populations on life support long after any realistic hope of
revitalization has faded away. Well-intentioned efforts to develop alternative
approaches to theological education to staff these dying congregations will
only prolong the misery and drain additional resources. Closing these outposts
can cost a great deal of political capital, but not closing them will only
expedite TEC's demise.
I've
served a congregation with an average Sunday attendance under 20. I know how
much those people valued their congregation, its worship, and its other
ministries. However, two vibrant parishes were located within a one-mile radius
of my small congregation. None of my parishioners wanted to ask, let alone
answer, the question of whether we would be most faithful by closing our
congregation and joining one of the other parishes. In the meantime, keeping
the congregation alive cost a great deal of money and contributed less to the
body of Christ than we would have contributed by shuttering the doors and
joining one of the neighboring congregations. My parishioners prioritized
loyalty to a location, preserving a congregational identity, and perpetuating a
dwindling community over doing the most for God's kingdom. As their priest, I
failed to realign their priorities more closely with the gospel imperatives.
Loyalty to God's purposes rather than loyalty to place, building, or tradition
best defines Christian fidelity.
Second,
TEC, in common with a great many organizations, finds dealing with small issues easier than dealing with large issues. Numerical decline
represents an existential threat for TEC. A growing number of congregations
devote a disproportionate (often almost 100%) of their resources to paying a
priest and keeping the building open. We find the latter two issues – how to
reduce what we pay a priest (e.g., by reducing educational debt) and funding
the building – easier to address than the overarching issue of numerical
decline.
Blaming
the numerical decline on either the ordination of women or the 1976 Book of
Common Prayer constitutes a red herring. TEC's serious numerical decline did
not begin until the 1980s, well after both of those changes.
The real
issue is that the interpretation and praxis of Christianity passed to people in
the US in the second half of the twentieth century no longer speaks to people.
Theoretically, every generation must claim the faith for itself, putting ideas
and practices into wineskins appropriate to that generation. In fact, we tend
to change the wineskins only when forced. The wineskins that I received in
seminary are an increasingly poor fit in a globalized, electronically
connected, scientifically oriented world. Creating new wineskins is no easy
task.
Many
Episcopalians, clergy and laity alike, thus choose an easier option. We find a
cause to support: we fought poverty, we fed the hungry, we campaigned for civil
rights, we supported the full inclusion of women in church and society, and now
we work for justice for gays, lesbians, the transgendered, and bisexuals. In
short, we walk some of the Jesus path. We do good things and we should keep
doing them; none of those worthy tasks is yet finished. Meantime, we avoid giving
too much thought to disturbing questions about who God is, how we connect with
God, and how we can discern God's presence and activity in our midst. We love
our neighbor, but we do so incompletely because we ignore our post-modern
world's pervasive spiritual hunger. We are most faithful and best incarnate the
body of Christ (i.e., be the Church) when we integrate loving God explicitly
and consistently into our efforts to love our neighbors.
The second
part of this post will offer practical ideas for reversing the decline.
2 comments:
The TEC and all other churches aspire to do the right thing. so where is the concern over current wars we start and have no answer to a solution. Hypocrisy does not lie in other countries. It is here in abundance.
We find ways to send food, water and of course weapons to starving people around the world. We never look at the consequences of our compassion. If the country insists on overpopulation and civil wars, should we be the ones to enable them.
All the countries who have civil wars and the people will not fight to protect their homes and families, is it our responsibility to protect them.
Your article on having churches so close together and no one will move to combine their congregation and finances rings a bell to me. In several places we lived people would get upset with the minister and form a new church only to do the same thing a few years in the future.
So much is going on in this country and the world and few people really care unless it involves money.
I'm with you for most of your observations, but I think the central insight deserves a bit of prodding: "The real issue is that the interpretation and praxis of Christianity passed to people in the US in the second half of the twentieth century no longer speaks to people."
This is actually a specific ideology about historical progression that is very specific to the twentieth century. And at the risk of being too academic, it's a specifically modernist ideology. In modernism, constant change and disruption are thought to be the norm. Taking a governing principle from science, capitalism and manifest destiny, we assume that the times are always changing, and we need to always be expanding outwards to keep up.
But again, that's a specific ideology of the 18th,19th, and especially the 20th centuries. That wasn't how history always worked, and it isn't necessarily how it is always going to work in the future. Postmodernism teaches a very different version of history, non-linear and perhaps repetitive. Which isn't to say we shouldn't be thinking harder about how to spread the gospel; I agree completely that the Episcopal Church's current model is not working. And at the risk of just being anecdotal, my urban, politically progressive, liturgically-conservative, Anglo-Catholic parish in a creaky old building, is growing and thriving. Not the answer for everywhere, but it's working here.
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