PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
Will Religious Institutions Rise to the Occasion?
KRISTA TIPPETT ON THE CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES AHEAD
Krista Tippett understands there's a crisis in American religious institutions, and she knows it's a painful and scary time for Christian leaders.
But at the same time, this seminary-trained Southern Baptist-turned-Episcopalian sees hope in the ferment.
"I actually have a lot of trust and faith in the kind of robust way people are struggling," she said. "And then I think the question is, will the institutions rise to the occasion? Because I think there's a lot of possibility here."
Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning journalist and author who is host and executive producer of "On Being," a podcast, radio show and website focusing on questions of meaning, values, religion and ethics.
Tippett has a diverse background -- she worked as a journalist and diplomat in Cold War-era Berlin before earning an M.Div. from Yale University -- which she draws upon in conversations with a broad array of guests, including the Dalai Lama, Jean Vanier, Seth Godin and Yo-Yo Ma.
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Photos courtesy of On Being
Young people today may be questioning the church, but they are doing so in a way that is faithful to the heart of the tradition. This has the capacity to fuel real spiritual renewal for our institutions, says the host of “On Being” in this interview.
Krista Tippett understands there’s a crisis in American religious institutions, and she knows it’s a painful and scary time for Christian leaders.
But at the same time, this seminary-trained Southern Baptist-turned-Episcopalian sees hope in the ferment.
“I actually have a lot of trust and faith in the kind of robust way people are struggling,” she said. “And then I think the question is, will the institutions rise to the occasion? Because I think there’s a lot of possibility here.”
Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning journalist and author who is host and executive producer of “On Being,” a podcast, radio show and website focusing on questions of meaning, values, religion and ethics.
Tippett has a diverse background -- she worked as a journalist and diplomat in Cold War-era Berlin before earning an M.Div. from Yale University -- which she draws upon in conversations with a broad array of guests, including the Dalai Lama, Jean Vanier, Seth Godin and Yo-Yo Ma.
“On Being” is also the home of the Civil Conversations Project(link is external), a series of podcasts, live events, and online resources for “beginning new conversations in public life.”
Tippett was at Duke University as the 2015 Kenan Distinguished Lecturer(link is external) for the Kenan Institute for Ethics. She also spoke with Faith & Leadership. The following is an edited transcript.
President Obama awards Krista Tippett the 2013 National Humanities Medal.
Q: How do the pieces of your professional and personal background fit together to form your current vocation?
I do actually feel like everything -- all the pieces of it find some kind of expression and purpose in what I do now. Growing up Southern Baptist in a really immersive, religious, Bible Belt world -- I think it’s so important as a public radio person that I had that background.
It was really in Berlin -- where I ended up, in a very quirky way -- that I was fascinated by huge geopolitical questions of communism versus capitalism, and the nuclear arms race, and the division of the world into these different ideologies.
But it was also there where I started to see that people could be immensely powerful and have pretty impoverished inner lives, and people could live in East Germany, where they had nothing, and create lives of great beauty and dignity.
And so it was there that I started asking spiritual and theological questions, and that led me to get my M.Div. And then when I finished, I still saw the world through the eyes of a journalist. In the mid-’90s, when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson had been enshrined by journalists as who religious people are, I was just so aware that it was just such a tiny part of the picture.
I had this kind of compulsion to find a way to tell more of the story. So it all somehow does feel like it comes together for me.
Q: How do you use your seminary education in your work now?
I think it’s completely interwoven. When I first started the show, I remember that when I first had an office at American Public Media and I brought in all my New Testament books from seminary, I was sure that I was the only person working in public radio who had these texts, who would do exegesis if I had to.
In the beginning, I was a lot more overtly aware of it. But I started the show right in those immediate post-9/11 years, when suddenly we’d all woken up to Islam by way of this act of terror.
But it’s this religion of over a billion people, and I was really aware that having a grounding in [Christian] theology was a foundation for starting to take seriously other forms of theology.
Just knowing how to look at sacred texts was really important; it had given me a set of skills that transferred.
Q: Do you think that’s an unusual perspective in public radio?
I remember feeling again in the early 2000s -- George W. Bush was in the White House, we had this evangelical president in the White House, and all of this religious energy around voting.
And there was all this journalism that was really inadequate, really kind of simplistic in a way that they would never be simplistic about political or economic actors.
The New York Times, which I love, had just kind of discovered -- just discovered -- that 40 percent of Americans are evangelical Christian.
I remember this article -- it was kind of this shock-horror -- about the number of evangelical students who are in Ivy League colleges. I’m like, “Do you people not realize that 50 years ago all the presidents of Ivy League colleges were evangelical pastors?”
So I felt at that time so grateful for my upbringing in the Southern Baptist church, and my grandfather, who was an evangelist, essentially. My theology is not my grandfather’s theology, but this was someone I loved, and I understood the humanity of that statistic of 40 percent. Forty percent of the American people is a very diverse swath of humanity.
And I wasn’t seeing that represented in a lot of the journalism. I didn’t see any place for my grandfather in that picture. And so we did a lot of shows in those years about diversity within Christianity and within evangelical Christianity, just to put that out there.
Q: How do you situate yourself as a Christian now?
I had not taken religion seriously for about 10 years when I was in Europe. It’s not like I ever stopped being Christian, but when I started taking my Christianity seriously, I was living in England, and so I went to the Church of England and became an Anglican and then Episcopalian.
And what I loved so much that the Church of England gave me was the sweep of church history and the communion of saints, and also liturgy, because I hadn’t been in a liturgical tradition. It was all new to me, even though I had gone to church three times a week for 18 years.
I kind of hesitate to say I’m Episcopalian. I mean, I’m Christian. I say I’m Christian first.
Q: You often include being a mother as part of your vocation.
I love the language of “vocation,” and I worry that we identify it too closely with job title. I’m fortunate to have work that is meaningful in and of itself, but everybody doesn’t have that. So I think of vocation as being as much the person I am as the work I do, and being a parent is constantly with me. Why not let it show a little bit more?
Q: As you speak to your audience and you hear back from your audience, what’s your sense of what people are yearning for? What questions are they asking?
I’m pretty fascinated by their religious energy right now, and I see a few things.
I see depth and real theological rigor, even within searching, that I think is new. I think that the New Age of the ’80s -- a lot of what came out of that movement -- has really grown up.
I see young people who grew up in the years of this strident religiosity who are just allergic to stridency. They are questioning what churches are for and what religion is for, but they’re often doing it in a way that I feel is so faithful to the heart of the tradition.
They want church to mean something. They want their spiritual lives to be reflected in their lives in the world. There’s a lot happening among younger generations, and what looks like a fluidity of religious identity in fact has the capacity to be real spiritual renewal for our institutions. I actually have a lot of trust and faith in the kind of robust way people are struggling.
And then I think the question is, will the institutions rise to the occasion? Because I think there’s a lot of possibility here.
Of course, it’s just such a complicated and really traumatizing time, because all of our institutions -- not just churches, but our political institutions, our economic institutions, our educational institutions, the way we’ve done medicine -- none of this makes sense anymore, right?
And so religious institutions -- churches, in any case -- are faced with having to reinvent the basic structures. Not theology, really, but how do we function. Fifty years from now, the forms may be very different.
And then there’s this world out here, which is disconnected from it, or kind of weaving in and out of it, that is trying to grapple with what should a church be, and what should it mean to be a person of faith in the modern world. There’s real integrity and substance to that struggle.
And what’s going to be interesting to me is to see how these things can overlap, how they run into each other.
Q: Where do you see institutions and people connecting?
I did some writing about that and heard back from people who said, “I have a church full of ‘nones’” or, “I have a synagogue full of ‘nones.’” I am aware that there are religious leaders out there who are creating hospitable spaces for people to feel at home even if they don’t feel comfortable with the labels, so that’s happening.
I interviewed this young man named Nathan Schneider(link is external), who I think of as kind of a millennial public theologian. He’s somebody who was raised by his nonreligious parents to try it all out and choose your own, and then was baptized in the Catholic Church at 18. He walked toward it, and he chose it.
And he tells these amazing stories about the Occupy Wall Street movement and how the kids in that movement, who are mostly nones, found themselves in churches and around churches, and in some cases railing at churches. But he said they weren’t against the churches; they were saying, “Church, act like a church.”
Then a lot of them got caught up in Occupy Sandy, which was this work of practical care, and a lot of that stuff got centered in churches.
Another interesting thing I see is how the church in the downtown that was once the center of a vibrant city is now a place nobody goes on the weekends.
But there is this spirit of invention, reinvention, and saying, “OK, if we’re not the place where everybody just automatically goes because their parents and grandparents did it, what is our place in this city, which is struggling?”
In the Civil Conversations Project that we do, we have a lot of churches saying, “We can be safe, trustworthy spaces for people to come together who aren’t already in relationship.”
That’s a different role for the church than it used to play when it had these rolls of hundreds, but it’s new life. And it might be new life that is close to the heart of what Christians and the church are called to be in the world. I see that everywhere.
Q: How would you advise Christian leaders who are trying to connect with people, who are asking, “How can we reach young people? How can we reach the unchurched? How can we reach the spiritual but not religious?”
I hesitate to be somebody offering advice to religious leaders. I do, and I also know very well what a complicated situation people are in, and a painful situation, and a scary situation.
But I guess what comes to mind, and I offer this with humility, is I think it might be more fruitful and more faithful to be asking, not just questions about the survival of the institution, but what are the faithful questions to be asking of our place in the world?
What are the needs and hungers and crises of the people walking past our doors every day? What is our calling now in this place? And I feel like living into that question might be a great way to start appealing to the nones and the unchurched.
Q: Which of your recent interviews would you recommend that Christian leaders listen to?
One thing that pleases me is when I hear from preachers who say that listening to the show becomes a way of self-care for them. And I think some of that is just about people who are constantly being asked to preach and to impart wisdom being able to take in some wisdom that feeds their souls.
I had an interview with John A. Powell(link is external) earlier this year. He’s not a religious figure, but he says that the limits of our collective encounter with race have, in part, to do with the fact that we have to venture into spiritual territory.
For him, it’s a question of belonging. How do we realize our belonging to each other? And to me, that’s as theological as any language could be.
Sister Simone Campbell(link is external), of Nuns on the Bus -- we did a live event with her in our studio, and I was so impressed with how relevant her way of talking about joining contemplation and action was for these ordinary people leading ordinary lives.
She’s a nun, but she’s also a lobbyist and a lawyer, and she talked wonderfully about being grounded in contemplation and being committed to making a difference in the world, and the interplay between those two things.
I don’t think there’s so much guidance for people on that.
Q: Have you done any interviews about leadership?
I shy away from people in authority, whether political or religious, because they are bound to represent an institution or a group. And so it’s hard, and sometimes just not possible, for them to really engage in a free, probing, first-person conversation.
But I interviewed Nadia Bolz-Weber(link is external), who’s a Lutheran pastor. And Jean Vanier(link is external), who started the L’Arche communities.
Leadership is one of these fluid terms, right? Leadership is not anymore just narrowly associated with the person who has the president or chief or priest title. I think that’s a good thing.
THE IDEA IN ACTION
A tale of two churches
Scholar Diana Butler Bass reflects on her experience of two congregations and the difference between them -- why one struggled for vitality and the other thrived. Her explanation for the vibrancy to be found at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church may defy the theories but makes perfect sense.
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I graduated from college in 1981, not exactly a banner year for mainline Protestantism. More than a decade of numerical decline and internal conflict had taken a toll on old-line denominations as these once-unassailable churches found themselves dethroned as chapels of the American establishment. Evangelical Protestants grabbed Ronald Reagan’s coattails—and headlines—when their preachers, folk like Jerry Falwell and Jim Bakker, rode a wave of populist discontent all the way to Washington. Not only did growing evangelical influence in national politics humiliate the mainline: evangelical churches were growing, too. Scottsdale Bible Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, the once-small fundamentalist church where I worshiped as a teenager, moved out of the building it shared with a Jewish congregation and moved into a sun-drenched structure that looked like a corporate headquarters. On Sunday mornings local police directed traffic jams caused by brand-new Cadillacs and Lincolns competing for space in the sprawling parking lot.A tale of two churches
Scholar Diana Butler Bass reflects on her experience of two congregations and the difference between them -- why one struggled for vitality and the other thrived. Her explanation for the vibrancy to be found at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church may defy the theories but makes perfect sense.
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Perhaps I was a 21-year-old contrarian, but when Protestant evangelicals hit the big time, I decided to hit the spiritual road. During my senior year in college, I left fundamentalism and opted for mainline Protestantism. Mainline church was my parents’ religion. They were Methodists, and as a child so was I. I did not, however, go home to United Methodism. Instead, with full knowledge that I was joining what my friends ridiculed as a “dying church,” I became an Episcopalian during my senior year in college.
A Struggle to Survive
After graduation, I worked as a church receptionist while saving money for seminary. For six months, I answered phones at Glass and Garden Community Church, a congregation of the Reformed Church in America, while I attended St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church—both in Scottsdale. I had not been part of a mainline congregation in a decade. But in spring 1982, I found myself—between work and worship—in two of them. Those churches presented me with a Dickensian tale of mainline Protestantism: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”
At Glass and Garden, times were pretty rough. The minister was an old-fashioned liberal who tried to make the gospel relevant by planting a drive-in church. In a radical departure from his Midwestern roots, Reverend Goulooze built a glass sanctuary, replete with both real and plastic plants, with a small stream running through the building. To attract Sunbelt immigrants, the decor minimized “offensive” Christian symbols. Worshipers could either sit in this oasis-like sanctuary or listen in their cars via the then high-tech sound system. Goulooze, a seminary classmate of Robert Schuller’s, was a lovely man who thought that Norman Vincent Peale was the greatest theologian of the 20th century. This pastor’s sermons generally consisted of feel-good pep talks. Worship focused on the sermon, framed by a few Victorian hymns accompanied on an electronic organ.
On Tuesday mornings, Pastor Goulooze would sometimes sit at my desk and wonder why no one was coming to church. After the initial novelty of a drive-in church wore off, people lost interest in Glass and Garden. Scottsdale Bible Church had built its fundamentalist cathedral less than two miles away, while this congregation struggled to survive. I longed to tell the pastor why, but I never did. Despite its hip packaging, Glass and Garden was the same old mainline congregation—dependent on ethnic identity and generational loyalty for members, theologically sentimental and undemanding, and wed to enervated worship. Glass and Garden was dying because it offered so little. I may have worked there, but I could never have joined the congregation. A generation of people like me needed a reason to go to and to be the church.
A Vital Community
Every Sunday, I worshiped at St. Stephen’s, a homey Episcopal parish, where things were better—much better. The people of St. Stephen’s would not remember me; I quietly sojourned among them. I never talked to anyone—except briefly to the rector. They, however, witnessed to me about mainline vitality.
My first Sunday at St. Stephen’s was a baptism—something I had not yet witnessed as a new Episcopalian. The denomination had recently revised its Book of Common Prayer, and its baptismal liturgy was considered central to God’s vision for the church: the service proclaims, in robust theological language, the essentials of Christian identity and vocation.
“There is one Body and one Spirit,” Father Bailey began. We responded, “There is one hope in God’s call to us.” I participated eagerly as I watched a child whom I would never know brought into God’s family, and as we claimed the baptismal covenant on her behalf.
“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” asked the priest. “I will, with God’s help,” we all responded.
As I vowed to repent, proclaim the gospel, serve God’s people, and work for justice and peace, I entered into baptism’s theological mystery. This liturgy proclaimed that Christianity was a distinctive way of life and a journey into God—a way of life and a pilgrimage to which I had been bound before I could even speak.
While attending newcomer classes at St. Stephen’s, I figured out that Father Bailey was, like Pastor Goulooze, theologically liberal. He did not approve of fundamentalism and biblical literalism. But his liberalism was not like any liberalism I understood. Not sentimental, he spoke of “Anglican tradition” as if it were a living thing. He prodded the congregation toward “wholeness” and “justice.” His theology embodied a dynamic, healing vision of God. His spirituality was both grounded and open—reflecting the congregation as I experienced it. St. Stephen’s was not a large church, but it was a vital one—a place where God was obviously present in community.
I would go to back to work at Glass and Garden on Monday, refreshed and reinvigorated. Then I would listen to Pastor Goulooze fret over attendance and stewardship. I asked myself: Why the difference between these two churches? What makes one so lively, while the other struggles to survive?
Questionable Statistics
The question of mainline vitality has become one of the guiding questions of my vocational life. As a scholar, teacher, and writer, as well as a congregant, seminary professor, and denominational leader, I deal with these concerns daily.
I have, of course, not been alone in my concerns. During these lean years, a kind of “decline industry” has developed around these questions. Books offer answers and quick fixes to grow. Organizations have been born, each claiming to know the reason for decline, each trying to rouse the rest of us to follow its church-growth plan. “Mainline decline” has become a tool for various interest groups in our denominations.
However, much of decline data is problematic. Statistics are outdated or have been disproved. Yes, mainline membership rolls have shrunk, congregations are struggling to survive, and a clergy shortage threatens. But the precipitous drops have slowed or stopped. In summer 2002, both the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America reported losses so small as to be statistically insignificant. A decade ago, the Episcopal Church hit a low of about 2.5 million and has maintained that number since. In addition, scholars have become much more sophisticated about numbers. The decline of the 1960s and 1970s followed unprecedented increases in the 1950s—numbers that created a “false high” from which to measure vitality. When compounded with demographic factors of childbirth, aging, education, and mobility, the mainline suffered worst when cultural trends conspired against it. Instead of counting members, many denominations now track attendance. These statistics tentatively indicate that while people hesitate to join mainline churches officially, more are attending than in a generation.
While none of this is great news (“Yippee! We stopped bleeding!”), it is not bad news either. Like Wall Street, we may be bumping along at the bottom of a long bear market.
What Fosters Vitality?
More significant than numbers, however, are anecdotal reports of vitality from across the mainline. These days, every mainline leader seems to know the story of St. What-a-Surprise, a particularly vital, healthy, and growing congregation in his or her town. In recent years, I have heard this tale repeatedly—an old, dying, often urban, church is now thriving.
But what fosters this vitality? How did St. What-a-Surprise do it? What was the difference between a Glass and Garden and a St. Stephen’s?
Over the years, church leaders have advanced a number of explanations and programmatic responses to answer these questions. Unlike some observers of mainline religion, I do not think a specific plan or program creates vitality. Rather, I believe that vitality is as unique as a congregation itself. Individual experiences of vitality can be grouped into four general categories:
- the evangelical style,
- the new paradigm style,
- the diagnostic style, and
- the intentional (or practicing) congregational style.
A Matter of Style
In 1972, Dean M. Kelley outlined the evangelical style in his book Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (New York: Harper & Row). By suggesting that conservative theology directly corresponded to vitality, Kelley implied that to reverse the decline, congregations and denominations needed to embrace evangelicalism. Denominational conservatives loved Kelley’s book. And his thesis rang true in the 1970s and early 1980s, during the high tide of the Jesus movement, the Moral Majority, and the charismatic revival. Many of the current denominational renewal movements took their cue from Kelley and his followers.
The “new paradigm” style arose in imitation of the success of Willow Creek Community Church, a “megachurch” in South Barrington, Illinois, near Chicago. This strategy suggested that mainline churches would grow if they minimized their distinctiveness and offered seekers what they wanted—an anonymous, symbolically neutral, user-friendly church. This market-driven approach resonated with the materially successful baby boomers, who were thronging back to church in the late 1980s and early 1990s—people turned off by traditional religion.
The third, the diagnostic style, borrowed insights from psychological therapy and the social sciences. Its proponents contended that mainline congregations suffered from systemic problems inhibiting vitality—most of which could be cured by a skilled practitioner. This approach has been most successfully presented by the Alban Institute, by mainline seminaries, and by some of the denominations themselves. According to this theory, neither mainline theology nor traditions are necessarily problematic. Rather, the institutions themselves are somehow “broken” and need to be repaired. Once correctly diagnosed and readjusted, congregations can get on with “being church.”
When the Theories Don’t Fit
All three of the styles described above have, in certain cases, worked—as attested to by a legion of publications, conferences, and devoted fans. However, not one of them explains what happened at Glass and Garden and St. Stephen’s.
Analyzed by the evangelical theory, Glass and Garden failed because it subscribed to Protestant liberalism and lacked the rigor of conservative thought. However, by that measure, St. Stephen’s should have failed as well. St. Stephen’s was both lively and liberal. Its vision statement still reveals a progressive impulse: that the community is “grounded in the scriptural messages of wisdom, mercy, and justice,” enabling “God’s people to engage in co-creation through a nurturing environment.” According to this thesis, however, St. Stephen’s should have declined—and probably should no longer exist.
Measured against the “new paradigm” theory, Glass and Garden should have succeeded and St. Stephen’s should have failed. Glass and Garden muted denominational distinctiveness, created a symbolically neutral worship space, and geared its services toward seekers. St. Stephen’s met in a Spanish adobe building with stained-glass windows and icons; it had two unwieldy worship books (a hymnal and a prayerbook) for the liturgically unskilled to navigate. Yet the parish’s newcomer class was full—while Glass and Garden looked in vain for new faces. In the case of these two churches, the one laden with art, architecture, and liturgy from the Christian past displayed more vitality than did the presumably nonthreatening one.
According to the diagnostic theory, Glass and Garden likely suffered from some dysfunction, while St. Stephen’s must have been a generally healthy congregation. However, neither seemed notably better or worse than other congregations of which I have been a member. Both appear, in retrospect, to have suffered from a modicum of conflict and dysfunction. Leadership was not an issue, either. Each pastor was a thoughtful, theologically mature person with a clear sense of identity and vision. But only St. Stephen’s was full of life.
The Intentional Congregation
Mainline observers have largely overlooked an outside-the-box possibility—the emergence of a fourth style, the intentional (or practicing) congregation. The omission stems from the fact that these congregations form no national movement and claim no single source of inspiration. They have no party, no platform, no seminary, no publication, and no organization. Each is a unique and inventive blend of local vision, denominational identity, and Christian practice. Such congregations exist. I know. Over the years, I have been a member of a number of them.
Intentional congregations are neither “conservative” nor “liberal.” They are not seeker oriented, but seekers are attracted by their spiritual practices. Like any other human community, they have their share of conflict and dysfunction. These churches resist labeling, serve no identifiable theological “party,” and reject programmatic fixes. Here’s how I would define them:
In these congregations, transmission of identity, tradition, and practice occurs not by birth, and thus, it is not assumed; rather, transmission occurs through choice and through reflective engagement, as a process both individual and communal. These churches tend to be theologically moderate-to-liberal and are reinvigorating historic practices based upon ancient Christian tradition; they might also be called “neo-traditional,” because they reach back so as to move forward. In these congregations, people choose to embrace or recreate practices drawn from the long Christian tradition—practices that bind them together and connect them with older patterns of living as meaningful ways to relate to a post-Christian society.
These congregations have developed against the backdrop of decline—often struggling alone to be faithful against great odds.
A Rich Resource for Churches
St. Stephen’s was an intentional congregation. Its life was shaped by the practices of thanksgiving (the Eucharist), compassion (works of mercy and justice), and healing (personal and corporate wholeness and pastoral care), which were grounded in—and formed by—Anglican tradition. Two decades after my brief pilgrimage among the people of St. Stephen’s, their vision statement proclaims the purposeful faith that I, a stranger, once sensed there: “We are committed to providing experiences for the celebration of God’s gifts through the practice of kindness and hospitality.”
Because of its innate creativity, resonance with tradition, and insistence upon Christian distinctiveness, the intentional, or practicing, pattern may be the richest resource for mainline Protestants who seek to revitalize congregations and move ahead in mission. But to draw upon it, we need to see it, name it, and continually commit ourselves to the way of life given through our baptism. We must teach and nurture this vision, and be willing to change as God’s spirit directs. When we really live in community—as if our very lives depended on practicing our faith—I can guarantee that our congregations will be more vital. The past 20 years may have been the worst of times, but perhaps those years have forced us to recognize the goodness of grace and wisdom embodied in the ways we practice Christian faith. Instead of weeping over numbers, it is time to appreciate where God has taken us. For some of us, the worst has brought out our very best.
From birth to death: the life-cycle of a church
Demonstrating the life cycle of a church and helping a church find itself in the progressive route between life and death has become an important tool for helping church leaders find their way out of stability and decline to vital ecclesial health, writes Stephen Compton.
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As a young, 52-year-old, middle-aged person (I intend to live to be 104), I am becoming increasingly (and sometimes agonizingly) aware of the natural life cycle of human beings. I remember when misery was a bee sting, not back pain; when fatigue was what my feet felt after a series of 10-mile days on the Appalachian Trail, not breathlessness from climbing the stairs to my office. As biological beings, we are born; we mature and grow through adolescence; we become somewhat sedentary adults; we decline in old age; and we die. We all know the routine. A number of scholars have noticed how congregations often mimic the life cycle of biological organisms.1
Each year, I work as a consultant with dozens of churches, and through years of accumulated experience in ministry as a pastor and in congregational development, I have found the effects of this life cycle on congregations to be readily apparent. Demonstrating this life cycle and helping a church find itself in the progressive route between life and death has become an important tool for helping church leaders find their way out of stability and decline to vital ecclesial health.
Stage One: Birth
The birth stage of the life cycle is brief, almost momentary, in the scale of time usually associated with the full life of a congregation. (It must be noted that in almost no other way is a particular scale of time important to an understanding of a church’s life cycle. The duration of each stage is so variable from one church to the next that it is impossible to characterize each stage by assigning a stated length of time to it.) No period in the life of a church is more responsible than the birth stage, despite its brevity, for defining the congregation’s mission and self-identity. No person is more responsible for shaping this first definition of the church than the founding pastor. In a lasting way, the character of the first pastor’s leadership and role in shaping the values and practices of a fledgling congregation is imprinted on the church. First, or charter, members, a core group of supporters who join with the pastor in giving birth to the church, also contribute to defining its character. The process of founding a church, discerning its first mission, and putting in place the infrastructure necessary to make ministry happen, is often a life-transforming experience for the pastor and the first members. They do not give up easily on their first vision of the church, and their collective imprint is likely to remain on the church for a very long time. The values of the church are often set at this time. Saying you are a “charter member” carries value for those who were in the core group, and often this value is respected by many second-tier members.
Many benefits for effective ministry are associated with this potent defining period in the life of a church. Mostly, the church begins with a clean page, figuratively speaking, without prior traditions or practices dictating what will be done in and by this new church. Every new member has chosen to be part of the founding of the congregation; this experience is frequently a spiritually life-transforming event. The values of the congregation are freshly chosen, usually as the result of prayerful study of the community context, of Scripture, and of the historic tenets of the church and its sponsoring denomination, if it has one. The unparalleled clarity in this stage about the church’s values and purpose, goals and objectives, may rarely be so evident again. This clarity of purpose results in intentional outreach, growth, and effectiveness that generate interest in the church, attract new members, and create support from many sources. For this reason, it is not at all unusual for a new church, meeting in temporary quarters, with limited financial and leadership resources, to grow quickly to become two, five, or even ten times larger in average worship attendance and membership than many nearby older churches serving in the same demographic setting.
Stage Two: Vitality
In the second, or vitality stage of the life cycle, the church often enjoys an extended period of growth—in membership, activity, and funding. This is a time for renovating or building additions to its church facilities, and for moving toward fulfillment of the congregation’s stated mission This vitality stage is usually built upon the foundation laid at the birth of the church, a footing rarely abandoned. The emerging congregation begins to shape and define its values. Is the church multicultural in makeup? Is worship offered in more than one language or more than one style? What is expected of members of this church? How are the traditional holy seasons observed and celebrated? In short, what traditions will we adopt that are compatible with our chosen values?
I was once assigned as a pastor to lead a newly created congregation that had been operating for 18 months before my arrival. The founding pastor had led the church to increase its average worship attendance to 80, with about 50 members. Personal concerns led the pastor to make an early exit from the congregation to pursue an advanced theological degree. Upon my arrival, about 20 of the adult charter members remained in place. One of these made a quick departure after my first Sunday at worship, charging that I had been sent by my bishop to change everything the members and their first pastor had set out to do. (That was not the case.)
The church had taken the name Saint Francis United Methodist. It is a bit unusual for a non-apostolic saint’s name to be used by churches of the denomination. In addition, the pastor had decided—in consultation, I am sure, with the core group—that Holy Communion would be celebrated at every worship service. Although our Anglican founder, John Wesley, would no doubt be pleased with this practice, this too was extraordinary for United Methodist congregations at the time (and continues to be today). Communion was served by intinction—with worshipers dipping the wafer into the common cup rather than drinking from it. (Intinction is still such a “new” practice for many Methodists that, when it is used, celebrants usually have to explain it before worshipers come to the table.) In another break with Methodist tradition, “real” wine was used (United Methodist folklore says that despite the concern for recovering, active, and potential alcoholics often cited to justify the use of grape juice in communion services, the truth is related to the fact that a certain Mr. Welch, a manufacturer of grape juice, was a staunch Methodist with no little degree of influence in the church.)
Notwithstanding my one skeptical, vocal core member’s doubts and objections, I was cautious about changing the church’s practices willy-nilly before trying to understand why such customs had been chosen to define its identity as a new church.
As it turned out, the name Saint Francis was selected by the core members while meeting in the “Upper Room,” an upstairs garage office, to study the life of Saint Francis of Assisi on the 500th anniversary of his birth. The church was being formed in an affluent new community, and Francis’ choice to deny his own legitimate claim to wealth, and to serve the poor, struck a chord with the founding members. As a result, the church became extraordinarily involved in outreach and service ministries in communities affected by poverty. Worshipers found that communion by intinction created a meaningful connection between those serving the bread and wine (the pastor and lay servers) and those coming close to the table to receive the elements. (Typically, American Methodists, in a very private posture, kneel at a rail in front of, or surrounding, the communion table, and receive individual cups of juice and a small portion of bread or a wafer.) As for the wine—historical precedents abound, but perhaps its use made the members of St. Francis feel less guilty about sipping wine at home!<
br />
Surprisingly, these somewhat unusual choices (for United Methodists in the 1980s) became valuable tools for attracting new members. The church began to attract significant numbers of young couples, one partner a Roman Catholic and the other a Protestant (often not Methodist). We became their “comfortable solution,” bridging their formative faith experiences and bringing them into relationship with a church that seemed to honor many of the beliefs and practices important to them before their marriage.
I relished the practice of serving the communion elements by intinction. Wearing name tags was a requisite practice at Saint Francis. As each person came to the table, I could see the name tag, and I used the communicant’s name when presenting the bread or wine. By then, the sermon was over and out of my mind, if not my heart, and I could consciously pray for each person coming to the table. These were my best moments of worship each Sunday. Usually, because of the name tags and my use of worshipers’ names during communion, I could remember at least the first names of new visitors as I greeted them at the door after the service. More than once, people told me that they came back to Saint Francis for a second visit because I noted their presence and remembered their names. You see, the values of this new church were being fleshed out in its first practices and traditions, and the benefits were readily evident.
C. Kirk Hadaway, a researcher for the United Church [of Christ] Board for Homeland Ministries, and formerly a church-growth specialist with the Southern Baptist Convention, suggests that young churches have a “window of opportunity” for significant growth that may last for 10 or 15 years.2 Why do new churches tend to grow more rapidly than older churches? It could be, Hadaway notes, that new churches are more flexible and open to change; growth-producing ideas can be put into practice; leaders are able to lead; rapid adjustments can still be made to changing circumstances; and friendship networks have not yet solidified, allowing for easy acceptance of new members.3 Research conducted by Hadaway on Southern Baptist churches shows clearly how the age of a church affects its growth pattern. Only one in four Southern Baptist churches in his study organized prior to 1927 had growth in excess of 10 percent from 1981 to 1986, whereas nearly 68 percent of churches founded between 1972 and 1981 experienced this kind of growth.4
An old congregation’s longtime members sometimes look back to the early stage of development as the “golden age” when the church was at its best. If the church is in decline, it is often to this idealized experience of church that members wish to return—a hope that can seldom be fulfilled. They remember the large youth group; the grand choral cantatas; the numerous births and baptisms; the weddings of first members’ maturing children; the excitement of moving into the first church building; the young minister who knew everyone by name and who made regular home visits; and the perennially victorious men’s softball team.
Stage 3: Equilibrium
After as little as a few years or as long as a human generation, stage 3 in the life cycle of a congregation usually begins. This is a leveling-out stage. Growth slows. New ideas are introduced less frequently. Traditions and practices become more routine and predictable. I call this stage equilibrium. It is a time when much of the congregational system’s energy becomes focused on maintaining the status quo. The church has found its center. Although the church is not growing significantly during this stage of equilibrium, neither is it declining. Each year, enough new members join to replace those who leave or die. Enough money is contributed to meet the annual budget, including modest increases required to maintain ongoing programs. Facilities are more or less adequate for the needs of the church, and debt, if any, is low. Members are generally satisfied with the way things are, and they don’t see the need to change much about the church’s programs. Conflict tends to be low. Ministers come and go, but the church survives each transition, so long as the new pastor doesn’t try to rock the boat by introducing too many new ideas.
It may not be readily apparent, but a congregation is at high risk during the equilibrium stage of the life cycle. This stage is not a seemingly boundless prairie. It is more like a mesa. Its top may be wide and smooth, but every edge of the mesa drops off precipitously to a plain or a rugged canyon floor. Living in equilibrium can have a slow-release narcotic effect on a church. Periodic highs mask the increasing sluggishness and dullness that mark the character of the church. These negative qualities are more readily apparent to newcomers than to longtime members. Robert Browning’s oft-quoted poem “Pippa Passes” posits that “God’s in his heaven—All’s right with the world” (a notion that I find inane). This “hunky-dory” attitude too often characterizes equilibrium-stage churches: God’s in control in some distant place, and nothing needs to change around here.
The older a denominational body, the more its congregations are likely to be found on the mesa of equilibrium, and consequently at high risk of shifting into decline (in size, as well as influence and effectiveness). These churches find their own techniques for maintaining their preferred identity, while at the same time suppressing growth.
The equilibrium phase of the congregational life cycle can be explained by a process that sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) calls routinization of charisma.5 Often, a young movement’s traits are fundamentally shaped by its founding charismatic leader. A nascent movement, such as a young denomination or a new congregation, may initially operate with few rules and little hierarchical structure. The people gathered into the movement are captivated by the tutelage of the movement’s founding leader, the movement’s defining philosophy (or theology or ecclesiology), and the energies derived from their own, firsthand, life-influencing, if not life-transforming, experience of participating in the birth of the movement. But, as we will see, these effects are seldom sustained.
The early church described in the Acts of the Apostles exhibits many of the characteristics of a young, unbound movement. The apostles, energized by their recent firsthand experience of both the living Jesus and the resurrected Christ, preached the good news with great vigor, and many who heard their words “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Many signs and wonders were performed by the apostles, and the people who saw them were awed. And “all who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2:44-47). These passages describe a group of people choosing to depart from the accepted behaviors of the day. They hear firsthand a life-converting message; they believe; they act in faith on their belief.
A new sect, like the Methodism of the late 18th century, was fundamentally shaped by its founder, John Wesley; and much of its early influence, growth, and success was derived from its unfettered capacity to carry an old gospel message into a rough-and-tumble frontier American setting where, along with other young Protestant movements, it would inspire an unprecedented religious revival.
A new Methodist church, like Chestnut Ridge, founded in 1832, was fundamentally shaped by rugged circuit-riding preachers, like James Christ
ie, who came into the wilderness of central North Carolina, preaching from a tree-stump pulpit sheltered by a brush arbor and illuminated by pine-knot torches and campfires.
A new church-cum-movement, like Willow Creek Church, near Chicago in South Barrington, Illinois, is being fundamentally shaped by its founder, Bill Hybels, who is introducing new paradigms for church, such as seeker-sensitive worship, that break many of the canons that have defined the church for decades.
Yet, Max Weber points out that as a movement ages and its founder dies, routinization begins. It becomes the task of the movement’s followers to continue the work of the founder. New converts become more distantly separated from the primal experience known by the movement’s first followers. Structure and ritual serve to perpetuate former experiences. Germinal experiences become recalled experiences. Bureaucracy, characterized by an expanding hierarchical leadership structure, increasingly replaces grassroots leadership and decision-making. Routine sets in, and a period of equilibrium begins.
Stage 4: Decline
Following a period of equilibrium in the congregational life cycle, a church can move into stage 4, decline. No longer capable of balancing losses of membership, participation, giving, or influence with the counterweight of growth, the church slowly, or even rapidly, diminishes in strength. Decline becomes evident when the membership includes only one or two aging generational groups; budgets shrink or are not met; needed building maintenance is deferred; worship or Sunday school attendance declines; few professions of faith and baptisms take place; pastors’ salaries are cut (or pastoral service is reduced from full-time to part-time); the same laity continue to serve as church leaders because no new leaders can be found; denominational mission funds are not fully supported; and long-standing programs are discontinued for lack of support. Such evidence of decline is often accompanied by congregational conflict, malaise, depression, blaming, scapegoating, anger, and withdrawal.
Initially, a church’s active members may not realize that the church is in decline. Routine in a declining church can be a deceptive partner. Busyness often hides ineffectiveness. An outside observer, such as a newcomer to the community who visits worship for the first time, or a visiting denominational staff member, may readily see the signs of decline go routinely unnoticed by congregation members. As in the process of grieving, denial becomes a mechanism for members to cope with the increasingly obvious decline in their church.
A weakening tree branch can resist the forces of gravity for only so long. Likewise, a declining church eventually breaks from the pressures of its losses and its incapacity to sustain its former level of activity. This point marks the realized decline phase. Often characterized by a posture of crisis, this is a time of desperation for a church when it begins to acknowledge openly its inability to sustain itself. In denominational systems, a church in crisis often expects its parent organization to come to the rescue. Many denominational staff members know that they can expect to hear a statement like this from a declining church’s pastor or the alpha leader: “For many years we have loyally supported the denomination’s cooperative mission fund. Does your office have funds you can send to help us repair our leaking roof, replace our clogged plumbing, and pay our pastor?” For several decades, numerous aging denominations whose churches, in increasing numbers, are aging into decline have attempted to prop up and revitalize declining churches by sending funds to pay bills the churches are unable to satisfy. In spite of these gallant, though essentially misdirected efforts, many of these denominations have continued to decline in size and influence.
Despite the devastating effects of decline, churches are notoriously tenacious and do not succumb easily. Many will whittle away at expense-generating programs, facility needs, and personnel requirements to keep the church doors open. Members of nearly defunct churches do not handle thoughts of closure well. Once, the attorney son of one of eight remaining elderly members of a rural congregation came to the office of the area bishop and said in very direct language, “If you close my mother’s church before she dies, I will sue you, this denomination, and anyone else I can find to hold liable for her unhappiness.” The church was not closed by the denomination.
Stage 5: Death
Inevitably, some churches, once strong and vital in their ministries and influence, do die. Certainly, this is an unhappy occasion for the last members of the church and for those who have supported it in its years of decline. But, when viewed in terms of the lifelong benefits afforded by the church to its members and its community, its end does not have to be an altogether sad event. A good life’s natural end is death. The same can be true of an organization or movement. God’s genius is exhibited in the fact that both life and death are natural and necessary for the successful perpetuation of creation. We do well to remember the words of the writer of Ecclesiastes, who said: “For everything there is a season . . . a time to be born, and a time to die . . . a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted . . . a time to break down, and a time to build up . . . a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together . . . a time to keep, and a time to throw away” (Eccles. 3:1a; 2; 3b; 5a; 6b).
This article was excerpted from Rekindling the Mainline: New Life Through New Churches.
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NOTES
1. For various interpretations of the congregational life cycle, see Martin F. Saarinen,The Life Cycle of a Congregation (Washington, D.C.: Alban Institute, 1986); Arlin J. Rothauge, The Life Cycle in Congregations: A Process of Natural Creation and an Opportunity for New Creation; Alice Mann, Can Our Church Live?: Redeveloping Congregations in Decline (Bethesda, Md.: Alban Institute, 1999).
2. C. Kirk Hadaway, “The Impact of New Church Development on Southern Baptist Growth,” Review of Religious Research 31, no. 4 (June 1990): 372.
3. Hadaway, “Impact,” 377–78.
4. Hadaway, “Impact,” 371.
5. For a brief synopsis of Weber’s views on routinization of charisma, see Donald E. Miller, Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 25–26.
Demonstrating the life cycle of a church and helping a church find itself in the progressive route between life and death has become an important tool for helping church leaders find their way out of stability and decline to vital ecclesial health, writes Stephen Compton.
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As a young, 52-year-old, middle-aged person (I intend to live to be 104), I am becoming increasingly (and sometimes agonizingly) aware of the natural life cycle of human beings. I remember when misery was a bee sting, not back pain; when fatigue was what my feet felt after a series of 10-mile days on the Appalachian Trail, not breathlessness from climbing the stairs to my office. As biological beings, we are born; we mature and grow through adolescence; we become somewhat sedentary adults; we decline in old age; and we die. We all know the routine. A number of scholars have noticed how congregations often mimic the life cycle of biological organisms.1
Each year, I work as a consultant with dozens of churches, and through years of accumulated experience in ministry as a pastor and in congregational development, I have found the effects of this life cycle on congregations to be readily apparent. Demonstrating this life cycle and helping a church find itself in the progressive route between life and death has become an important tool for helping church leaders find their way out of stability and decline to vital ecclesial health.
Stage One: Birth
The birth stage of the life cycle is brief, almost momentary, in the scale of time usually associated with the full life of a congregation. (It must be noted that in almost no other way is a particular scale of time important to an understanding of a church’s life cycle. The duration of each stage is so variable from one church to the next that it is impossible to characterize each stage by assigning a stated length of time to it.) No period in the life of a church is more responsible than the birth stage, despite its brevity, for defining the congregation’s mission and self-identity. No person is more responsible for shaping this first definition of the church than the founding pastor. In a lasting way, the character of the first pastor’s leadership and role in shaping the values and practices of a fledgling congregation is imprinted on the church. First, or charter, members, a core group of supporters who join with the pastor in giving birth to the church, also contribute to defining its character. The process of founding a church, discerning its first mission, and putting in place the infrastructure necessary to make ministry happen, is often a life-transforming experience for the pastor and the first members. They do not give up easily on their first vision of the church, and their collective imprint is likely to remain on the church for a very long time. The values of the church are often set at this time. Saying you are a “charter member” carries value for those who were in the core group, and often this value is respected by many second-tier members.
Many benefits for effective ministry are associated with this potent defining period in the life of a church. Mostly, the church begins with a clean page, figuratively speaking, without prior traditions or practices dictating what will be done in and by this new church. Every new member has chosen to be part of the founding of the congregation; this experience is frequently a spiritually life-transforming event. The values of the congregation are freshly chosen, usually as the result of prayerful study of the community context, of Scripture, and of the historic tenets of the church and its sponsoring denomination, if it has one. The unparalleled clarity in this stage about the church’s values and purpose, goals and objectives, may rarely be so evident again. This clarity of purpose results in intentional outreach, growth, and effectiveness that generate interest in the church, attract new members, and create support from many sources. For this reason, it is not at all unusual for a new church, meeting in temporary quarters, with limited financial and leadership resources, to grow quickly to become two, five, or even ten times larger in average worship attendance and membership than many nearby older churches serving in the same demographic setting.
Stage Two: Vitality
In the second, or vitality stage of the life cycle, the church often enjoys an extended period of growth—in membership, activity, and funding. This is a time for renovating or building additions to its church facilities, and for moving toward fulfillment of the congregation’s stated mission This vitality stage is usually built upon the foundation laid at the birth of the church, a footing rarely abandoned. The emerging congregation begins to shape and define its values. Is the church multicultural in makeup? Is worship offered in more than one language or more than one style? What is expected of members of this church? How are the traditional holy seasons observed and celebrated? In short, what traditions will we adopt that are compatible with our chosen values?
I was once assigned as a pastor to lead a newly created congregation that had been operating for 18 months before my arrival. The founding pastor had led the church to increase its average worship attendance to 80, with about 50 members. Personal concerns led the pastor to make an early exit from the congregation to pursue an advanced theological degree. Upon my arrival, about 20 of the adult charter members remained in place. One of these made a quick departure after my first Sunday at worship, charging that I had been sent by my bishop to change everything the members and their first pastor had set out to do. (That was not the case.)
The church had taken the name Saint Francis United Methodist. It is a bit unusual for a non-apostolic saint’s name to be used by churches of the denomination. In addition, the pastor had decided—in consultation, I am sure, with the core group—that Holy Communion would be celebrated at every worship service. Although our Anglican founder, John Wesley, would no doubt be pleased with this practice, this too was extraordinary for United Methodist congregations at the time (and continues to be today). Communion was served by intinction—with worshipers dipping the wafer into the common cup rather than drinking from it. (Intinction is still such a “new” practice for many Methodists that, when it is used, celebrants usually have to explain it before worshipers come to the table.) In another break with Methodist tradition, “real” wine was used (United Methodist folklore says that despite the concern for recovering, active, and potential alcoholics often cited to justify the use of grape juice in communion services, the truth is related to the fact that a certain Mr. Welch, a manufacturer of grape juice, was a staunch Methodist with no little degree of influence in the church.)
Notwithstanding my one skeptical, vocal core member’s doubts and objections, I was cautious about changing the church’s practices willy-nilly before trying to understand why such customs had been chosen to define its identity as a new church.
As it turned out, the name Saint Francis was selected by the core members while meeting in the “Upper Room,” an upstairs garage office, to study the life of Saint Francis of Assisi on the 500th anniversary of his birth. The church was being formed in an affluent new community, and Francis’ choice to deny his own legitimate claim to wealth, and to serve the poor, struck a chord with the founding members. As a result, the church became extraordinarily involved in outreach and service ministries in communities affected by poverty. Worshipers found that communion by intinction created a meaningful connection between those serving the bread and wine (the pastor and lay servers) and those coming close to the table to receive the elements. (Typically, American Methodists, in a very private posture, kneel at a rail in front of, or surrounding, the communion table, and receive individual cups of juice and a small portion of bread or a wafer.) As for the wine—historical precedents abound, but perhaps its use made the members of St. Francis feel less guilty about sipping wine at home!<
br />
Surprisingly, these somewhat unusual choices (for United Methodists in the 1980s) became valuable tools for attracting new members. The church began to attract significant numbers of young couples, one partner a Roman Catholic and the other a Protestant (often not Methodist). We became their “comfortable solution,” bridging their formative faith experiences and bringing them into relationship with a church that seemed to honor many of the beliefs and practices important to them before their marriage.
I relished the practice of serving the communion elements by intinction. Wearing name tags was a requisite practice at Saint Francis. As each person came to the table, I could see the name tag, and I used the communicant’s name when presenting the bread or wine. By then, the sermon was over and out of my mind, if not my heart, and I could consciously pray for each person coming to the table. These were my best moments of worship each Sunday. Usually, because of the name tags and my use of worshipers’ names during communion, I could remember at least the first names of new visitors as I greeted them at the door after the service. More than once, people told me that they came back to Saint Francis for a second visit because I noted their presence and remembered their names. You see, the values of this new church were being fleshed out in its first practices and traditions, and the benefits were readily evident.
C. Kirk Hadaway, a researcher for the United Church [of Christ] Board for Homeland Ministries, and formerly a church-growth specialist with the Southern Baptist Convention, suggests that young churches have a “window of opportunity” for significant growth that may last for 10 or 15 years.2 Why do new churches tend to grow more rapidly than older churches? It could be, Hadaway notes, that new churches are more flexible and open to change; growth-producing ideas can be put into practice; leaders are able to lead; rapid adjustments can still be made to changing circumstances; and friendship networks have not yet solidified, allowing for easy acceptance of new members.3 Research conducted by Hadaway on Southern Baptist churches shows clearly how the age of a church affects its growth pattern. Only one in four Southern Baptist churches in his study organized prior to 1927 had growth in excess of 10 percent from 1981 to 1986, whereas nearly 68 percent of churches founded between 1972 and 1981 experienced this kind of growth.4
An old congregation’s longtime members sometimes look back to the early stage of development as the “golden age” when the church was at its best. If the church is in decline, it is often to this idealized experience of church that members wish to return—a hope that can seldom be fulfilled. They remember the large youth group; the grand choral cantatas; the numerous births and baptisms; the weddings of first members’ maturing children; the excitement of moving into the first church building; the young minister who knew everyone by name and who made regular home visits; and the perennially victorious men’s softball team.
Stage 3: Equilibrium
After as little as a few years or as long as a human generation, stage 3 in the life cycle of a congregation usually begins. This is a leveling-out stage. Growth slows. New ideas are introduced less frequently. Traditions and practices become more routine and predictable. I call this stage equilibrium. It is a time when much of the congregational system’s energy becomes focused on maintaining the status quo. The church has found its center. Although the church is not growing significantly during this stage of equilibrium, neither is it declining. Each year, enough new members join to replace those who leave or die. Enough money is contributed to meet the annual budget, including modest increases required to maintain ongoing programs. Facilities are more or less adequate for the needs of the church, and debt, if any, is low. Members are generally satisfied with the way things are, and they don’t see the need to change much about the church’s programs. Conflict tends to be low. Ministers come and go, but the church survives each transition, so long as the new pastor doesn’t try to rock the boat by introducing too many new ideas.
It may not be readily apparent, but a congregation is at high risk during the equilibrium stage of the life cycle. This stage is not a seemingly boundless prairie. It is more like a mesa. Its top may be wide and smooth, but every edge of the mesa drops off precipitously to a plain or a rugged canyon floor. Living in equilibrium can have a slow-release narcotic effect on a church. Periodic highs mask the increasing sluggishness and dullness that mark the character of the church. These negative qualities are more readily apparent to newcomers than to longtime members. Robert Browning’s oft-quoted poem “Pippa Passes” posits that “God’s in his heaven—All’s right with the world” (a notion that I find inane). This “hunky-dory” attitude too often characterizes equilibrium-stage churches: God’s in control in some distant place, and nothing needs to change around here.
The older a denominational body, the more its congregations are likely to be found on the mesa of equilibrium, and consequently at high risk of shifting into decline (in size, as well as influence and effectiveness). These churches find their own techniques for maintaining their preferred identity, while at the same time suppressing growth.
The equilibrium phase of the congregational life cycle can be explained by a process that sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) calls routinization of charisma.5 Often, a young movement’s traits are fundamentally shaped by its founding charismatic leader. A nascent movement, such as a young denomination or a new congregation, may initially operate with few rules and little hierarchical structure. The people gathered into the movement are captivated by the tutelage of the movement’s founding leader, the movement’s defining philosophy (or theology or ecclesiology), and the energies derived from their own, firsthand, life-influencing, if not life-transforming, experience of participating in the birth of the movement. But, as we will see, these effects are seldom sustained.
The early church described in the Acts of the Apostles exhibits many of the characteristics of a young, unbound movement. The apostles, energized by their recent firsthand experience of both the living Jesus and the resurrected Christ, preached the good news with great vigor, and many who heard their words “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Many signs and wonders were performed by the apostles, and the people who saw them were awed. And “all who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2:44-47). These passages describe a group of people choosing to depart from the accepted behaviors of the day. They hear firsthand a life-converting message; they believe; they act in faith on their belief.
A new sect, like the Methodism of the late 18th century, was fundamentally shaped by its founder, John Wesley; and much of its early influence, growth, and success was derived from its unfettered capacity to carry an old gospel message into a rough-and-tumble frontier American setting where, along with other young Protestant movements, it would inspire an unprecedented religious revival.
A new Methodist church, like Chestnut Ridge, founded in 1832, was fundamentally shaped by rugged circuit-riding preachers, like James Christ
ie, who came into the wilderness of central North Carolina, preaching from a tree-stump pulpit sheltered by a brush arbor and illuminated by pine-knot torches and campfires.
A new church-cum-movement, like Willow Creek Church, near Chicago in South Barrington, Illinois, is being fundamentally shaped by its founder, Bill Hybels, who is introducing new paradigms for church, such as seeker-sensitive worship, that break many of the canons that have defined the church for decades.
Yet, Max Weber points out that as a movement ages and its founder dies, routinization begins. It becomes the task of the movement’s followers to continue the work of the founder. New converts become more distantly separated from the primal experience known by the movement’s first followers. Structure and ritual serve to perpetuate former experiences. Germinal experiences become recalled experiences. Bureaucracy, characterized by an expanding hierarchical leadership structure, increasingly replaces grassroots leadership and decision-making. Routine sets in, and a period of equilibrium begins.
Stage 4: Decline
Following a period of equilibrium in the congregational life cycle, a church can move into stage 4, decline. No longer capable of balancing losses of membership, participation, giving, or influence with the counterweight of growth, the church slowly, or even rapidly, diminishes in strength. Decline becomes evident when the membership includes only one or two aging generational groups; budgets shrink or are not met; needed building maintenance is deferred; worship or Sunday school attendance declines; few professions of faith and baptisms take place; pastors’ salaries are cut (or pastoral service is reduced from full-time to part-time); the same laity continue to serve as church leaders because no new leaders can be found; denominational mission funds are not fully supported; and long-standing programs are discontinued for lack of support. Such evidence of decline is often accompanied by congregational conflict, malaise, depression, blaming, scapegoating, anger, and withdrawal.
Initially, a church’s active members may not realize that the church is in decline. Routine in a declining church can be a deceptive partner. Busyness often hides ineffectiveness. An outside observer, such as a newcomer to the community who visits worship for the first time, or a visiting denominational staff member, may readily see the signs of decline go routinely unnoticed by congregation members. As in the process of grieving, denial becomes a mechanism for members to cope with the increasingly obvious decline in their church.
A weakening tree branch can resist the forces of gravity for only so long. Likewise, a declining church eventually breaks from the pressures of its losses and its incapacity to sustain its former level of activity. This point marks the realized decline phase. Often characterized by a posture of crisis, this is a time of desperation for a church when it begins to acknowledge openly its inability to sustain itself. In denominational systems, a church in crisis often expects its parent organization to come to the rescue. Many denominational staff members know that they can expect to hear a statement like this from a declining church’s pastor or the alpha leader: “For many years we have loyally supported the denomination’s cooperative mission fund. Does your office have funds you can send to help us repair our leaking roof, replace our clogged plumbing, and pay our pastor?” For several decades, numerous aging denominations whose churches, in increasing numbers, are aging into decline have attempted to prop up and revitalize declining churches by sending funds to pay bills the churches are unable to satisfy. In spite of these gallant, though essentially misdirected efforts, many of these denominations have continued to decline in size and influence.
Despite the devastating effects of decline, churches are notoriously tenacious and do not succumb easily. Many will whittle away at expense-generating programs, facility needs, and personnel requirements to keep the church doors open. Members of nearly defunct churches do not handle thoughts of closure well. Once, the attorney son of one of eight remaining elderly members of a rural congregation came to the office of the area bishop and said in very direct language, “If you close my mother’s church before she dies, I will sue you, this denomination, and anyone else I can find to hold liable for her unhappiness.” The church was not closed by the denomination.
Stage 5: Death
Inevitably, some churches, once strong and vital in their ministries and influence, do die. Certainly, this is an unhappy occasion for the last members of the church and for those who have supported it in its years of decline. But, when viewed in terms of the lifelong benefits afforded by the church to its members and its community, its end does not have to be an altogether sad event. A good life’s natural end is death. The same can be true of an organization or movement. God’s genius is exhibited in the fact that both life and death are natural and necessary for the successful perpetuation of creation. We do well to remember the words of the writer of Ecclesiastes, who said: “For everything there is a season . . . a time to be born, and a time to die . . . a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted . . . a time to break down, and a time to build up . . . a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together . . . a time to keep, and a time to throw away” (Eccles. 3:1a; 2; 3b; 5a; 6b).
This article was excerpted from Rekindling the Mainline: New Life Through New Churches.
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NOTES
1. For various interpretations of the congregational life cycle, see Martin F. Saarinen,The Life Cycle of a Congregation (Washington, D.C.: Alban Institute, 1986); Arlin J. Rothauge, The Life Cycle in Congregations: A Process of Natural Creation and an Opportunity for New Creation; Alice Mann, Can Our Church Live?: Redeveloping Congregations in Decline (Bethesda, Md.: Alban Institute, 1999).
2. C. Kirk Hadaway, “The Impact of New Church Development on Southern Baptist Growth,” Review of Religious Research 31, no. 4 (June 1990): 372.
3. Hadaway, “Impact,” 377–78.
4. Hadaway, “Impact,” 371.
5. For a brief synopsis of Weber’s views on routinization of charisma, see Donald E. Miller, Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 25–26.
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