Faith & Leadership
CONGREGATIONS, INNOVATION, CONGREGATIONAL INNOVATION, MONEY, SUSTAINABILITY
Legacy ministries to dying churches give congregations a way to end well
Legacy ministries to dying churches helps congregations end well
CREATIVE MINISTRIES HELP CONGREGATIONS LEAVE A LASTING LEGACY
The chancel of Richfield UMC, where the remaining members have decided to close after years of faithful ministry. Photos courtesy of Zina Risley
A creative new ministry is underway in various UMC conferences to help declining congregations chart their end and leave behind a lasting gift.
After the funeral for yet another member of Richfield United Methodist Church earlier this year, nine of the 12 remaining members of this rural 111-year-old church (the other three are homebound) got together to discuss their future.By many metrics, the church was still vibrant. It had a healthy $90,000 balance in its treasury; it regularly contributed to the local community, collecting food and school supplies; it was proud of its near-perfect attendance record. Unless someone was sick or in a nursing home, every member could be counted on to be at church on Sunday mornings.
But the colonial brick building in the central region of North Carolina had not drawn new members in more than a decade. The two textile mills in nearby Albemarle had long closed, and a mill in the town of Richfield had shuttered. With no industry and few jobs, the small community of 600-plus residents was unlikely to grow.
Fortunately, the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, to which Richfield belongs, last year launched a project funded by The Duke Endowment to help declining congregations take a hard look at their future prospects and consider their options.
The Church Legacy Initiative, as it's known, is a novel experiment that helps declining churches chart their end and leave behind a lasting gift. A sort of "hospice care for churches," a dozen or so similar programs have started in various United Methodist conferences across the country, and other independent nonprofits have begun to offer similar services.
These programs meet a critical need. A 2012 study by Donald R. House found that while the United Methodist Church has suffered through decades of declining worship attendance, the rate of decline has increased markedly since 2002. By 2030, an estimated 30 percent of the denomination's churches -- or about 10,000 congregations -- will have closed.
Richfield UMC's updated register sign. Most of those congregations are very small. In the United Methodist Church, roughly 40 percent of congregations had fewer than 35 people at Sunday worship in 2015, according to statistics(link is external) from the UMC General Council on Finance and Administration. (Those congregations account for about 9 percent of all UMC churchgoers.) The landscape is much the same in the Western N.C. Conference, where more than 500 of the conference’s 1,100 churches have an average attendance of fewer than 50.Other mainline churches face similar realities. Using a small self-reported sample(link is external), Ed Stetzer, the Billy Graham Professor of Church, Mission and Evangelism and executive director of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College, estimated that 3,700 Protestant churches in the United States closed in 2014. Many other churches, it’s safe to assume, are barely hanging on.
The financial drain of dying churches is hard to estimate; even harder to calculate is the burden -- and anxiety -- these churches impose on mostly elderly church members who are left to pay the bills.
The question for many denominational leaders is how to help declining churches make decisions while they still have some agency and an ability to shape their future.
“It’s not a matter of whether churches are closing,” said the Rev. Lyn Sorrells, the team leader of the legacy initiative in the Western N.C. Conference. “It’s more, ‘Are we going to help them end well?’”
While no church wants to reach a stage where it requires terminal care, Sorrells said the services offered through the program are a way of honoring a congregation’s life at the very end, much like hospice in a healthcare setting.
“It won’t make things different in terms of helping them make the decision, but it will help them do it well,” said Sorrells, who has helped 16 churches, including Richfield United Methodist, arrive at a decision to close. “It’s intended to be a gift, a ministry.”
Starting the conversation
Of the 3,700 or so Protestant churches that closed last year many likely did so suddenly and under duress, with little or no planning -- landing on a stretcher in the emergency room, as it were, without health insurance.
Perhaps the church had become unable to pay its bills, service its debt or finance critical maintenance repairs to its facilities. In any case, such events would necessitate swift action on the part of its denomination, with officials, in essence, forced to issue a death certificate.
“A bad closure feels imposed,” said the Rev. Bill Gottschalk-Fielding, the director of connectional ministries and assistant to the bishop of the Upper New York Conference of the United Methodist Church. “It happens suddenly,” he said. “People feel ganged up on; they feel a lot of shame: ‘We failed.’”
Church legacy programs are intended to offer care before it’s too late. That’s not an easy thing to do, especially in a culture loath to name death, much less talk about it.
Still, the reality is that churches close all the time, said Stetzer, who has called for thecreation of a “hospice” ministry(link is external) for churches. The particular churches mentioned in the New Testament are no longer in existence. Christians know this, but they haven’t internalized it.
Where is your church in its life cycle? What does that mean for its ministries?
“The ‘capital C’ church doesn’t die away, but individual churches do,” Stetzer said. “People move; people relocate. Congregations age.”
Church legacy programs are intended to start the conversation, said the Rev. Cate Noellert, a California pastor who chairs the Legacy Church Project(link is external) created by the Texas Methodist Foundation to help denominational leaders start their own programs. Noellert has her own consulting ministry, Liminal Grace,(link is external) which includes working with congregations in the process of closing.
“Legacy work is about coming in before [churches] get down to the bitter end and offering them a better end -- the idea of finishing well and finishing strong and doing that with more care, with more empowerment -- giving them the chance to close of their own accord and leave a legacy for the future,” Noellert said.
Legacy programs can also assist with the many details that follow a decision to close: setting up a legal entity to provide for the ongoing care of a cemetery, drawing up lists of items to donate, closing bank accounts, transferring control of the building to a company that helps maintain the property after the church has closed.
But more important than help with the paperwork are the conversations about the future.
If your church closed today, how would it be remembered?
“People really care about, ‘How will people remember us? Will we be known as the church that closed this year, or will our longer, larger story be told?’” Noellert said.
Some churches may want to create a book or a video to memorialize their work. Others may want to donate their reserves toward a ministry they have long funded -- a camp, a halfway house, a ministry for disabled children. Still others may want to use proceeds from the sale of the building (which in the United Methodist system returns to the conference) to seed a new church.
“A good closure allows a congregation to make some decisions they own and to feel they’re supported by the conference,” Gottschalk-Fielding said. “They can say, ‘My church closed, but we sold the building and now those resources are helping the conference plant new church communities.’ Those kinds of things help congregations feel good.”
Death and rebirth
The dozen or so United Methodist conferences that have started legacy programs have each compiled criteria for identifying dying churches.
Although the details may vary by region, they typically include several markers:
Sunday church attendance of fewer than 50 people, with persistent decline over the past decade
no new baptisms in the past five years
no new professions of faith in the past five years
a history of low or declining apportionments, or financial contributions, to the denomination
After drawing up an inventory of churches meeting those criteria, the conference consults its district superintendents to identify churches with enough energy and leadership to participate in the program.
Some regions, such as the Florida Conference, present churches with an option of revitalization, too.
“If they choose revitalization, then they have to commit to certain steps as part of that revitalization,” said the Rev. Daniel Jackson, the director of new church development for the Florida Conference, which calls its legacy program the Nehemiah Project(link is external). “If they don’t do those things, they’re agreeing they’ll go ahead and close.”
What does Richfield UMC's story say about failure and success in ministry?
Church closure is not necessarily a sign of failure. Many congregations, such as Richfield United Methodist, are victims of changing demographics. The collapse of local industry and the migration of educated millennials to large urban areas can create challenges for rural congregations -- especially when they are located in areas with an overabundance of churches, built long ago to be within an easy walk or horse ride for worshippers.
In any case, legacy program leaders say church closure is theologically consistent with Christian faith, which teaches that death is followed by new life. Just as Jesus rose from the dead, so too dying congregations can give birth to new ministries, either by turning over their buildings to younger groups or by selling the property and funding new church plants or ministry projects through the proceeds.
In what ways does a building help or hurt a church's efforts to make new disciples?
“If we’re focusing on making disciples as our primary reason for existence, then that means we don’t have to be so focused on building buildings as we have in the past,” Jackson said. “Helping churches in difficult circumstances see other ways of developing disciples than our traditional model is a way to move the economics to a better place.”
Legacy programs also work hard to make sure members of dying churches find a welcoming home in a new congregation.
Wanda Stilwell of Monroe, North Carolina, was “welcomed with open arms” at Mineral Springs United Methodist, which she joined alongside seven other church members from Hebron United Methodist, a church that closed last year with the help of the legacy project.
Her new church has Sunday school classes, Bible study, a choir, a quilting group, a prayer group and multiple mission opportunities -- none of which her shuttered church had offered in years. Best of all, she said, her 13-year-old grandson, Trystan, has been welcomed into the youth group at Mineral Springs UMC.
Where are signs of life at your church? Where are signs of death and decay?
Stilwell said she misses her old church. But she added, “I’m somewhere where there’s life, and there wasn’t any life there at the end.”
Amazing faith
The members of Richfield United Methodist chose a longer-than-usual time frame to complete their closure process.
After meeting with leaders of the Western North Carolina legacy project, the church decided it would remain open until July 2018, holding its last service on homecoming Sunday. The extra year would allow its members to go out, not with a whimper but with a bang.
Among the items on the members’ bucket list:
a communitywide Thanksgiving potluck and food drive
traditional Christmas caroling at local nursing homes
a school supply collection for the neighborhood elementary school
a communitywide Easter Sunday service
a final contribution to The Children’s Home in Winston-Salem
a toiletry drive for a local halfway house for men and women in recovery
And then there are two big items on the list. The church wants to finalize the transfer of the parsonage to Pfeiffer University, a private liberal arts school affiliated with the United Methodist Church. The school will use the parsonage as a dormitory for students studying early childhood education and wanting to train at a nearby elementary school.
The church is also in talks with the district superintendent about repurposing the church building as a resource center for the community. One idea is to convert the building into a kitchen or warehouse to provide meals for elderly residents.
Sorrells, who facilitated two conversations with the church members, said he wasn’t sure how they would vote, given the level of energy they still had for ministry. Ultimately, they saw that in closing, the church could offer more to the community than in remaining open.
“They’re going out as a vital congregation that still has life after death,” said the Rev. Jim Groome, the church’s former pastor.
That doesn’t take away the grief many members feel. Zina Risley, who joined the church 13 years ago, said she loves the intimacy and the openness with which members shared their lives. Back when men and women had separate Sunday school classrooms, she could hear the men cackling on the other side of the wall. It wasn’t hard to figure out who was up to what.
Risley and her husband, John, will likely transfer their membership to New Mt. Tabor United Methodist after Richfield closes. But the lessons of “the tiny church that could” will always remain.
“They try to stretch out to do as much as they can,” Risley said. “They’re a very faithful group. The strength of their faith is amazing.”
Questions to consider:
- Where is your church in its life cycle? What does that mean for its ministries?
- If your church closed today, how would it be remembered?
- What does Richfield UMC's story say about the nature of failure and success in ministry?
- In what ways does a building help and hurt a church's efforts to make new disciples? What new ways might be more effective?
- Where do you see signs of life at your church? Where do you see signs of death and decay?
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: CHURCH CLOSINGS
Closing time: A congregation's witness to ending well
As painful as it was to face the challenge of ending well, one church decided it would have been even more painful to avoid it. They acknowledged that they did not want to become a church that existed for the sake of its own survival and asked themselves, "if we had only three months to live as a church, how would we spend our last days together?"
If your congregation had only three months to live, how would you spend your last days together?
It is common to pose such a question about a human life. If you had only one year to live, what would you do? We ask the same about a congregation’s life far less often. Biological science instructs us that no organism lives forever. To many, a local church is a living, breathing organism, too. While we never expect an individual human being to live forever, a heady mix of hope and denial shape different expectations about congregations.
Four years had gone by before this hypothetical question became a pragmatic one. Hyped up on hope, the congregation that formed in our family’s living room in a suburb just east of Dallas, Texas began with only a handful of people and me as the founding pastor. A dream was born to create a more progressive, liturgical church presence in a community shadowed by a megachurch and a cluster of more theologically conservative churches. It was admittedly an audacious undertaking. Still, we believed ours was a holy calling to be a spiritual community committed to Christ through historic worship, holistic discipleship, and missional service.
In more ways than one, it worked. Our Sunday living room gatherings that we referred to lovingly as “Baptist brunch” were filled with new friends, fervent prayers, reflective Bible studies, Holy Communion, good food, and lively conversations. Soon we outgrew our modest rehabilitated historic house and relocated to a local elementary school cafeteria.
Our progress was steady and slow. More of us were okay with that than not. While we always wanted to connect with more people in our community, we also wanted to maintain theological integrity to do it. Though often tempted by popular church growth methods, we resisted market-based strategies that liken starting new churches to a NASA space shuttle launch. And though we had a supportive parent congregation, neither did we intend to be a satellite campus or become a franchise of another church. We decided on a more organic approach—one that helped us see our infant congregation in terms of human development. As we learned to crawl and walk and talk, we relied on personal relationships to help spread the word about the church. As we grew and developed, we sought to be true to the spirit of who we were and to the spirit of who we believed Jesus to be—a radical rabbi who openly welcomed people to join the alternative culture of the kin-dom of God.
Unlike entertainment-based evangelism that often seeks to grow churches as fast as possible, we knew that we would not be the spiritual “golden arches” of our town. Instead we chose as our public symbol a Celtic cross—a rich spiritual symbol that connected us with a faith deeper than what we believed to be trendy and popular. Splashy direct mail campaigns and flashy online technology were not our main means of outreach—although we did once create an invitation postcard with three words printed over the images of a Celtic cross and a Communion Table: “Sacred, Soulful, Simple.” These three words described well our church.
Sacred, soulful, and simple described well our worship, too. Rather than have a rock band, we sang hymns. Sermons were narrative-based and began with Scripture rather than a contemporary topic. We celebrated Holy Communion weekly. We observed the liturgical calendar. Silence and meditations on sacred art were routinely part of our worship experience. These practices were rarely motivated by a desire to be fashionable to our local culture. Our primary aim was to be faithful to Christ in our worship and beyond whether or not our church grew by the numbers.
Of course all ministries are contextual. Being in Texas, more than one friend of our church suggested we serve beer and barbeque after Sunday worship: “You know how to attract a big crowd,” he said knowingly. “Serve up some Sunday brisket and Shiner Bock. You will be the biggest church in town!”
Well, we would have at least been the biggest party in town.
These friends did have a point. To get results you have never had before, you have to try things you have never tried before. I had witnessed other innovative churches in our area practice similar Texas-sized church growth strategies. One church raffled off Dallas Cowboys tickets. Another held drawings for Caribbean cruises. Easter in Texas often has been an occasion to lure more people to the Wheel of Fortune church by giving away fabulous cash and prizes.
These methodologies just never seemed to fit who we felt called to be. Instead, we tried to use the good old fashioned people attract people philosophy.
It was effective, too. Well, sort of. From the onset, I was driven to succeed as long as I could maintain a hefty measure of theological integrity. I did my best to marshal my inner entrepreneur. I was passionate about making new relationships and serving our community through our new church. Perhaps it is hard to fathom that a church that grew in attendance by 2500-3000% over four years decided to end its ministry. Start with two people like we did, however, and these are humble gains.
Entering our fourth year, our congregation was avidly aware that increases in financial giving would be critical in order to reach long-term organizational sustainability. We knew what it would take to help make ministry happen as we had done from the start. As with most churches, personnel and facilities expenses eventually demanded the majority of our annual budget. This combined with the forces of the Great Recession, it soon became clear that we would not reach financial viability in order to sustain our church’s operating budget. Rather than underplay the bad news or hold out hope that things would change, the leadership of our congregation felt compelled to submit a recommendation to effectively end our formal ministry together.
With a three-month grace period, our congregation reached a consensus to devote ourselves to ending well. Practical matters like a lease renewal for our worship space and being able to support our ministry partners and personnel made our decision obvious financially. But our thriving spiritual life together also made this decision difficult and especially painful. This same spiritual point of view, however, enabled us to end with dignity, class, and grace. It gave us the freedom to acknowledge that we had finished the work God had given us to do. Had we tried to keep our church going for any other reason than to fulfill our mission of loving God, growing faith, and serving others, we would have been unfaithful to God and to each other. We determined to best honor our commitments to God and to each other by ending well.
As painful as it was to face this challenge, it would have been even more painful to avoid it. We did not want to become a church that existed for the sake of its own survival. Too many churches waste valuable spiritual resources when they define success by their organizational security rather than the risks they take for God’s kin-dom. Once we decided to close our church, we were able to celebrate the latter rather than lament the former.
When pastors and congregations measure their ministries by risks rather than securities, they learn to count (and count the cost) differently. When this happens, no longer do statistics function as the primary way to interpret a ministry’s success. Instead, stories of transformation serve that purpose. My friend and the pastor of our parent church, George Mason, puts it well about spiritual success:
Every venture does not have to succeed in order to be successful. Because the church is not a business per se, it doesn’t have to show a financial return on investment in order to justify a new ministry. Because the church is the body of Christ that is ever dying and rising again, it can risk itself for the sake of the gospel and find that the very venture undertaken that looks to some like failure may in fact have transformed the lives of those involved, making it successful in spiritual ways.
If we want to know how to measure spiritual success, it seems it is about as mysterious as figuring out how to measure God’s goodness.
Jesus did this all the time. He measured spiritual goodness by telling stories about what the kin-dom of God was like. If we listen closely enough, we learn that Jesus indeed counts differently than we do. He speaks of being present where just two or three are gathered. He describes the Good Shepherd as the One who would leave 99 sheep to go find the one who was lost. He compares the kin-dom of God to tiny mustard seeds and sings the praises of a woman who uses only a small measure of yeast that permeates the whole dough. And he measures greatness differently than we do, too.
Ambitious disciples James and John once went to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”1 In other words, make us powerful. Give us influence. Bless us with prestige.
These two disciples’ ideas about power were really different than Jesus’ ideas about power. James and John wanted Jesus to appoint them vice-presidents in his company but Jesus was not impressed by their ambition. Do you want to be the greatest in the kin-dom of God? Well, first realize that Jesus doesn’t define “the greatest” the same way we do.
If any of us, clergy and laity alike, insists on being ambitious, Jesus is okay with that. But he wants to radically redefine what that means. Be ambitious for the kin-dom of God instead. If any of us insist on being power hungry, Jesus is okay with that. But he wants to radically redefine what that means. Be hungry for God’s power to rule and reign in the world instead.
Jesus himself was ambitious. He was ambitious about feeding hungry people. Jesus used his power to provide clothes to people who had no coats and no shirts and no shoes and no underwear. Jesus’s vision of what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the beloved community is a vision that grounds us in hope for a day when all of God’s children are fed; when all of God’s children are included; when all of God’s children are loved. This is success on Jesus’ terms. What would it be like if more of our congregations defined success on his terms, too?
By Jesus’ standards, our church plant failure was a glorious defeat. People committed their lives to the way of Christ and were baptized. With God’s help, we connected with church alumni and re-engaged church dropouts. We fed the hungry in our community. We served among the mentally ill. We partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build a house. We funded three water wells in India and provided school supplies to low income neighborhoods. We lobbied our Congressional representatives about committing more of our national budget to helping provide medicines and food and clean water to underserved people around the world.
These were the stories we told and the ministries we celebrated as our congregation ended well. We spoke good words to each other and over each other in our remaining weeks together. We even experienced a kind of mini-revival as we completed our four-year spiritual journey. We talked about money and the distribution of our church’s equipment all the while remaining friends. Truly we took our commitment seriously to loving each other to the very end. We learned this by watching the way Jesus loved his disciples to the very end.
Rarely does a congregation live like its days are numbered. Especially when attendance is high and budgets are strong and ministry is thriving, a congregation can often live like it is an eternal teenager. Our church did not have such a luxury. And yet as we learned to number our days we learned that numbers don’t tell a congregation’s entire story. By committing ourselves to ending well together, we discovered better ways to measure God’s goodness in the life of our church.
Our spiritual community was not great according to worldly standards. We were not great because we had a million dollar budget or the fastest growing church in town. Our greatness was not measured by these metrics. Instead, we sought to measure the spiritual goodness of our mission and ministries. Rather than ask, “How many people do we average in worship on Sundays? How big do we want our budget to be?” we asked other questions like: Are we more loving today than when we began this journey? Are we less judgmental? Are we more generous? Are we more peaceful people? Do we serve others with more joy today than we did when we started? By these measures, our congregation was spiritually alive! This spiritual aliveness accentuated the irony that our ministry was coming to an end. Questions emerged: are we calling it quits too soon? Are we being unfaithful? Should we trust more that God will take care of our needs? Certainly we did not want to worry that our congregation was being buried alive.
Many people are intrigued with near-death experiences. They want to know what the afterlife is like from people who have been to the existential brink. I wonder if the same is true for leaders who fear the future of denominations or the numerical decline of congregations. Might they want to hear from people who have crossed over to the other side as long as they do not have to make the journeys themselves?
Truth be told, there are countless congregations across the United States that need to find ways to celebrate all that God has done in their congregations over time but that need to make difficult decisions to end well. These congregations, old and new, need to find healthy ways to formally close their ministries. This is hard for me to say and even harder for congregations to admit. There is no shame in saying it, however. Rather than lament statistical declines, why not begin to tell the stories of transformation and share the spiritual successes as Jesus defines them? Make the courageous decision to die so that something new might be born. There is no glory in keeping alive the organism of the church for any other reason than to fulfill a spiritual mission. While there will always be more ministry a congregation wants to do, what if a congregation is not destined to live forever? Could it be that God’s spiritual mission can be accomplished without the congregation needing to live forever?
To think of it one way, I have been to and through the death of a congregation, and, lo and behold, I am still alive! Is my ego a bit battered and bruised? No, it is worse than that and yet better than that. The good news is that much of my ego has undergone a death, too. Where once my ambition to help create the next big-steeple church in town reigned supreme, I can now more clearly see that the reign of God is what is supremely important. The reign of God goes beyond the lifespan of any one congregation.
I led a congregation from creation to consummation in just under four years. It is not exactly the kind of Texas-sized church success story I had hoped it would be, but it prompts kin-dom-of-God-sized questions: Do I love God more or my own accomplishments? Am I driven more by the upward mobility of the American Dream or the downward mobility of Jesus’s dream of the kin-dom of God? Do I measure success by my own standards or do I define success on Jesus’s terms?
Our congregation is one witness among many that whether we live or die, our response to these questions affects everything. To quote American poet Mary Gardiner Brainard, “I would rather walk with God in the dark than go alone in the light.”
The disciples knew deeply and profoundly what it meant to walk with God in the dark. They risked the adventure of following after Jesus with no prior planning as the Gospels tell it. They joined in a movement that had come to nothing. Their leader had been executed as a criminal, not a Christ.
The gospel of John describes a sad scene of scared, grief-stricken, and disappointed disciples. A few days after the resurrection, these disciples are hiding out in a house behind locked doors. Jesus appears among them anyway on that first Easter evening, and his first words to them are, “Peace. At ease. Just breathe. Receive the Holy Spirit.”
When it is closing time in any congregation, inevitably there is grief about what comes to an end—with disappointments that things did not work out exactly the way the people hoped and with uncertainties about what will happen next. And yet these are precisely the conditions that Jesus entered into on that first Easter evening.
If what happened then still happens now, a congregation’s closing strains our Easter credulity that it is actually an ending at all. Disciples that linger long enough in the dark with God eventually come to find the end to be but a beginning. And that being in the darkness with God sheds a whole new light on things. The body of Christ is truly ever dying and rising again.
Note
1 Mark 10: 35-37, NRSV
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Faith & Leadership
Cheryl M. Lawrence: A good death
Carr UMC's new pastor arrived fresh out of divinity school, filled with passion and impatience. But her real ministry, she soon discovered, would be to help the church give up its life for the sake of the gospel.
The first time I stepped inside the sanctuary of Carr United Methodist Church, the dark beauty of the worship space took my breath away. It exuded an air of both wealth and decline.
The cavernous room was washed in royal blue and ruby red from the stained-glass windows. In the dim light, I could see row upon row of dark wood pews and two balconies. There was a communion rail with worn kneeling pads, a tall communion table, faded green paraments, and a high and exalted pulpit.
I never expected my first pastoral appointment to be in a church of such beauty. Little did I know that my tenure would end in the church giving its life for the sake of the gospel.
Fear of the neighborhood around the building played a part in the congregation’s decision, as well as a weary acknowledgment that 40 people could no longer maintain the old building or engage in fruitful ministry in that location. Yet they wanted to leave a legacy.
Over and above everything was Jesus Christ, who seemed to be calling the church to follow their crucified Lord by giving themselves away in love.
Fifty years earlier, Carr United Methodist Church in east Durham, N.C., was a big, busy neighborhood church. But times changed, the neighborhood changed, and the church did not.
Letting go was not easy. My teenage daughter identified the situation well, after about a month: “Mom, these people are so sad.”
Some members denied that anything was wrong, but most knew what was happening. They despaired over the all-but-certain prospect of becoming one more boarded-up inner-city church.
Into this situation arrived the new pastor, fresh out of divinity school and filled with passion and impatience.
I immediately set about fixing things. Resurrect the finance committee! Get a new treasurer! Consolidate the accounts! Sell the unused church vans! Raise the payment on the rented parsonage! Retire the 80-year-old secretary! (The last one took a long time to accomplish, and in retrospect, it’s a wonder I wasn’t tossed out.)
But our path to new life wasn’t to be found in financial fixes. Instead, it began when a series of other small congregations approached us about sharing our space. Initially, a nondenominational African-American church asked to worship in our sanctuary on Sunday evenings and provided a monthly offering to cover utilities.
Soon, a large Baptist church knocked on our door, asking for space to teach English as a Second Language to the many Spanish-speaking residents of the neighborhood. If we weren’t able to engage in ministry with the neighborhood, the church decided, then we could at least welcome those churches who were. The offerings didn’t hurt, of course.
Meanwhile, I preached, taught, led committee meetings and offered public prayers that relentlessly asked: Where is God leading us? How can a congregation of good-hearted, elderly Christians reach out with the love of Christ to the least, last and lost?
It didn’t help that the least, last and lost kept stealing the copper out of the air conditioning units, or that the police broke up a crack house three doors down the street, or that a drive-by shooting resulted in a car crashing into the parking lot as people were leaving worship.
Gradually, I began to envision Carr as a multidenominational, multicultural center of Christian worship: many churches in one building.
Not everyone caught the vision, though, and ultimately, God’s vision turned out to be much different from my own. Carr’s few members never completely agreed about anything, and despite my dreams, Carr and the other two churches didn’t have a lot of contact with one another.
Yet thanks to that experience, we were primed and ready when we heard that Shepherd’s House, a new-church start of people from Zimbabwe, needed space. The idea of an immigrant church worshipping in our building was both exhilarating and frightening. Shepherd’s House wasn’t just one more church -- they were United Methodists -- and they already had more than double Carr’s Sunday attendance.
But they wanted to worship at 11 a.m., the same time we did. Where would they worship? Certainly not with Carr; their service was conducted in Shona, the language of Zimbabwe. Our worship styles were literally worlds apart.
Our building had plenty of space on the first floor, but it was in disrepair. With an offer of financial support from a suburban United Methodist church, Carr members readily approved a project to create space for Shepherd’s House on our first and third floors.
After a year of construction, on a beautiful spring day, the Zimbabwean congregation moved in on schedule. For the next year, Carr’s congregation worshipped in the second-floor sanctuary, sandwiched between the Shepherd’s House adults one floor below and their children’s church one floor above.
Our churches shared the fellowship hall, bathrooms and parking lot. The Shepherd’s House children ran up and down the stairs constantly, and I often heard African drums while I preached.
The two churches invited one another to fellowship meals, including a feast of traditional African food and an outdoor cookout. We held several joint worship services, including one on Christmas Eve, with communion and “Silent Night” in both English and Shona.
It was a challenging and exciting time. One moment I would be overcome with joy at all the wonderful things that were happening, and the next, nauseated by the thought of all that could go wrong.
But eventually, the worst, at least from Carr’s perspective, began to happen. Shepherd’s House outgrew their worship space while Carr continued to shrink, as aging members died.
Clearly, it made no sense for a thriving congregation to be squashed in their worship space while 30 people knocked around upstairs in a sanctuary built for 500. I had not foreseen this happening so quickly; when I prayed that God would fill the church pews, I had meant Carr’s pews.
Thus, Carr began a difficult process of prayer and discernment. We prayed, and we talked -- and not always in pleasant ways.
Again and again, we kept coming back to Mark 8:34-35:
“He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it’” (NRSV).
For decades, Carr had tried to save its own life and had experienced nothing but slow death. We asked ourselves: What would it mean for a church to lose its life for the sake of the gospel? What would it mean for a whole church to take up a cross and follow our crucified Savior?
We were stuck somewhere between life and death. But the logjam broke when an outside person trained in conflict resolution volunteered a Saturday to help us uncover what was really important to our church -- and what wasn’t. She assigned me a task: to stay silent.
That day was a turning point. She was able to establish that most members cared more about their relationships with one another and leaving behind a United Methodist legacy than hanging on to a building.
Two months later, Carr officers requested an official vote to put the matter to rest, one way or another. When the vote came, a majority of Carr members decided that Shepherd’s House was the right church for that location. They voted to give it all -- building, furnishings and next-door parsonage -- to Shepherd’s House. Carr would relocate to another church in Durham.
After worshipping for two years in borrowed space, Carr closed, dovetailing gently into the church that had invited us to worship in their old sanctuary. It was a good death, giving way to new life in surprising ways.
Read more from Cheryl Lawrence »
The first time I stepped inside the sanctuary of Carr United Methodist Church, the dark beauty of the worship space took my breath away. It exuded an air of both wealth and decline.
The cavernous room was washed in royal blue and ruby red from the stained-glass windows. In the dim light, I could see row upon row of dark wood pews and two balconies. There was a communion rail with worn kneeling pads, a tall communion table, faded green paraments, and a high and exalted pulpit.
I never expected my first pastoral appointment to be in a church of such beauty. Little did I know that my tenure would end in the church giving its life for the sake of the gospel.
Fear of the neighborhood around the building played a part in the congregation’s decision, as well as a weary acknowledgment that 40 people could no longer maintain the old building or engage in fruitful ministry in that location. Yet they wanted to leave a legacy.
Over and above everything was Jesus Christ, who seemed to be calling the church to follow their crucified Lord by giving themselves away in love.
Fifty years earlier, Carr United Methodist Church in east Durham, N.C., was a big, busy neighborhood church. But times changed, the neighborhood changed, and the church did not.
Letting go was not easy. My teenage daughter identified the situation well, after about a month: “Mom, these people are so sad.”
Some members denied that anything was wrong, but most knew what was happening. They despaired over the all-but-certain prospect of becoming one more boarded-up inner-city church.
Into this situation arrived the new pastor, fresh out of divinity school and filled with passion and impatience.
I immediately set about fixing things. Resurrect the finance committee! Get a new treasurer! Consolidate the accounts! Sell the unused church vans! Raise the payment on the rented parsonage! Retire the 80-year-old secretary! (The last one took a long time to accomplish, and in retrospect, it’s a wonder I wasn’t tossed out.)
But our path to new life wasn’t to be found in financial fixes. Instead, it began when a series of other small congregations approached us about sharing our space. Initially, a nondenominational African-American church asked to worship in our sanctuary on Sunday evenings and provided a monthly offering to cover utilities.
Soon, a large Baptist church knocked on our door, asking for space to teach English as a Second Language to the many Spanish-speaking residents of the neighborhood. If we weren’t able to engage in ministry with the neighborhood, the church decided, then we could at least welcome those churches who were. The offerings didn’t hurt, of course.
Meanwhile, I preached, taught, led committee meetings and offered public prayers that relentlessly asked: Where is God leading us? How can a congregation of good-hearted, elderly Christians reach out with the love of Christ to the least, last and lost?
It didn’t help that the least, last and lost kept stealing the copper out of the air conditioning units, or that the police broke up a crack house three doors down the street, or that a drive-by shooting resulted in a car crashing into the parking lot as people were leaving worship.
Gradually, I began to envision Carr as a multidenominational, multicultural center of Christian worship: many churches in one building.
Not everyone caught the vision, though, and ultimately, God’s vision turned out to be much different from my own. Carr’s few members never completely agreed about anything, and despite my dreams, Carr and the other two churches didn’t have a lot of contact with one another.
Yet thanks to that experience, we were primed and ready when we heard that Shepherd’s House, a new-church start of people from Zimbabwe, needed space. The idea of an immigrant church worshipping in our building was both exhilarating and frightening. Shepherd’s House wasn’t just one more church -- they were United Methodists -- and they already had more than double Carr’s Sunday attendance.
But they wanted to worship at 11 a.m., the same time we did. Where would they worship? Certainly not with Carr; their service was conducted in Shona, the language of Zimbabwe. Our worship styles were literally worlds apart.
Our building had plenty of space on the first floor, but it was in disrepair. With an offer of financial support from a suburban United Methodist church, Carr members readily approved a project to create space for Shepherd’s House on our first and third floors.
After a year of construction, on a beautiful spring day, the Zimbabwean congregation moved in on schedule. For the next year, Carr’s congregation worshipped in the second-floor sanctuary, sandwiched between the Shepherd’s House adults one floor below and their children’s church one floor above.
Our churches shared the fellowship hall, bathrooms and parking lot. The Shepherd’s House children ran up and down the stairs constantly, and I often heard African drums while I preached.
The two churches invited one another to fellowship meals, including a feast of traditional African food and an outdoor cookout. We held several joint worship services, including one on Christmas Eve, with communion and “Silent Night” in both English and Shona.
It was a challenging and exciting time. One moment I would be overcome with joy at all the wonderful things that were happening, and the next, nauseated by the thought of all that could go wrong.
But eventually, the worst, at least from Carr’s perspective, began to happen. Shepherd’s House outgrew their worship space while Carr continued to shrink, as aging members died.
Clearly, it made no sense for a thriving congregation to be squashed in their worship space while 30 people knocked around upstairs in a sanctuary built for 500. I had not foreseen this happening so quickly; when I prayed that God would fill the church pews, I had meant Carr’s pews.
Thus, Carr began a difficult process of prayer and discernment. We prayed, and we talked -- and not always in pleasant ways.
Again and again, we kept coming back to Mark 8:34-35:
“He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it’” (NRSV).
For decades, Carr had tried to save its own life and had experienced nothing but slow death. We asked ourselves: What would it mean for a church to lose its life for the sake of the gospel? What would it mean for a whole church to take up a cross and follow our crucified Savior?
We were stuck somewhere between life and death. But the logjam broke when an outside person trained in conflict resolution volunteered a Saturday to help us uncover what was really important to our church -- and what wasn’t. She assigned me a task: to stay silent.
That day was a turning point. She was able to establish that most members cared more about their relationships with one another and leaving behind a United Methodist legacy than hanging on to a building.
Two months later, Carr officers requested an official vote to put the matter to rest, one way or another. When the vote came, a majority of Carr members decided that Shepherd’s House was the right church for that location. They voted to give it all -- building, furnishings and next-door parsonage -- to Shepherd’s House. Carr would relocate to another church in Durham.
After worshipping for two years in borrowed space, Carr closed, dovetailing gently into the church that had invited us to worship in their old sanctuary. It was a good death, giving way to new life in surprising ways.
Read more from Cheryl Lawrence »
From birth to death: Exploring the life cycle of the church
A church consultant notes that a number of scholars have noticed how congregations often mimic the life cycle of biological organisms. Demonstrating a church life cycle and helping a church find itself in the progressive route between life and death becomes an important tool for helping church leaders find their way out of stability and decline to vital ecclesial health.
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!
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.
—————
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.Read more from Stephen Compton »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Facing Decline, Finding Hope: New Possibilities for Faithful Churchesby Jeffrey JonesChurch today isn't the same as it was fifty years ago-or even ten years ago. In spite of the powerful stories of turn-around churches with skyrocketing memberships, the difficult reality is that most congregations are getting smaller. Jeffrey D. Jones asks brave questions for congregations facing this reality-what if membership growth isn't the primary goal for a church? How can churches remain vital, even with declining attendance?
Facing Decline, Finding Hope is an essential resource to help congregations confront their shrinking size while looking towards the hopeful reality that God is calling them to greater faithfulness. The book draws on biblical and theological resources, as well as contemporary leadership studies, to help leaders-both clergy and laity-set aside a survival mentality and ask new questions to shape ministry more attuned to today's world.
Facing Decline, Finding Hope is a powerful book for leaders who want to honestly assess the size of their church and plan for faithful, invigorating service regardless of whether membership numbers are up or down.
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Alban at Duke Divinity School
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