PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: Five lies we like to tell about church growth" Alban at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States
PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
Faith & Leadership
A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
DEBUNKING MYTHS ABOUT CHURCH GROWTH HELPS US MAKE PLANS TO GROW
Read more from Dan Hotchkiss »
Some churches grow, and others shrink. Most oscillate for decades around a size they find comfortable. Whether your church is trying to achieve escape velocity from its comfortable size zone or struggling to stay within it, you need to know what growth requires. Unfortunately, we often soothe each other by ignoring well-established facts about church growth and telling reassuring lies. Here are a few of the most common:
Lie #1: Friendly churches grow. Declining churches often marvel at how many visitors show up once and don’t return. “But we’re so friendly!” Like most lies we tell ourselves, this one has a grain of truth in it: a visitor who gets a friendly greeting is more likely to return. But most church consultants know that the more vehemently leaders say their church is friendly, the more likely it will feel quite cold to visitors.
When people say, “Our church is friendly,” generally they mean “My friends are here.” Visitors to “friendly” churches see the backs of people’s heads—heads gathered into tight, impenetrable groups of friends. Churches that excel at hospitality are more apt to give themselves a B+ or C– in the friendliness department—and appreciate that hospitality takes effort.
Lie #2: Growth is not about numbers. I have looked at lots of numbers over twenty years as a consultant. One of the consistent patterns is that churches are more diligent about keeping records of attendance, membership, and giving when the numbers rise than when they fall.
In periods of decline, clergy and lay leaders say, “We don’t play the numbers game,” and “We are interested in quality, not quantity.” These attitudes are comforting and vaguely spiritual-sounding, but if what you are doing is worthwhile for 50 people, why wouldn’t it be twice as good to do it for 100?
We pay attention to the things we measure, and a congregation that does not keep and regularly read and talk about its numbers is not likely to do what it must to keep those numbers healthy.
Lie #3: Our children are our future. I first heard this one in the 1980s, when I served a church in southeast Florida, where lots of churches had big, empty education wings. In that context, churches could thrive for decades without attracting families with children, thanks to an endless supply of new old people.
Even in communities with lots of children, the chief benefit of having a strong young people’s ministry is not because “our” children will grow up to join “our” church. How many adult members of your church grew up in your Sunday school? Thanks to mobility, intermarriage, and competition from new congregations, if it’s more than five percent, you’re the exception.
Having a strong ministry with youth and children is important for your congregation’s growth, not because your children will grow up to join your church, but because a strong children’s program is the key to attracting your fair share of other people’s children. Congregations grow because they engage people now, not decades in the future.
Lie #4: We grow one new member at a time. Churches oscillate around comfortable sizes because that is how many people they have space for. “Space” comes in various forms. In order of importance, the chief types of capacity that limit growth appear to be: seating, leadership style, parking, worship style, adult social and program space, and education space.
Seating starts to limit congregation size when it’s about 80% full, on average. That means that you have to build a bigger sanctuary or (much cheaper) add a worship service long before long-time members feel uncomfortable.
Leadership style revolves around the role of the main clergy leader (you can learn more about this from books by me, by Susan Beaumont, and by Alice Mann). One of the main ways leaders limit growth is to insist that newcomers conform to ways of “joining” that belong to the size the church is now, rather than the size it hopes to become. Did I mention that I wrote a book (see chapter 7)?
- Parking matters most in suburbs, less in rural towns and bigger cities.
- Worship style does not mean classical or folk or rock, but whether you plan for an informal family gathering where everybody knows each other (family size: median attendance up to about 100), a facilitated group discussion (pastoral size: 100–250), a professionally-led talent show (multi-celled: 250–400), or a polished all-pro episode of a goal-driven experience (professional size: 400–800 and up).
- Adult social and program space is critical, especially for churches that aspire to be communities of faith instead of merely audiences. The common practice of building sanctuaries first and leaving social and adult program spaces for the second phase risks building a passive congregation that is vulnerable to losing members when it has a change of clergy.
- Education space, sadly, is the least important limiting factor for church growth. While parents are far pickier today about where they will leave their children than they used to be, they still tolerate more crowding in the Sunday school than in the pews or parking lot. It is rare to see a sanctuary that has averaged more than 80% of its capacity for more than a couple of years, but many classrooms have been crammed much longer.
Lie #5: Our church wants to grow. In many churches (especially stable or declining ones) leaders act surprised if you ask whether they want growth. “Of course we do!” they say. This is the biggest lie of all, and the most innocent. Consider what it means to want your church to grow. For established members, growth means taking away the church they love and replacing it with something that feels strange and alien. Leaders in a small church might not qualify as leaders in a big one. Everybody knows me in a small church, but a big church has many people—maybe even the pastor—who don’t know who I am.
No one who understands what growth involves would “want” it, in the sense that we “want” pleasure or consumer goods. The only reason a sane person would want a church to grow is because they believe it has something of importance to offer other people. For that goal, some people will accept the hard work, sacrifice, and inconvenience growth requires.
Church growth does not proceed from working harder or more diligently at what you are already doing. Growth means doing something new. And the first step toward doing something new is to quit kidding yourself about what you are doing now.
Dan Hotchkiss consults with congregations and other mission-driven groups from his home near Boston. He is the author of the best-selling Alban book Governance and Ministry: Rethinking Board Leadership, which has helped hundreds of churches, synagogues, and non-profit organizations to streamline their structure and become more mission-focused and effective.
Faith & Leadership
A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
Episode 4: Gideon Tsang on taking risks, failing and starting again
CAN THESE BONES: GIDEON TSANG
What do you do when you don't know where God is leading you?
The Rev. Gideon Tsang's tale is one of risk and reward -- but it isn't just a success story. The pastor of Vox Veniae shares some painful failures and struggles he and his congregation experienced as they planted a church and then tried to figure out how it could serve the changing city of Austin. In his conversation with co-host Laura Everett, he also talks about self-reflection, creating a learning community and moving forward without a grand vision.
In this episode of “Can These Bones,” co-host Laura Everett talks with Gideon Tsang, pastor and teacher at Vox Veniae in Austin, Texas, about the challenges of a new church plant.
What do you do when you don’t know where God is leading you? The Rev. Gideon Tsang’s tale is one of risk and reward -- but it isn’t just a success story. The pastor of Vox Veniae shares some painful failures and struggles he and his congregation experienced as they planted a church and then tried to figure out how it could serve the changing city of Austin. In his conversation with co-host Laura Everett, he also talks about self-reflection, creating a learning community and moving forward without a grand vision.
This episode is part of a series. Learn more about Can These Bones or learn how to subscribe to a podcast.
Listen and subscribe
More from Gideon Tsang
Q Ideas: Tsang contributor profile and articles
Faith & Leadership: “Austin church is a ‘voice of grace’ for a rapidly changing city,” by Eileen Flynn, on Vox Veniae and Tsang’s role in its evolution
New York Times: “Breaking the Evangelical Mold at a Church With Ethnic Roots,” by Mark Oppenheimer, on Vox Veniae and Tsang
Transcript
Bill Lamar: From Faith & Leadership, this is “Can These Bones,” a podcast that asks a fresh set of questions about leadership and the future of the church. I’m Bill Lamar.
Laura Everett: And I’m Laura Everett. This is episode 4 of a series of conversations with leaders from the church and other fields.
Laura Everett: And I’m Laura Everett. This is episode 4 of a series of conversations with leaders from the church and other fields.
Through this podcast, we want to share our hope in the resurrection and perhaps breathe life into leaders struggling in the “valley of dry bones.”
Bill Lamar: Today we are hearing from Gideon Tsang, a pastor at Vox Veniae in Austin, Texas. You spoke with Gideon about the experience with Vox. Give us a little background about it.
Laura Everett: Oh, Bill, it’s a really good conversation. I got to talk to Gideon Tsang, who is a pastor and teacher at Vox Veniae, a church plant in Austin, Texas.
Now, Vox Veniae means “voice of grace” or “voice of forgiveness,” and it’s been a generous invitation to Austin, Texas. Austin is a fascinating city. It’s full of artists and creative types, and it’s young. And this changing demographic has really posed a challenge to this congregation, because Vox started 11 years ago as a church plant of the Austin Chinese Church.
When they began, their membership was really young, and it was primarily Asian. But they wanted a church that reflected the city in which they lived, and so they made some pretty significant moves to new neighborhoods and noticed that their community was changing around them.
They wanted to be what Gideon calls an “indigenous church plant,” so they moved from a downtown office building to an abandoned nightclub in a mostly black neighborhood in East Austin. And then they had this task before them of figuring out what it meant to authentically be in that neighborhood.
All the while, Austin is this city of artists, and suddenly all of these artists showed up at church as well, and they had to figure out how to serve both communities. So Vox is just a fascinating example of a church that really struggled with their identity as the neighborhood gentrifies, as the congregation reflects the demographic changes in the city.
I really appreciate this conversation with Gideon, because he’s honest about the failures, and honest about how hard it was to become a learning community.
I think even if you aren’t starting a new church, there’s a lot to learn from Gideon’s experience of experimentation and evaluation and paying close attention to the changing community around you.
Bill Lamar: Let’s hear your conversation.
Laura Everett: Gideon Tsang, we are so grateful to have you on “Can These Bones,” a Faith & Leadership podcast.
Gideon Tsang: Thanks for having me.
Laura Everett: So, Gideon, the original congregation of 300 to 400 people was 99 percent college student and 99 percent Asian, and then you went through a massive change, a change even down to 70 members.
When you lose half or more of your church, how do you know that you are on the path that God’s called you to?
Gideon Tsang: That’s a good question. You don’t. And it feels terrifying. It kind of feels like you’re doing something wrong, actually.
Laura Everett: Why did you make those changes? What was the precipitating factor or event that led you to not just move neighborhoods but really change who you thought your congregation was?
Gideon Tsang: Well, I think what happens is you have, you know, these young, idealistic notions of what you’re going to do when you start a church. And so in our minds, we thought, you know, “We’re going to fix the church.” Here are all the problems, and then, “Look out church, look out world, we’re going to come solve all these problems.”
Then you take a step into it, and, one, you realize, “Oh man, this is way harder than I realized.” And then, two, you just really begin to ask questions of, “OK, this is taking a lot of time and energy and resources. What is the church, and what are we called to, together as a community, in this city, in this time?
And you know, you start asking a lot of those questions and you don’t really have a lot of answers, and then along the way you just start saying, “OK, we’re paying rent on this fancy office. It’s comfortable. There are coffee shops and music studios and film studios, and it’s kind of hip. But we don’t have much money, and we’re paying rent. And our impact on this neighborhood, being in this comfortable little space, is zero. Like, no one knows we’re here. We’re not serving anyone except paying rent for ourselves to sit in an empty office.”
And so you go, “OK, resources are limited, and we’re trying to figure out what it means to be the church here now.” And so our lease came up, and we said, “Well, let’s find a space to better serve this city that we love, we live in.”
And so what happened was we didn’t have options, we didn’t have money, and when our lease came up, we just said, “All right, we’re not going to renew it. Let’s move all of our office furniture into people’s homes, and let’s begin this journey of discovery.”
So that’s really what started it off. It was very pragmatic. Unfortunately, we weren’t smart enough to have a grand vision of what this community was going to be like and how it was going to be in the city. We really didn’t know. We had a lot of questions, and not too many answers.
Laura Everett: And so there’s something about the constraints you were under that forced a kind of creativity, right? Like, you could not afford a worship space and an office space ...
Gideon Tsang: Mm-hmm.
Laura Everett: ... and an event space. And so I’m curious about how the constraints informed some of your decisions.
Gideon Tsang: Yeah, that absolutely -- because we came from an established mother church, the immigrant church, and they’ve been around 20, 30 years. It was a community of 1,000, and a lot of established families and resources, and so you just throw money at problems.
And then suddenly, we left the nest, and none of that was available. And as hard as it was, it was probably the one thing that really fostered us to move beyond what we were comfortable with or knew, because we really didn’t have a choice. We couldn’t just find a problem and throw some money at it.
Laura Everett: So you ultimately ended up in a place that became known as Space12. It was a shuttered nightclub. It had been a place of violence, even a place where a police officer had shot a black teenager, right?
Gideon Tsang: Mm-hmm.
Laura Everett: That is an unlikely space. I mean, a nightclub is an unlikely space for a church, but a place of violence, too -- I’m wondering, what changed for you because you were in that place?
Gideon Tsang: I think what changed -- so again, our stumbling into it wasn’t that we had this grand vision. Honestly, it was the only place that looked affordable. And we had known of the story of Kevin Brown, but when we stumbled onto that building, we didn’t know it was that building. And then after we made the call, connected some dots, we were like, “Oh, wow -- this place has a history.”
I tend to be the optimist in the community, and I’m usually the one that’s like, “We can do this! It’s going to be hard, but this is us. Let’s do this.”
And honestly, when I stepped into the building, it was so overwhelming. I wasn’t even sure we had the capacity or the resources to take on something like this, or even just the education and the understanding and the history of that neighborhood, and the racial tension and what had happened.
And it was really -- at that time, the [church] community was small, and we would bring it back to the community and we would go, “What do you all think?”
And it was a collective decision. Without the community, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to step into it, but the community was like, “Yeah, I think this would be a great place to be a church. We can do this.”
Laura Everett: That’s remarkable, that communal decision-making process. One of the things that’s so fascinating to me about Vox is you are aiming to be an indigenous plant, an indigenous plant in your neighborhood, but that requires really knowing your neighborhood.
And so I’m wondering, what are the practices for you, for your congregation, of a close read or a close assessment of what will grow in a particular neighborhood, or what’s in the soil of a particular neighborhood?
Gideon Tsang: We didn’t do it well, starting off. You know, when we first moved in, we renovated the place, and people would drive by. We still had -- our community was probably majority Asian when we were renovating the building, and people would drive by and they’d go, “Hey, what is this going to be?” And then, you know, they’d roll down -- “Is this going to be a Chinese restaurant?” And we were like, “Would you like a Chinese restaurant? Would that be helpful to the neighborhood? We could think about it.”
[Laughter]
But we were young and naive, and we thought we’d fix up this place and the neighborhood would break down the doors and they’d be thrilled and they’d be, “Oh, we’re so glad you’re here.”
And in reality, we fixed it up, opened the doors, and then nobody came in. There was actually a cricket problem the first year, so it was literally me, by myself, sitting in the building, with crickets chirping in the background.
[Laughter]
Laura Everett: That’s so rough, Gideon.
Gideon Tsang: Yeah.
Laura Everett: If God wanted to give you a stronger sign ...
Gideon Tsang: … God would say, “Watch this; this will be funny.”
And so after a few weeks of that, we were like, “Well, maybe we should go meet the neighbors.” It’s a little embarrassing, now that we tell the story, because no one was coming in. We said, “OK, let’s start knocking on doors.”
So we started talking to neighbors and talking to nonprofits, faith-based, non-faith-based, talking to churches. We’re slow learners, Laura, but at each point, we kind of hit an impediment, and then we’d go, “OK, what is this? What should we do next?”
It reminds me of -- you know, Wendell Berry has that one line, “It’s the impeded stream that sings.” And that’s been true of our story. So mainly, we’ve had a lot of impediments.
Laura Everett: Yeah, and some communities that encounter impediments decide that the response is to do more and to go harder. As a community, how do you discern the difference between an impediment that informs a different kind of decision and one that’s worth sort of working away at?
Gideon Tsang: Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, it’s probably just trusting that if we do the best we can to listen well, even sometimes things we do maybe even out of the wrong motive, God can use that, if that makes sense. And then there are still decisions that we’ve made that I’m still thinking through.
That’s really complicated. Austin’s a complicated city. It’s one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S. It’s quickly becoming more and more monocultural, so as all the educated creatives move in -- primarily white, middle-upper class, educated -- there's 100,000 people moving every year, and that’s who’s moving in. So it’s really pushing out diversity.
And then, as you ask that question -- What are the impediments that we’ve discerned well, or not? -- some of the conversation we’re having is, for better or for worse, we’re trying to be a part of the neighborhood and help, but we also help gentrify the neighborhood, and that’s not a good thing.
So we’re constantly asking these questions and constantly evaluating and then just hoping that our flawed efforts are the best we can, and God can use flawed efforts and flawed people.
But it’s a tricky one. We’ve made a lot of mistakes, and some have been redeemed, and some we’re kind of still wading through and trying to discern.
Laura Everett: It strikes me that that’s a mark of a learning community, that sort of active reflection, the reassessment, and even the ability to go back to former decisions and say, “Maybe we didn’t get that quite right.”
Are you conscious about what kind of pace of change your community can handle, and then what’s the stuff that you just don’t want to change?
Gideon Tsang: Yeah. So early on, we changed everything all the time.
Laura Everett: Like, every Sunday?
Gideon Tsang: Well, OK, so I know a lot of people aren’t into the Enneagram, but my Enneagram type is a 7, so I’m the optimist. I like change, and I like new things. Things need to be new and fun and fresh.
And so in hindsight, this is what happened. You start a church, or you’re a part of a community that starts a church, and then it comes with a lot of anxiety -- or I had a lot of anxiety. So the way to appease my anxiety is I start new things, if that makes sense.
Laura Everett: Yeah.
Gideon Tsang: Which is a terrible -- it just gives you more reason to have more anxiety. So you start a church -- “Aah, what am I going to do?” Let’s start a nonprofit -- “Aah, what am I going to do?” Let’s start an intentional community -- “Aah, what am I going to do?” And you keep starting things.
And then in our first five years, just a trail of bodies burned out, and I almost burned myself into the ground. And then coming back, I took a sabbatical. We had a difficult staff situation. We had to navigate that.
And we were at a point where all of us just had our arms up, shrugging, and this sense of, “All right, we’ve given it our best human effort, and we don’t know -- if this thing survives or not, it’s not going to be us.”
And then, right around that time, God brought people who we really needed. Specifically, there’s a family -- he’s a spiritual director; she’s a therapist. She teaches at the Episcopal seminary now. And they really helped us take what was really hard and kind of hurting and wounded, a lot of open wounds still, and just start to give space and time to start healing, create a space that’s just safe enough just to talk about mistakes and things we really needed to process.
And so it was really kind of this frantic, anxious burst of life, you know, like a toddler, and then just running ourselves into the ground. And then God bringing people along the way to kind of pick us up, help us lick our wounds, and just to say, “OK, is there a better, more healthy way to do this? And can we set a pace and a rhythm where collectively we go, ‘You know, we could do this. This feels light, like the load is shared. We could probably do this for 20, 30 years.’”
That doesn’t feel terrifying to say that. So what is that? What is that version of a life together?
Laura Everett: Gideon, I’m so grateful for the story of a new church start that is not just a victory lap, that is a story of birth and death and rebirth, again and again, with a kind of humility. Because there’s so much shame in the church around failures of innovative efforts. And so to hear you talk about real places of wounding and things that were redeemed and were not redeemed, I think, is a gift. Thank you.
Gideon Tsang: Yeah, thank you. And, you know, to me that just feels like a better way to engage life and each other, right?
I remember thinking my parents -- I think a lot of people have this experience, [thinking] their parents have it all together, or their marriage. Or even, you know, folks in their 40s, when we were teenagers, it kind of felt like -- for a lot of us, not all of us -- like our parents kind of had it figured out and had it all together, but it just turns out they were really good at faking it.
Then you get to that stage of life, and you go, “Oh my gosh, this is so hard.” And you ask your parents, who go, “Yeah, that was really hard.” And you’re like, “Why didn’t you tell me? It would have been more helpful if you just showed me it was hard so when I get there I’ll go, ‘OK, this feels appropriate. Like, this is developmentally appropriate.’”
And so no one told me how hard starting a church is, and I think it’s probably more helpful if we just tell those stories. And then I do think that the stories in Scripture are so raw in that way -- the depth and the pain and the violence of life -- I think it’s so honest that sometimes we have a hard time even engaging those stories. But those are still our stories, right?
Laura Everett: Gideon, I believe that the story of Vox and the story of your leadership and the leadership of the community with you in East Austin is a story that will breathe life into the people that hear it this day.
I want to thank you for being with us on “Can These Bones,” a Faith & Leadership podcast. Thanks, Gideon.
Gideon Tsang: Thanks for having me.
Bill Lamar: That was my co-host Laura Everett’s conversation with Gideon Tsang, pastor at Vox Veniae in Austin, Texas.
As I listened to your conversation, it struck me how often Gideon talked about failure, about mistakes that they’d made, about things they’d done wrong.
One thing I found interesting is, how do you lead a community, an institution, with that kind of honesty? Willing not only to be self-reflective about failure internally but to share that narrative, and to invite people into failure as a learning opportunity and not as something that freezes activity and causes stasis. How did you experience that part of the conversation?
Laura Everett: I think it’s really profound, Bill. I actually think, especially for new church plants, there’s so much pressure to succeed, right? Like, the model that we’ve got in many places where there’s a denomination or a mother church that’s supporting it is you’ve got three years or you’ve got five years and then we’re pulling your funding, or you’ve got to be self-sustaining by that point. And it puts so much pressure on the congregation to thrive immediately and not experiment.
And so, that Gideon was really honest in talking about the places that just didn’t work -- I think that really cuts against the sort of church plant culture and also the tendency to only tell our stories of successes.
I appreciate that they are a congregation that actually takes some risks. And I know in my own institution, at the [Massachusetts] Council of Churches, there are many times, especially as I began, that I’ve felt like I was playing sort of safe and close. And that that first level of work is really cleaning up and clarifying what’s going on.
But taking the big risks and actually failing is something I feel that I need the sort of pastoral courage that I hear in Gideon’s story.
Bill Lamar: So as I look around Metropolitan, and I’m sure as others look around their churches and institutions, there are a number of risks that should be taken. And based on your conversation with Gideon, how do you know when it’s time to take the risk? How do you know when it’s time to really, really move in that different direction that you have been thinking about, praying about, and hoping to begin to engage? How does that happen?
Laura Everett: Part of what was so remarkable about the conversation with Gideon is they really did step out in faith, not entirely sure where God was leading them, right? Like, the move to East Austin to a neighborhood that was not yet the multicultural place that they wanted to be -- they felt like that’s where God was calling them, but they didn’t have any assurance that that was the right place to go.
I was really struck by that, that they were clinging to their core values. They knew that they wanted to be a church that reflected the diversity of their city, but they weren’t sure how to get there, and so to place a stake in the ground, to set out in a direction, is a really brave act. My sense from Gideon was that they knew what their values were; they weren’t actually perfectly convinced that that was the right direction they needed to be going in.
Bill Lamar: So sometimes indeed we have to move without having perfect clarity. That might be one of the perennial conditions of leadership.
Something else that struck me, Laura, was it seems like the community of Vox Veniae is a community of learners. How do you get folks, even in the midst of taking risks or in a more stable, older kind of situation -- as you have and as I have at the places where we are -- how do we develop these communities of learners?
Laura Everett: Yeah, that’s one thing that comes through really clear in Gideon’s conversation, that they are doing a lot of active reflection. Both Gideon is doing that on his own, and he’s doing it with his leadership team.
So I know for the Council of Churches, we had a pretty strong practice, when I came, of reflecting on what we were doing and asking good questions, but we were doing it casually. And at some point, I started to realize we were dropping some really critical bits of information. We weren’t retaining the evaluations that we were doing, and we actually had to formalize it.
So it’s not that we’re doing something new, necessarily; we’re trying to hold on to the information differently. We’re writing down our evaluations and keeping file folders, so that we can see what we’ve learned.
But I think the reality is that even for established congregations, established institutions, we are where Gideon’s community is; we are where Vox is, where there are a lot of questions and there are not a ton of answers. Does it feel like that to you at Metropolitan, Bill?
Bill Lamar: Very, very often I feel like I am afloat in a sea of more questions than answers. I’ve learned in my practice to become more comfortable with that. But still, decisions have to be made.
And so I think what Gideon reflects and what you share about your work at the Council [of Churches] is we seek to reflect -- and sometimes it seems like you can reflect ad nauseam -- but you do have to think about what you’ve done in order to chart a clearer course toward what it is you’re trying to achieve by way of vision, and trying as best we can to build consensus.
One of the things about being in a church is the leadership is not shielded, especially in my context -- maybe in others -- but I am not shielded from hearing the opinions of everybody. And so trying ...
[Laughter]
Laura Everett: Yep.
Bill Lamar: I love my job, but ...
Laura Everett: That’s real.
Bill Lamar: But trying to figure out -- you could really, really get into a place as a leader where you feel crippled. So learning to listen, but also learning what comments actually are the kinds of comments that will help you to develop as a leader and help the institution, and which comments just are a part of your being a leader and having to graciously and generously hear feedback, even if all of it may or may not be helpful.
One of the things that I thought, Laura, was very helpful was Gideon’s clarity around pushing back on having a grand vision. I know everywhere I’ve been -- Metropolitan is the fifth church that I have served as pastor -- but my first day, people wanted to know what was the vision, what was my vision.
Walking into an institution nearly 200 years old, what was the vision of a 39-year-old? Which I thought was a ridiculous question, because I didn’t know the people, and I didn’t yet know the culture.
And so Gideon being willing to say not having a grand vision could really make you more nimble, having a space where people are learning, where people are discerning, and where you’re struggling -- oh, it is very difficult to struggle toward consensus -- but struggling to get to consensus.
And then I think it seems to me that Vox Veniae got where they are by degrees, not so much leaps of faith as very small steps of faith, and now we are seeing a budding community that is still toddling in ways, but toddling in ways that invite people to come and participate in their forward movement.
Laura Everett: Bill, that makes a ton of sense to me, and ...
Bill Lamar: It’s the most sense I’ve made all day, Laura, the most sense I’ve made.
[Laughter]
Laura Everett: But look, I am -- I was talking to a younger pastor recently who was distraught by some feedback that he had received from a parishioner, some unsolicited feedback, and I asked him, “Is this someone you would seek out the opinion of?” And he said no. And I was like, “Well, then why are you taking seriously what he’s saying now?”
[Laughter]
Right, like -- and I do think that changes with age and experience, that wisdom about what feedback do you take seriously and what feedback do you thank and put in the bottom file and just leave.
I think that’s part of what I’m hearing about the sort of wisdom of discernment, but also that lack of a grand vision and living with the uncertainty -- I think that’s part of the new normal for the church. I really do.
I think if we’re to be careful observers of the community around us, and to really trust that the church is eternal but our institutions are not, then we’re going to have to get flexible in a kind of way that we haven’t had to practice before.
And I think that’s going to mean learning to live with a lot of questions, learning to live without sort of a grand master plan, and learning to cultivate a sort of spiritual discipline of flexibility that allows us to stay grounded in those core values that we heard in Vox Veniae. But also a flexibility about how those get enacted.
Bill Lamar: Well, I think, Laura, the church has to be less Hannibal from the A-Team, who always said, “I love it when a plan comes together,” and more like John on Patmos, which I love. As Revelation comes to an end, he says that he came to a city and there was no temple there, but the presence of God was there, and that was the light.
And so what encourages me is all of our institutions -- all of them that we serve -- they’re wonderful. Our churches are wonderful, but they are temporary. And they are meant to cast the light of God’s presence and God’s holiness in the world, God’s justice, God’s beauty, but the time comes when the institutions fall away.
And so I think you’re exactly right. We are grasping, but we are also being led, and that can be a very difficult space for leaders. But I think it’s where we find ourselves. And as much as it can be terrifying, it’s also exciting.
And as we read history and see history unfold in Vox Veniae through Gideon Tsang and those who are there worshipping with him and building that community, we see people taking small steps, and those small steps have indeed taken the church to wonderful places, and so we hope that we’ll continue to do so.
Laura Everett: Bill Lamar, I think that is a wise word preached and proclaimed, and I do think that is the first time I have ever heard anybody try to tie together Revelation and John of Patmos and the A-Team. So a deep bow of respect to you, brother. I appreciate that.
[Laughter]
Bill Lamar: I’m a child of the ’80s, a child of the ’80s. Born in the ’70s, but a child of the ’80s.
Laura Everett: Thank you for listening to “Can These Bones.” I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. There’s more about Gideon Tsang, including a Faith & Leadership story about Vox Veniae, on our website, www.canthesebones.com. Bill, who are you talking to next?
Bill Lamar: I had a wonderful conversation with my dear friend Kate Bowler. Kate is a church historian at Duke Divinity School, and she’s an expert on the prosperity gospel. She’s also written a memoir about having stage 4 cancer.
Laura Everett: Oh Bill, wow, there’s going to be a lot to learn from that conversation with Kate. Thanks for speaking with her, and I’m looking forward to listening.
Bill Lamar: “Can These Bones” is brought to you by Faith & Leadership, a learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity. It’s produced by Sally Hicks, Kelly Ryan Gilmer and Dave Odom. Our theme music is by Blue Dot Sessions. Funding is provided by Lilly Endowment Inc.
We’d love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts about this podcast on social media. I’m on Twitter @WilliamHLamarIV, and you can reach Laura on Twitter @RevEverett.You can also find us on our website, www.canthesebones.com.
I’m Bill Lamar, and this is “Can These Bones.”
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Read or listen to the podcast »
Learn how to listen to this podcast »
Church growth consultants are fond of noting that when average church attendance exceeds 80 percent of sanctuary capacity, crowding begins to limit a congregation’s growth. This rule of thumb, often called the “80 percent rule” has been so commonly cited by consultants that it is now invoked by many a minister or lay leader as a reason for a congregation’s failure to grow or as proof of the need for a second service or a new facility. Lately, though, more and more people are asking how and where the 80 percent rule originated and what research supports its validity.
Despite its familiarity, the 80 percent rule is far more complex than most might imagine. “There are misconceptions about the rule,” says Jim Moss, a church growth consultant with 26 years of experience. For instance, Moss points out, “It isn’t about a particular Sunday attendance reaching 80 percent of the sanctuary seating capacity. It refers to the annual average attendance compared to the comfortable capacity of the sanctuary.” And, though some have attempted to apply it to parking capacity (see box on page 9), consultants say its applicability is to seating capacity—and primarily pew seating, at that.
The exact origin of the 80 percent rule is unclear and it seems likely to have been experience based. However, there is now both research and anecdotal evidence to support it. Initially, the rule may have been based on the simple observation that churches never reached the occupancy capacity cited on the building’s architectural plans and submitted to the local building code authority. For many years, sanctuary seating capacity in churches with pew seating typically has been based on 18 inches of space per person (with some variation by state), which would require even individuals of average size and weight to sit shoulder to shoulder in the pews. This measurement is an inch less of space than is allotted to coach class passengers on airplanes, and considerably less space than research shows people reserve for themselves in a pew if left to their own devices.
For instance, architect Roger Patterson, who has designed hundreds of churches in his 52-year career, uses 20 inches to calculate capacity. “A pew seating 12 people at 20 inches per person will average 9 persons in the pew,” he says, “but if you place 12 chairs behind this same pew such that each chair affords 20 inches of space, 12 people will be seated comfortably. That’s 75 percent of capacity right there.” According to building code standards, 13 people could be accommodated by the pew in this example, with room to spare. But, as architect Jerry Cripps of InterDesign points out, state building code capacity standards have nothing to do with comfort or personal space preferences. “Under the building code, the ‘occupant load’ or capacity relates to getting people safely out of the building in the event of an emergency, such as a fire,” he says. “What we’ve seen is that, in reality, people don’t crowd in that close.”
The Rise of “Comfortable Capacity”
It is for this reason that architects, church planners, pew designers, and consultants have begun to consider “comfortable capacity” as the designation of a full church rather than the maximum capacity specified by building codes. When drawing up the plans for a church, InterDesign allows between 22 and 24 inches per person for pew seating, as do many other architects, but there are those who say even that amount isn’t sufficient for most people—at least not in pews.
For instance, Moss suggests 25 inches per person is needed for comfort. This figure is based on findings from a survey of 711 churches from seven Presbyterian denominations that Moss conducted in the mid-1980s, as well as ongoing research since then.
Kenn Sanders, a church planner and designer who has worked with more than 1,000 churches, says the attendance and pew length data he has obtained from many of these churches indicate that “26 H inches is the amount of space everybody wants when they sit in a pew these days.”
Others believe the figure is even higher. “When your main worship service reaches 80 percent of comfortable capacity (measured at 30 to 36 inches per person), you may be pretty certain that you are discouraging frequent attendance by current members and presenting a ‘no vacancy’ sign to newcomers,” says Alban Institute senior consultant Alice Mann in her book Raising the Roof.1
According to Mann, this notion of providing a welcoming environment for newcomers is one of the core issues from which the 80 percent rule emerged. Another is the question of how a church can take responsibility for factors that may decrease the frequency with which its current members attend. For Mann, the “hassle factor” is a caption for both these issues. “If I am brand new to a church and the only available seat is way up front, I may leave,” she says. “If I am a member who is on the fence about coming to church on a particular day, my expectation of crowding may tip the balance in favor of staying home. Until people begin to consider these questions of human motivation more carefully, they often don’t ‘get’ the 80 percent rule. Instead, they hold onto the premise that nothing has to be done because the church isn’t full yet.”
Identifying Unwelcoming Space
When church members perceive there to be vacant seating, resistance to believing capacity is an issue is common, consultants say. But they also report that much of the seating that members identify as available is not what most newcomers would consider comfortable or inviting seating, so identifying such unwelcoming seating has become part and parcel of consultants’ work with the 80 percent rule.
For instance, many consultants now consider uncomfortable seating to be unavailable seating and do not count it when calculating comfortable capacity. Obvious examples are portions of pews located behind large pillars or other view-obstructing objects. And, though church members often point to empty balconies and front rows, consultants tend to agree that these are not welcoming spaces. “Few visitors would feel welcome if the only seating available was in a hard-to-access balcony littered with gum wrappers,” says Mann. “Most people don’t want to sit in the balcony,” Moss agrees, citing less distance between pews and the difficulty of negotiating stairs as two barriers to balcony seating.
Pew design can also inhibit full use of the space, Moss says, noting that pews longer than 13 feet tend to remain empty toward the middle and that pews ending at a wall tend to remain empty in the spaces nearest the wall. Pews with a central armrest are also problematic. “You generally lose a full seat with those pews,” he says.
There may be congregation-specific seating patterns to factor in, as well. For example, notes Alban Institute senior consultant Dan Hotchkiss, physically disabled parishioners often occupy the seats at either end of long pews. When that’s the case members and newcomers are reluctant to disturb these individuals to gain access to the inner seats.
In some cases, notes Moss, “the perceived space may be more important than the actual space. I’ve been in several churches where the sight lines gave the impression that the space was smaller than it was, and the attendance in those churches seldom reached 80 percent of capacity.”
Only after all of these and other seating considerations have been taken into account is an estimate of comfortable capacity determined. And after that, consultants believe, there still needs to be some welcoming space left over if the church is to continue to grow. They cite both experience and research to support this conclusion.
What the Research Shows
Using 25 inches per person to calculate comfortable capacity in the churches h
e surveyed, Moss found that average annual attendance increased until it reached 57 percent of comfortable capacity. At that point it began to decline. Consequently, Moss says, “I think resistance to growth occurs at about 57 percent of the comfortable seating capacity. After that, people have to sit closer to each other, and Americans are accustomed to space. We want to have our own turf.” It is because of evidence like this that consultants often recommend a church consider adding a second (or other additional) service once it has reached 65 to 70 percent of its comfortable capacity.
“I would prefer that a church add a second service before reaching 80 percent capacity,” says Moss, “It is a major change and in many churches there is a lot of resistance to it, so it can take a long time to accomplish.”
What many churches have found, though, is that adding a second service has been key to their continued growth. An example of such an experience can be found in First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee. Hotchkiss, who worked with the church on an 18-month strategic planning process, recently graphed the church’s yearly attendance as it related to comfortable capacity, producing the startling illustration shown above.
Between 1987 and 1996, the church offered only one service. While attendance rose sharply between 1987 and 1988, it quickly leveled off after exceeding the 80 percent capacity mark (calculated based on 30 inches per person, applied to each pew separately). Although small increases were seen after that, First Unitarian did not see significant gains again until it added a second service.
“The results are quite dramatic,” Hotchkiss notes. “It was like letting a lid off.”
Since the introduction of the second service, the church’s attendance has nearly doubled, but participation began to level off again after peaking just above the 80 percent capacity mark. According to many consultants, this is an indication that a third service should be added to encourage additional growth, and the church is considering doing just that.
Exceptions to the “Rule”?
Despite case studies like this one, doubt remains about the validity of the 80 percent rule. Alban consultant Patricia Hayes says many congregations believe the 80 percent rule doesn’t apply to them. “They say things like ‘We don’t mind sitting close together’ or ‘The children leave after the first ten minutes.’ In cases like that, I have them look at their visitor return rate—the number of new members versus the number of annual visitors.”
“Identifying the barriers that 80 percent capacity creates is just the beginning of a conversation,” says Mann. “A great deal of the work goes into convincing the congregation that it is a barrier. A lot of my work involves helping people to acknowledge the way they do things and to see that these ways might be hampering the welcome they want to provide. Sometimes I use the image of a fishbowl full of marbles; there comes a point when you can’t add a new marble without taking another one out. If people begin to consider that welcoming five newcomers means displacing five existing attendees, the impact of the 80 percent factor becomes clear.”
Nevertheless, some argue that the 80 percent rule may have limited applicability. “Most new churches have adopted theater seating,” says church planner and designer Sanders. “The 80 percent factor doesn’t play out there.” Others disagree, saying certain issues are eliminated with theater seating, such as the need to figure out how many seats remain empty, but that a sufficient number of empty seats in desirable locations must still be available if growth is to be facilitated.
Others believe the 80 percent rule may not be applicable in Evangelical, African American, and Catholic churches, many of which have a “push in” policy—the practice of asking members to “push in” toward the center of the pew to allow additional members or visitors to be seated.
Hotchkiss acknowledges that “the 80 percent rule may have some basis in the customary zone of privacy of white Protestants” and therefore may be a less accurate predictor in churches with other personal space customs. However, he maintains that at some point crowding will impede any church’s growth. “American consumers are used to having abundant goods and services, and most potential and actual churchgoers are no different,” he says. “Crowding and uncomfortable seating will drive members away. And while a church that is in an initial growth phase gathers momentum and its members may tolerate many discomforts and inconveniences in those early days, people will create a more comfortable space for themselves as soon as they can. All of my experiences with congregations that resist these realities indicate that their growth will eventually plateau.”
“It’s very difficult to keep a church full for more than five years without a plan to address the issue of crowding,” Moss agrees. Even when there is such a plan, he says, there must be confidence among parishioners that the plan will be implemented. He cites the example of a church that had been pushing capacity for five years, yet remained unwilling to add a second service. Although it had a plan to address the issue of crowding—and had acquired property and obtained the necessary funding to build a larger facility upon it—the church ultimately lost half its members in an 18-month period. “The younger members did not believe anything was going to happen,” Moss explains. “They just lost the vision.”
Not the Only Factor
Despite their conviction that a church that is crowded—or perceived as crowded—can inhibit a congregation’s growth, consultants and others are quick to acknowledge that this is just one factor among many that may impinge upon growth.
“Too many churches come to me regarding their building. and their facility is not the problem; ministry is their problem,” says Patterson. “The problem is that the congregation hasn’t grown into the ministry it is called to.”
“Even if a church is at 80 percent capacity, the data does not tell you your call,” adds Mann. “You have to interpret the information to determine where God calls this congregation next.”
Alban Institute senior consultant Dan Hotchkiss says it is not that simple. This is not to say that the availability of parking does not have an impact on attendance and growth. “I usually tell church leaders that seating is one important factor affecting growth and parking is another.” But with parking, Hotchkiss says, application of the 80 percent rule of thumb is not possible because there are so many other factors that come into play. “You not only have the number of spaces available, but other factors to consider, as well, such as distance and safety.” As an example, he cites the experience of a Wisconsin church with whom he has worked recently. “The interesting thing about First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee is that they have zero parking spaces. The church is located in a neighborhood that is urban enough that people can park in front of someone’s house without the residents feeling i
ntruded upon, and it’s an area where people feel safe, so they feel comfortable walking a good distance from their cars to the church.”
For other churches, though, such neighborhood parking may not be available or appealing, and in these cases a full parking lot can severely affect attendance. “I serve three little country churches, and when parking is gone, attendance peaks,” notes Alban consultant Patricia Hayes.
“In many situations there is no parking other than the church parking lot,” notes church architect Roger Patterson. “For instance, new church buildings set well back from a rural road must depend on the parking they provide. My usual statement is ‘Provide a parking space for every two persons you want in the building’ similar to the sign in the dentist’s office that reads ‘Only floss the teeth you want to save.’”
Even when off-site parking is available, Patterson sees a correlation between the notion of comfortable seating capacity and comfortable parking capacity. “A person coming to the church for the first time doesn’t know there is parking behind the bank, school, or nearby store.” In some churches Patterson has worked with, members volunteer to park off-site to free up space for new worshipers and those needing to park near the building. In recognition of their contribution, these members are provided with “I am a remote parker” lapel badges. “I have suggested this to many congregations with similar situations.”
The effect of a lack of parking, says Patterson, is a serious consideration for churches planning new or expanded facilities. “I have consulted with churches that needed to expand their building facilities but could not expand their parking. I tried to convince them that it would be a waste of money to expand the building if the parking could not be expanded, because if you cannot park your car, you cannot attend.”
—————
NOTE
1. Alice Mann, Raising the Roof: The Pastoral-to-Program Size Transition (Bethesda, Md.: Alban Institute, 2001), 20.
Bill Lamar: Today we are hearing from Gideon Tsang, a pastor at Vox Veniae in Austin, Texas. You spoke with Gideon about the experience with Vox. Give us a little background about it.
Laura Everett: Oh, Bill, it’s a really good conversation. I got to talk to Gideon Tsang, who is a pastor and teacher at Vox Veniae, a church plant in Austin, Texas.
Now, Vox Veniae means “voice of grace” or “voice of forgiveness,” and it’s been a generous invitation to Austin, Texas. Austin is a fascinating city. It’s full of artists and creative types, and it’s young. And this changing demographic has really posed a challenge to this congregation, because Vox started 11 years ago as a church plant of the Austin Chinese Church.
When they began, their membership was really young, and it was primarily Asian. But they wanted a church that reflected the city in which they lived, and so they made some pretty significant moves to new neighborhoods and noticed that their community was changing around them.
They wanted to be what Gideon calls an “indigenous church plant,” so they moved from a downtown office building to an abandoned nightclub in a mostly black neighborhood in East Austin. And then they had this task before them of figuring out what it meant to authentically be in that neighborhood.
All the while, Austin is this city of artists, and suddenly all of these artists showed up at church as well, and they had to figure out how to serve both communities. So Vox is just a fascinating example of a church that really struggled with their identity as the neighborhood gentrifies, as the congregation reflects the demographic changes in the city.
I really appreciate this conversation with Gideon, because he’s honest about the failures, and honest about how hard it was to become a learning community.
I think even if you aren’t starting a new church, there’s a lot to learn from Gideon’s experience of experimentation and evaluation and paying close attention to the changing community around you.
Bill Lamar: Let’s hear your conversation.
Laura Everett: Gideon Tsang, we are so grateful to have you on “Can These Bones,” a Faith & Leadership podcast.
Gideon Tsang: Thanks for having me.
Laura Everett: So, Gideon, the original congregation of 300 to 400 people was 99 percent college student and 99 percent Asian, and then you went through a massive change, a change even down to 70 members.
When you lose half or more of your church, how do you know that you are on the path that God’s called you to?
Gideon Tsang: That’s a good question. You don’t. And it feels terrifying. It kind of feels like you’re doing something wrong, actually.
Laura Everett: Why did you make those changes? What was the precipitating factor or event that led you to not just move neighborhoods but really change who you thought your congregation was?
Gideon Tsang: Well, I think what happens is you have, you know, these young, idealistic notions of what you’re going to do when you start a church. And so in our minds, we thought, you know, “We’re going to fix the church.” Here are all the problems, and then, “Look out church, look out world, we’re going to come solve all these problems.”
Then you take a step into it, and, one, you realize, “Oh man, this is way harder than I realized.” And then, two, you just really begin to ask questions of, “OK, this is taking a lot of time and energy and resources. What is the church, and what are we called to, together as a community, in this city, in this time?
And you know, you start asking a lot of those questions and you don’t really have a lot of answers, and then along the way you just start saying, “OK, we’re paying rent on this fancy office. It’s comfortable. There are coffee shops and music studios and film studios, and it’s kind of hip. But we don’t have much money, and we’re paying rent. And our impact on this neighborhood, being in this comfortable little space, is zero. Like, no one knows we’re here. We’re not serving anyone except paying rent for ourselves to sit in an empty office.”
And so you go, “OK, resources are limited, and we’re trying to figure out what it means to be the church here now.” And so our lease came up, and we said, “Well, let’s find a space to better serve this city that we love, we live in.”
And so what happened was we didn’t have options, we didn’t have money, and when our lease came up, we just said, “All right, we’re not going to renew it. Let’s move all of our office furniture into people’s homes, and let’s begin this journey of discovery.”
So that’s really what started it off. It was very pragmatic. Unfortunately, we weren’t smart enough to have a grand vision of what this community was going to be like and how it was going to be in the city. We really didn’t know. We had a lot of questions, and not too many answers.
Laura Everett: And so there’s something about the constraints you were under that forced a kind of creativity, right? Like, you could not afford a worship space and an office space ...
Gideon Tsang: Mm-hmm.
Laura Everett: ... and an event space. And so I’m curious about how the constraints informed some of your decisions.
Gideon Tsang: Yeah, that absolutely -- because we came from an established mother church, the immigrant church, and they’ve been around 20, 30 years. It was a community of 1,000, and a lot of established families and resources, and so you just throw money at problems.
And then suddenly, we left the nest, and none of that was available. And as hard as it was, it was probably the one thing that really fostered us to move beyond what we were comfortable with or knew, because we really didn’t have a choice. We couldn’t just find a problem and throw some money at it.
Laura Everett: So you ultimately ended up in a place that became known as Space12. It was a shuttered nightclub. It had been a place of violence, even a place where a police officer had shot a black teenager, right?
Gideon Tsang: Mm-hmm.
Laura Everett: That is an unlikely space. I mean, a nightclub is an unlikely space for a church, but a place of violence, too -- I’m wondering, what changed for you because you were in that place?
Gideon Tsang: I think what changed -- so again, our stumbling into it wasn’t that we had this grand vision. Honestly, it was the only place that looked affordable. And we had known of the story of Kevin Brown, but when we stumbled onto that building, we didn’t know it was that building. And then after we made the call, connected some dots, we were like, “Oh, wow -- this place has a history.”
I tend to be the optimist in the community, and I’m usually the one that’s like, “We can do this! It’s going to be hard, but this is us. Let’s do this.”
And honestly, when I stepped into the building, it was so overwhelming. I wasn’t even sure we had the capacity or the resources to take on something like this, or even just the education and the understanding and the history of that neighborhood, and the racial tension and what had happened.
And it was really -- at that time, the [church] community was small, and we would bring it back to the community and we would go, “What do you all think?”
And it was a collective decision. Without the community, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to step into it, but the community was like, “Yeah, I think this would be a great place to be a church. We can do this.”
Laura Everett: That’s remarkable, that communal decision-making process. One of the things that’s so fascinating to me about Vox is you are aiming to be an indigenous plant, an indigenous plant in your neighborhood, but that requires really knowing your neighborhood.
And so I’m wondering, what are the practices for you, for your congregation, of a close read or a close assessment of what will grow in a particular neighborhood, or what’s in the soil of a particular neighborhood?
Gideon Tsang: We didn’t do it well, starting off. You know, when we first moved in, we renovated the place, and people would drive by. We still had -- our community was probably majority Asian when we were renovating the building, and people would drive by and they’d go, “Hey, what is this going to be?” And then, you know, they’d roll down -- “Is this going to be a Chinese restaurant?” And we were like, “Would you like a Chinese restaurant? Would that be helpful to the neighborhood? We could think about it.”
[Laughter]
But we were young and naive, and we thought we’d fix up this place and the neighborhood would break down the doors and they’d be thrilled and they’d be, “Oh, we’re so glad you’re here.”
And in reality, we fixed it up, opened the doors, and then nobody came in. There was actually a cricket problem the first year, so it was literally me, by myself, sitting in the building, with crickets chirping in the background.
[Laughter]
Laura Everett: That’s so rough, Gideon.
Gideon Tsang: Yeah.
Laura Everett: If God wanted to give you a stronger sign ...
Gideon Tsang: … God would say, “Watch this; this will be funny.”
And so after a few weeks of that, we were like, “Well, maybe we should go meet the neighbors.” It’s a little embarrassing, now that we tell the story, because no one was coming in. We said, “OK, let’s start knocking on doors.”
So we started talking to neighbors and talking to nonprofits, faith-based, non-faith-based, talking to churches. We’re slow learners, Laura, but at each point, we kind of hit an impediment, and then we’d go, “OK, what is this? What should we do next?”
It reminds me of -- you know, Wendell Berry has that one line, “It’s the impeded stream that sings.” And that’s been true of our story. So mainly, we’ve had a lot of impediments.
Laura Everett: Yeah, and some communities that encounter impediments decide that the response is to do more and to go harder. As a community, how do you discern the difference between an impediment that informs a different kind of decision and one that’s worth sort of working away at?
Gideon Tsang: Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, it’s probably just trusting that if we do the best we can to listen well, even sometimes things we do maybe even out of the wrong motive, God can use that, if that makes sense. And then there are still decisions that we’ve made that I’m still thinking through.
That’s really complicated. Austin’s a complicated city. It’s one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S. It’s quickly becoming more and more monocultural, so as all the educated creatives move in -- primarily white, middle-upper class, educated -- there's 100,000 people moving every year, and that’s who’s moving in. So it’s really pushing out diversity.
And then, as you ask that question -- What are the impediments that we’ve discerned well, or not? -- some of the conversation we’re having is, for better or for worse, we’re trying to be a part of the neighborhood and help, but we also help gentrify the neighborhood, and that’s not a good thing.
So we’re constantly asking these questions and constantly evaluating and then just hoping that our flawed efforts are the best we can, and God can use flawed efforts and flawed people.
But it’s a tricky one. We’ve made a lot of mistakes, and some have been redeemed, and some we’re kind of still wading through and trying to discern.
Laura Everett: It strikes me that that’s a mark of a learning community, that sort of active reflection, the reassessment, and even the ability to go back to former decisions and say, “Maybe we didn’t get that quite right.”
Are you conscious about what kind of pace of change your community can handle, and then what’s the stuff that you just don’t want to change?
Gideon Tsang: Yeah. So early on, we changed everything all the time.
Laura Everett: Like, every Sunday?
Gideon Tsang: Well, OK, so I know a lot of people aren’t into the Enneagram, but my Enneagram type is a 7, so I’m the optimist. I like change, and I like new things. Things need to be new and fun and fresh.
And so in hindsight, this is what happened. You start a church, or you’re a part of a community that starts a church, and then it comes with a lot of anxiety -- or I had a lot of anxiety. So the way to appease my anxiety is I start new things, if that makes sense.
Laura Everett: Yeah.
Gideon Tsang: Which is a terrible -- it just gives you more reason to have more anxiety. So you start a church -- “Aah, what am I going to do?” Let’s start a nonprofit -- “Aah, what am I going to do?” Let’s start an intentional community -- “Aah, what am I going to do?” And you keep starting things.
And then in our first five years, just a trail of bodies burned out, and I almost burned myself into the ground. And then coming back, I took a sabbatical. We had a difficult staff situation. We had to navigate that.
And we were at a point where all of us just had our arms up, shrugging, and this sense of, “All right, we’ve given it our best human effort, and we don’t know -- if this thing survives or not, it’s not going to be us.”
And then, right around that time, God brought people who we really needed. Specifically, there’s a family -- he’s a spiritual director; she’s a therapist. She teaches at the Episcopal seminary now. And they really helped us take what was really hard and kind of hurting and wounded, a lot of open wounds still, and just start to give space and time to start healing, create a space that’s just safe enough just to talk about mistakes and things we really needed to process.
And so it was really kind of this frantic, anxious burst of life, you know, like a toddler, and then just running ourselves into the ground. And then God bringing people along the way to kind of pick us up, help us lick our wounds, and just to say, “OK, is there a better, more healthy way to do this? And can we set a pace and a rhythm where collectively we go, ‘You know, we could do this. This feels light, like the load is shared. We could probably do this for 20, 30 years.’”
That doesn’t feel terrifying to say that. So what is that? What is that version of a life together?
Laura Everett: Gideon, I’m so grateful for the story of a new church start that is not just a victory lap, that is a story of birth and death and rebirth, again and again, with a kind of humility. Because there’s so much shame in the church around failures of innovative efforts. And so to hear you talk about real places of wounding and things that were redeemed and were not redeemed, I think, is a gift. Thank you.
Gideon Tsang: Yeah, thank you. And, you know, to me that just feels like a better way to engage life and each other, right?
I remember thinking my parents -- I think a lot of people have this experience, [thinking] their parents have it all together, or their marriage. Or even, you know, folks in their 40s, when we were teenagers, it kind of felt like -- for a lot of us, not all of us -- like our parents kind of had it figured out and had it all together, but it just turns out they were really good at faking it.
Then you get to that stage of life, and you go, “Oh my gosh, this is so hard.” And you ask your parents, who go, “Yeah, that was really hard.” And you’re like, “Why didn’t you tell me? It would have been more helpful if you just showed me it was hard so when I get there I’ll go, ‘OK, this feels appropriate. Like, this is developmentally appropriate.’”
And so no one told me how hard starting a church is, and I think it’s probably more helpful if we just tell those stories. And then I do think that the stories in Scripture are so raw in that way -- the depth and the pain and the violence of life -- I think it’s so honest that sometimes we have a hard time even engaging those stories. But those are still our stories, right?
Laura Everett: Gideon, I believe that the story of Vox and the story of your leadership and the leadership of the community with you in East Austin is a story that will breathe life into the people that hear it this day.
I want to thank you for being with us on “Can These Bones,” a Faith & Leadership podcast. Thanks, Gideon.
Gideon Tsang: Thanks for having me.
Bill Lamar: That was my co-host Laura Everett’s conversation with Gideon Tsang, pastor at Vox Veniae in Austin, Texas.
As I listened to your conversation, it struck me how often Gideon talked about failure, about mistakes that they’d made, about things they’d done wrong.
One thing I found interesting is, how do you lead a community, an institution, with that kind of honesty? Willing not only to be self-reflective about failure internally but to share that narrative, and to invite people into failure as a learning opportunity and not as something that freezes activity and causes stasis. How did you experience that part of the conversation?
Laura Everett: I think it’s really profound, Bill. I actually think, especially for new church plants, there’s so much pressure to succeed, right? Like, the model that we’ve got in many places where there’s a denomination or a mother church that’s supporting it is you’ve got three years or you’ve got five years and then we’re pulling your funding, or you’ve got to be self-sustaining by that point. And it puts so much pressure on the congregation to thrive immediately and not experiment.
And so, that Gideon was really honest in talking about the places that just didn’t work -- I think that really cuts against the sort of church plant culture and also the tendency to only tell our stories of successes.
I appreciate that they are a congregation that actually takes some risks. And I know in my own institution, at the [Massachusetts] Council of Churches, there are many times, especially as I began, that I’ve felt like I was playing sort of safe and close. And that that first level of work is really cleaning up and clarifying what’s going on.
But taking the big risks and actually failing is something I feel that I need the sort of pastoral courage that I hear in Gideon’s story.
Bill Lamar: So as I look around Metropolitan, and I’m sure as others look around their churches and institutions, there are a number of risks that should be taken. And based on your conversation with Gideon, how do you know when it’s time to take the risk? How do you know when it’s time to really, really move in that different direction that you have been thinking about, praying about, and hoping to begin to engage? How does that happen?
Laura Everett: Part of what was so remarkable about the conversation with Gideon is they really did step out in faith, not entirely sure where God was leading them, right? Like, the move to East Austin to a neighborhood that was not yet the multicultural place that they wanted to be -- they felt like that’s where God was calling them, but they didn’t have any assurance that that was the right place to go.
I was really struck by that, that they were clinging to their core values. They knew that they wanted to be a church that reflected the diversity of their city, but they weren’t sure how to get there, and so to place a stake in the ground, to set out in a direction, is a really brave act. My sense from Gideon was that they knew what their values were; they weren’t actually perfectly convinced that that was the right direction they needed to be going in.
Bill Lamar: So sometimes indeed we have to move without having perfect clarity. That might be one of the perennial conditions of leadership.
Something else that struck me, Laura, was it seems like the community of Vox Veniae is a community of learners. How do you get folks, even in the midst of taking risks or in a more stable, older kind of situation -- as you have and as I have at the places where we are -- how do we develop these communities of learners?
Laura Everett: Yeah, that’s one thing that comes through really clear in Gideon’s conversation, that they are doing a lot of active reflection. Both Gideon is doing that on his own, and he’s doing it with his leadership team.
So I know for the Council of Churches, we had a pretty strong practice, when I came, of reflecting on what we were doing and asking good questions, but we were doing it casually. And at some point, I started to realize we were dropping some really critical bits of information. We weren’t retaining the evaluations that we were doing, and we actually had to formalize it.
So it’s not that we’re doing something new, necessarily; we’re trying to hold on to the information differently. We’re writing down our evaluations and keeping file folders, so that we can see what we’ve learned.
But I think the reality is that even for established congregations, established institutions, we are where Gideon’s community is; we are where Vox is, where there are a lot of questions and there are not a ton of answers. Does it feel like that to you at Metropolitan, Bill?
Bill Lamar: Very, very often I feel like I am afloat in a sea of more questions than answers. I’ve learned in my practice to become more comfortable with that. But still, decisions have to be made.
And so I think what Gideon reflects and what you share about your work at the Council [of Churches] is we seek to reflect -- and sometimes it seems like you can reflect ad nauseam -- but you do have to think about what you’ve done in order to chart a clearer course toward what it is you’re trying to achieve by way of vision, and trying as best we can to build consensus.
One of the things about being in a church is the leadership is not shielded, especially in my context -- maybe in others -- but I am not shielded from hearing the opinions of everybody. And so trying ...
[Laughter]
Laura Everett: Yep.
Bill Lamar: I love my job, but ...
Laura Everett: That’s real.
Bill Lamar: But trying to figure out -- you could really, really get into a place as a leader where you feel crippled. So learning to listen, but also learning what comments actually are the kinds of comments that will help you to develop as a leader and help the institution, and which comments just are a part of your being a leader and having to graciously and generously hear feedback, even if all of it may or may not be helpful.
One of the things that I thought, Laura, was very helpful was Gideon’s clarity around pushing back on having a grand vision. I know everywhere I’ve been -- Metropolitan is the fifth church that I have served as pastor -- but my first day, people wanted to know what was the vision, what was my vision.
Walking into an institution nearly 200 years old, what was the vision of a 39-year-old? Which I thought was a ridiculous question, because I didn’t know the people, and I didn’t yet know the culture.
And so Gideon being willing to say not having a grand vision could really make you more nimble, having a space where people are learning, where people are discerning, and where you’re struggling -- oh, it is very difficult to struggle toward consensus -- but struggling to get to consensus.
And then I think it seems to me that Vox Veniae got where they are by degrees, not so much leaps of faith as very small steps of faith, and now we are seeing a budding community that is still toddling in ways, but toddling in ways that invite people to come and participate in their forward movement.
Laura Everett: Bill, that makes a ton of sense to me, and ...
Bill Lamar: It’s the most sense I’ve made all day, Laura, the most sense I’ve made.
[Laughter]
Laura Everett: But look, I am -- I was talking to a younger pastor recently who was distraught by some feedback that he had received from a parishioner, some unsolicited feedback, and I asked him, “Is this someone you would seek out the opinion of?” And he said no. And I was like, “Well, then why are you taking seriously what he’s saying now?”
[Laughter]
Right, like -- and I do think that changes with age and experience, that wisdom about what feedback do you take seriously and what feedback do you thank and put in the bottom file and just leave.
I think that’s part of what I’m hearing about the sort of wisdom of discernment, but also that lack of a grand vision and living with the uncertainty -- I think that’s part of the new normal for the church. I really do.
I think if we’re to be careful observers of the community around us, and to really trust that the church is eternal but our institutions are not, then we’re going to have to get flexible in a kind of way that we haven’t had to practice before.
And I think that’s going to mean learning to live with a lot of questions, learning to live without sort of a grand master plan, and learning to cultivate a sort of spiritual discipline of flexibility that allows us to stay grounded in those core values that we heard in Vox Veniae. But also a flexibility about how those get enacted.
Bill Lamar: Well, I think, Laura, the church has to be less Hannibal from the A-Team, who always said, “I love it when a plan comes together,” and more like John on Patmos, which I love. As Revelation comes to an end, he says that he came to a city and there was no temple there, but the presence of God was there, and that was the light.
And so what encourages me is all of our institutions -- all of them that we serve -- they’re wonderful. Our churches are wonderful, but they are temporary. And they are meant to cast the light of God’s presence and God’s holiness in the world, God’s justice, God’s beauty, but the time comes when the institutions fall away.
And so I think you’re exactly right. We are grasping, but we are also being led, and that can be a very difficult space for leaders. But I think it’s where we find ourselves. And as much as it can be terrifying, it’s also exciting.
And as we read history and see history unfold in Vox Veniae through Gideon Tsang and those who are there worshipping with him and building that community, we see people taking small steps, and those small steps have indeed taken the church to wonderful places, and so we hope that we’ll continue to do so.
Laura Everett: Bill Lamar, I think that is a wise word preached and proclaimed, and I do think that is the first time I have ever heard anybody try to tie together Revelation and John of Patmos and the A-Team. So a deep bow of respect to you, brother. I appreciate that.
[Laughter]
Bill Lamar: I’m a child of the ’80s, a child of the ’80s. Born in the ’70s, but a child of the ’80s.
Laura Everett: Thank you for listening to “Can These Bones.” I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. There’s more about Gideon Tsang, including a Faith & Leadership story about Vox Veniae, on our website, www.canthesebones.com. Bill, who are you talking to next?
Bill Lamar: I had a wonderful conversation with my dear friend Kate Bowler. Kate is a church historian at Duke Divinity School, and she’s an expert on the prosperity gospel. She’s also written a memoir about having stage 4 cancer.
Laura Everett: Oh Bill, wow, there’s going to be a lot to learn from that conversation with Kate. Thanks for speaking with her, and I’m looking forward to listening.
Bill Lamar: “Can These Bones” is brought to you by Faith & Leadership, a learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity. It’s produced by Sally Hicks, Kelly Ryan Gilmer and Dave Odom. Our theme music is by Blue Dot Sessions. Funding is provided by Lilly Endowment Inc.
We’d love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts about this podcast on social media. I’m on Twitter @WilliamHLamarIV, and you can reach Laura on Twitter @RevEverett.You can also find us on our website, www.canthesebones.com.
I’m Bill Lamar, and this is “Can These Bones.”
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Read or listen to the podcast »
Learn how to listen to this podcast »
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: CHURCH GROWTH
Church growth consultants are fond of noting that when average church attendance exceeds 80 percent of sanctuary capacity, crowding begins to limit a congregation's growth. More and more people are asking how and where the 80 percent rule originated and what research supports its validity.Church growth consultants are fond of noting that when average church attendance exceeds 80 percent of sanctuary capacity, crowding begins to limit a congregation’s growth. This rule of thumb, often called the “80 percent rule” has been so commonly cited by consultants that it is now invoked by many a minister or lay leader as a reason for a congregation’s failure to grow or as proof of the need for a second service or a new facility. Lately, though, more and more people are asking how and where the 80 percent rule originated and what research supports its validity.
Despite its familiarity, the 80 percent rule is far more complex than most might imagine. “There are misconceptions about the rule,” says Jim Moss, a church growth consultant with 26 years of experience. For instance, Moss points out, “It isn’t about a particular Sunday attendance reaching 80 percent of the sanctuary seating capacity. It refers to the annual average attendance compared to the comfortable capacity of the sanctuary.” And, though some have attempted to apply it to parking capacity (see box on page 9), consultants say its applicability is to seating capacity—and primarily pew seating, at that.
The exact origin of the 80 percent rule is unclear and it seems likely to have been experience based. However, there is now both research and anecdotal evidence to support it. Initially, the rule may have been based on the simple observation that churches never reached the occupancy capacity cited on the building’s architectural plans and submitted to the local building code authority. For many years, sanctuary seating capacity in churches with pew seating typically has been based on 18 inches of space per person (with some variation by state), which would require even individuals of average size and weight to sit shoulder to shoulder in the pews. This measurement is an inch less of space than is allotted to coach class passengers on airplanes, and considerably less space than research shows people reserve for themselves in a pew if left to their own devices.
For instance, architect Roger Patterson, who has designed hundreds of churches in his 52-year career, uses 20 inches to calculate capacity. “A pew seating 12 people at 20 inches per person will average 9 persons in the pew,” he says, “but if you place 12 chairs behind this same pew such that each chair affords 20 inches of space, 12 people will be seated comfortably. That’s 75 percent of capacity right there.” According to building code standards, 13 people could be accommodated by the pew in this example, with room to spare. But, as architect Jerry Cripps of InterDesign points out, state building code capacity standards have nothing to do with comfort or personal space preferences. “Under the building code, the ‘occupant load’ or capacity relates to getting people safely out of the building in the event of an emergency, such as a fire,” he says. “What we’ve seen is that, in reality, people don’t crowd in that close.”
The Rise of “Comfortable Capacity”
It is for this reason that architects, church planners, pew designers, and consultants have begun to consider “comfortable capacity” as the designation of a full church rather than the maximum capacity specified by building codes. When drawing up the plans for a church, InterDesign allows between 22 and 24 inches per person for pew seating, as do many other architects, but there are those who say even that amount isn’t sufficient for most people—at least not in pews.
For instance, Moss suggests 25 inches per person is needed for comfort. This figure is based on findings from a survey of 711 churches from seven Presbyterian denominations that Moss conducted in the mid-1980s, as well as ongoing research since then.
Kenn Sanders, a church planner and designer who has worked with more than 1,000 churches, says the attendance and pew length data he has obtained from many of these churches indicate that “26 H inches is the amount of space everybody wants when they sit in a pew these days.”
Others believe the figure is even higher. “When your main worship service reaches 80 percent of comfortable capacity (measured at 30 to 36 inches per person), you may be pretty certain that you are discouraging frequent attendance by current members and presenting a ‘no vacancy’ sign to newcomers,” says Alban Institute senior consultant Alice Mann in her book Raising the Roof.1
According to Mann, this notion of providing a welcoming environment for newcomers is one of the core issues from which the 80 percent rule emerged. Another is the question of how a church can take responsibility for factors that may decrease the frequency with which its current members attend. For Mann, the “hassle factor” is a caption for both these issues. “If I am brand new to a church and the only available seat is way up front, I may leave,” she says. “If I am a member who is on the fence about coming to church on a particular day, my expectation of crowding may tip the balance in favor of staying home. Until people begin to consider these questions of human motivation more carefully, they often don’t ‘get’ the 80 percent rule. Instead, they hold onto the premise that nothing has to be done because the church isn’t full yet.”
Identifying Unwelcoming Space
When church members perceive there to be vacant seating, resistance to believing capacity is an issue is common, consultants say. But they also report that much of the seating that members identify as available is not what most newcomers would consider comfortable or inviting seating, so identifying such unwelcoming seating has become part and parcel of consultants’ work with the 80 percent rule.
For instance, many consultants now consider uncomfortable seating to be unavailable seating and do not count it when calculating comfortable capacity. Obvious examples are portions of pews located behind large pillars or other view-obstructing objects. And, though church members often point to empty balconies and front rows, consultants tend to agree that these are not welcoming spaces. “Few visitors would feel welcome if the only seating available was in a hard-to-access balcony littered with gum wrappers,” says Mann. “Most people don’t want to sit in the balcony,” Moss agrees, citing less distance between pews and the difficulty of negotiating stairs as two barriers to balcony seating.
Pew design can also inhibit full use of the space, Moss says, noting that pews longer than 13 feet tend to remain empty toward the middle and that pews ending at a wall tend to remain empty in the spaces nearest the wall. Pews with a central armrest are also problematic. “You generally lose a full seat with those pews,” he says.
There may be congregation-specific seating patterns to factor in, as well. For example, notes Alban Institute senior consultant Dan Hotchkiss, physically disabled parishioners often occupy the seats at either end of long pews. When that’s the case members and newcomers are reluctant to disturb these individuals to gain access to the inner seats.
In some cases, notes Moss, “the perceived space may be more important than the actual space. I’ve been in several churches where the sight lines gave the impression that the space was smaller than it was, and the attendance in those churches seldom reached 80 percent of capacity.”
Only after all of these and other seating considerations have been taken into account is an estimate of comfortable capacity determined. And after that, consultants believe, there still needs to be some welcoming space left over if the church is to continue to grow. They cite both experience and research to support this conclusion.
What the Research Shows
Using 25 inches per person to calculate comfortable capacity in the churches h
e surveyed, Moss found that average annual attendance increased until it reached 57 percent of comfortable capacity. At that point it began to decline. Consequently, Moss says, “I think resistance to growth occurs at about 57 percent of the comfortable seating capacity. After that, people have to sit closer to each other, and Americans are accustomed to space. We want to have our own turf.” It is because of evidence like this that consultants often recommend a church consider adding a second (or other additional) service once it has reached 65 to 70 percent of its comfortable capacity.
“I would prefer that a church add a second service before reaching 80 percent capacity,” says Moss, “It is a major change and in many churches there is a lot of resistance to it, so it can take a long time to accomplish.”
What many churches have found, though, is that adding a second service has been key to their continued growth. An example of such an experience can be found in First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee. Hotchkiss, who worked with the church on an 18-month strategic planning process, recently graphed the church’s yearly attendance as it related to comfortable capacity, producing the startling illustration shown above.
Between 1987 and 1996, the church offered only one service. While attendance rose sharply between 1987 and 1988, it quickly leveled off after exceeding the 80 percent capacity mark (calculated based on 30 inches per person, applied to each pew separately). Although small increases were seen after that, First Unitarian did not see significant gains again until it added a second service.
“The results are quite dramatic,” Hotchkiss notes. “It was like letting a lid off.”
Since the introduction of the second service, the church’s attendance has nearly doubled, but participation began to level off again after peaking just above the 80 percent capacity mark. According to many consultants, this is an indication that a third service should be added to encourage additional growth, and the church is considering doing just that.
Exceptions to the “Rule”?
Despite case studies like this one, doubt remains about the validity of the 80 percent rule. Alban consultant Patricia Hayes says many congregations believe the 80 percent rule doesn’t apply to them. “They say things like ‘We don’t mind sitting close together’ or ‘The children leave after the first ten minutes.’ In cases like that, I have them look at their visitor return rate—the number of new members versus the number of annual visitors.”
“Identifying the barriers that 80 percent capacity creates is just the beginning of a conversation,” says Mann. “A great deal of the work goes into convincing the congregation that it is a barrier. A lot of my work involves helping people to acknowledge the way they do things and to see that these ways might be hampering the welcome they want to provide. Sometimes I use the image of a fishbowl full of marbles; there comes a point when you can’t add a new marble without taking another one out. If people begin to consider that welcoming five newcomers means displacing five existing attendees, the impact of the 80 percent factor becomes clear.”
Nevertheless, some argue that the 80 percent rule may have limited applicability. “Most new churches have adopted theater seating,” says church planner and designer Sanders. “The 80 percent factor doesn’t play out there.” Others disagree, saying certain issues are eliminated with theater seating, such as the need to figure out how many seats remain empty, but that a sufficient number of empty seats in desirable locations must still be available if growth is to be facilitated.
Others believe the 80 percent rule may not be applicable in Evangelical, African American, and Catholic churches, many of which have a “push in” policy—the practice of asking members to “push in” toward the center of the pew to allow additional members or visitors to be seated.
Hotchkiss acknowledges that “the 80 percent rule may have some basis in the customary zone of privacy of white Protestants” and therefore may be a less accurate predictor in churches with other personal space customs. However, he maintains that at some point crowding will impede any church’s growth. “American consumers are used to having abundant goods and services, and most potential and actual churchgoers are no different,” he says. “Crowding and uncomfortable seating will drive members away. And while a church that is in an initial growth phase gathers momentum and its members may tolerate many discomforts and inconveniences in those early days, people will create a more comfortable space for themselves as soon as they can. All of my experiences with congregations that resist these realities indicate that their growth will eventually plateau.”
“It’s very difficult to keep a church full for more than five years without a plan to address the issue of crowding,” Moss agrees. Even when there is such a plan, he says, there must be confidence among parishioners that the plan will be implemented. He cites the example of a church that had been pushing capacity for five years, yet remained unwilling to add a second service. Although it had a plan to address the issue of crowding—and had acquired property and obtained the necessary funding to build a larger facility upon it—the church ultimately lost half its members in an 18-month period. “The younger members did not believe anything was going to happen,” Moss explains. “They just lost the vision.”
Not the Only Factor
Despite their conviction that a church that is crowded—or perceived as crowded—can inhibit a congregation’s growth, consultants and others are quick to acknowledge that this is just one factor among many that may impinge upon growth.
“Too many churches come to me regarding their building. and their facility is not the problem; ministry is their problem,” says Patterson. “The problem is that the congregation hasn’t grown into the ministry it is called to.”
“Even if a church is at 80 percent capacity, the data does not tell you your call,” adds Mann. “You have to interpret the information to determine where God calls this congregation next.”
Parking: Does the 80 Percent Rule Apply?
Many consultants are convinced that church growth will be impeded when average annual participation reaches 80 percent of the sanctuary’s comfortable seating capacity, but does this same rule of thumb apply to parking? Are newcomers discouraged from joining a church that has reached 80 percent of its parking capacity? Do active members perceive the lot as full and return home when 80 percent of the spaces are taken?Alban Institute senior consultant Dan Hotchkiss says it is not that simple. This is not to say that the availability of parking does not have an impact on attendance and growth. “I usually tell church leaders that seating is one important factor affecting growth and parking is another.” But with parking, Hotchkiss says, application of the 80 percent rule of thumb is not possible because there are so many other factors that come into play. “You not only have the number of spaces available, but other factors to consider, as well, such as distance and safety.” As an example, he cites the experience of a Wisconsin church with whom he has worked recently. “The interesting thing about First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee is that they have zero parking spaces. The church is located in a neighborhood that is urban enough that people can park in front of someone’s house without the residents feeling i
ntruded upon, and it’s an area where people feel safe, so they feel comfortable walking a good distance from their cars to the church.”
For other churches, though, such neighborhood parking may not be available or appealing, and in these cases a full parking lot can severely affect attendance. “I serve three little country churches, and when parking is gone, attendance peaks,” notes Alban consultant Patricia Hayes.
“In many situations there is no parking other than the church parking lot,” notes church architect Roger Patterson. “For instance, new church buildings set well back from a rural road must depend on the parking they provide. My usual statement is ‘Provide a parking space for every two persons you want in the building’ similar to the sign in the dentist’s office that reads ‘Only floss the teeth you want to save.’”
Even when off-site parking is available, Patterson sees a correlation between the notion of comfortable seating capacity and comfortable parking capacity. “A person coming to the church for the first time doesn’t know there is parking behind the bank, school, or nearby store.” In some churches Patterson has worked with, members volunteer to park off-site to free up space for new worshipers and those needing to park near the building. In recognition of their contribution, these members are provided with “I am a remote parker” lapel badges. “I have suggested this to many congregations with similar situations.”
The effect of a lack of parking, says Patterson, is a serious consideration for churches planning new or expanded facilities. “I have consulted with churches that needed to expand their building facilities but could not expand their parking. I tried to convince them that it would be a waste of money to expand the building if the parking could not be expanded, because if you cannot park your car, you cannot attend.”
—————
NOTE
1. Alice Mann, Raising the Roof: The Pastoral-to-Program Size Transition (Bethesda, Md.: Alban Institute, 2001), 20.
Read more from Marlis McCollum »
As churches grow, the work of leadership changes. It's important for a clergyperson to know if they would be capable of leading a church to real, sustainable growth, and vocationally-fulfilled.
As churches grow, the work of leadership changes. It's important for a clergyperson to know if they would be capable of leading a church to real, sustainable growth, and vocationally-fulfilled.
If you are sole pastor and your congregation’s average attendance is 150 or more, you probably already feel pretty stretched by:
1. Change your priorities. In a pastoral-size church (51 to 150 people at worship), building one-to-one pastoral relationships usually comes first. At program size (151 to 400 people), your priorities will be high-quality Sunday worship, lay leadership development, and reliable systems of member care and involvement (including strong lay teams for pastoral care and new-member ministry).
2. Negotiate expectations. Not all members will accept this shift. Some will feel abandoned, or accuse you of being uncaring, ambitious, and unspiritual. You will have to gain skills for negotiating expectations with your board (and with the denominational officials to whom dissatisfied members may appeal).
3. Clarify your vision. The advantage of a program-size church (significant programs targeted to different kinds of people) also creates its challenge (managing multiple styles, expectations, and projects). You must take more initiative to ensure that:
Your board can articulate what the church is primarily here for (purpose/mission) and where it is called to go (vision). Typically, boards become nervous during a transition, realizing they can’t keep everybody happy. Your board probably needs help to develop for itself better processes of recruitment, orientation, and meeting design.
Key subgroups stay in face-to-face communication with each other. Liaisons tend not to work well. In worship planning, for example, key music leaders, ushers, church school teachers, and clergy may need to meet quarterly to work out seasonal worship plans. You might organize a semiannual “leadership forum” where leaders of groups and programs share goals, negotiate calendars, and solve problems. By sharing aspirations, program leaders can support each other’s efforts and minimize unhealthy competition for time, space, and money.
This description may sound daunting. But consider the satisfactions of effective clergy in program-size churches:
Pastoral-to-program size change is frequently described as the most challenging of growth transitions for congregations. Alban senior consultant Alice Mann addresses the difficulties of that transition in this resource designed specifically for a congregational learning team. From preparing the congregation’s board and members, selecting the person to guide the learning process, and recruiting the learning team, to creating and celebrating a plan for congregational learning and action, Mann provides all the resources a congregation needs to address this significant size transition period.
Read more from Alice Mann »
Governance and Ministry has proven to be an indispensable guide for leaders and clergy on how to work together to lead congregations. In this second edition, veteran congregational consultant and minister Dan Hotchkiss updates the book to reflect today's church and synagogue landscape and shares practical insights based on his work with readers of the first edition.
Governance and Ministry highlights the importance of reaching the right governance model for a congregation to fulfill its mission-to achieve both the outward results and the inward quality of life to which it is called. Hotchkiss draws on governance research from business, nonprofits, and churches, as well as deep experience in a variety of denominations and congregations to help readers determine the governance model that best fits their needs. The second edition has been streamlined and reorganized to better help readers think through leadership models and the process of change. The book features new material on the implications of congregation size, the process of governance change, policy choices, and the lay-clergy relationship. It also features two appendices with resources often requested by Hotchkiss's consulting clients: a style guide for policy-makers and a unified example of a board policy book.
Written with energy and humor, and offering plenty of practical examples, the second edition of this helpful resource is ideal for anyone involved in church leadership to assist in framing critical questions, creating a vision, and implementing a plan.
Learn more and order the book »
- Keeping up with non-crisis visitation and counseling
- Tracking visitors and incorporating new members
- Providing leadership for adult classes, groups, and committees
- Managing clashing expectations (Older or longer-tenured members often want a “single cell” of informal fellowship. Younger or shorter-tenured members may expect a variety of high-quality programs.)
- Stepping up to more complex processes for planning and communication
1. Change your priorities. In a pastoral-size church (51 to 150 people at worship), building one-to-one pastoral relationships usually comes first. At program size (151 to 400 people), your priorities will be high-quality Sunday worship, lay leadership development, and reliable systems of member care and involvement (including strong lay teams for pastoral care and new-member ministry).
2. Negotiate expectations. Not all members will accept this shift. Some will feel abandoned, or accuse you of being uncaring, ambitious, and unspiritual. You will have to gain skills for negotiating expectations with your board (and with the denominational officials to whom dissatisfied members may appeal).
3. Clarify your vision. The advantage of a program-size church (significant programs targeted to different kinds of people) also creates its challenge (managing multiple styles, expectations, and projects). You must take more initiative to ensure that:
Your board can articulate what the church is primarily here for (purpose/mission) and where it is called to go (vision). Typically, boards become nervous during a transition, realizing they can’t keep everybody happy. Your board probably needs help to develop for itself better processes of recruitment, orientation, and meeting design.
Key subgroups stay in face-to-face communication with each other. Liaisons tend not to work well. In worship planning, for example, key music leaders, ushers, church school teachers, and clergy may need to meet quarterly to work out seasonal worship plans. You might organize a semiannual “leadership forum” where leaders of groups and programs share goals, negotiate calendars, and solve problems. By sharing aspirations, program leaders can support each other’s efforts and minimize unhealthy competition for time, space, and money.
This description may sound daunting. But consider the satisfactions of effective clergy in program-size churches:
- Creating durable structures of ministry. Like an architect, you may encounter the imaginative challenge of design and the practical adventure of installing new systems to sustain effective ministry.
- Developing a leadership cadre. Like a coach, you can take pride in the growth of the leaders you mentor and the teams you guide.
- Building consensus. Like a politician, you come to know people’s aspirations, interests, and “hot spots,” and help forge coalitions to accomplish important work.
______________________________________
Featured Resources:
by Jill M. Hudson
Many sociologists and a growing number of church scholars have noted that we live in a time of transition–from the modern era to the postmodern. Whenever a shift of this magnitude occurs, it leaves all of life, including the church, in flux. We instinctively strive to stabilize the situation by re-establishing what has worked in the past. Increasingly, however, congregations are finding that the same old things done harder or better don’t seem to make a difference. Author Jill Hudson argues, “We must identify new criteria for success, and perhaps even for faithfulness, and hold ourselves accountable to them.” Approaching the postmodern era as a tremendous opportunity, Hudson identifies 12 characteristics by which we can measure effective ministry for the early 21st century.
“Rethinking the Large Church” Congregations, Winter 2005
According to recent surveys, large churches account for more than half of all U.S. churchgoers. What are the special characteristics of these churches? Who is best suited to large church ministry? How can large church pastors make personal connections with the many people in their care? These and other questions are explored in this issue of Alban’s magazine, Congregations.Read more from Alice Mann »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Governance and Ministry highlights the importance of reaching the right governance model for a congregation to fulfill its mission-to achieve both the outward results and the inward quality of life to which it is called. Hotchkiss draws on governance research from business, nonprofits, and churches, as well as deep experience in a variety of denominations and congregations to help readers determine the governance model that best fits their needs. The second edition has been streamlined and reorganized to better help readers think through leadership models and the process of change. The book features new material on the implications of congregation size, the process of governance change, policy choices, and the lay-clergy relationship. It also features two appendices with resources often requested by Hotchkiss's consulting clients: a style guide for policy-makers and a unified example of a board policy book.
Written with energy and humor, and offering plenty of practical examples, the second edition of this helpful resource is ideal for anyone involved in church leadership to assist in framing critical questions, creating a vision, and implementing a plan.
Learn more and order the book »
Follow us on social media:
Copyright © 2018. All Rights Reserved.
Alban at Duke Divinity School
1121 West Chapel Hill Street, Suite 200
Durham, North Carolina 27701, United States
No comments:
Post a Comment