I consider my mentor in
Congregational Development to be Lyle Schaller who many see as the Father of
Congregational Development in the wider church.
Schaller has written extensively on congregations and
denominations. His books are full
of very helpful information.
I first met Lyle when a Missouri
Synod Lutheran pastor and friend in central Ohio slipped me into a Synod conference
that Lyle was leading in the early 80s.
When Lyle discovered a single Episcopalian in the mix, we began a
conversation that continued for over 20 years.
In 1987, I attend a conference by
Lyle titled “15 Key Elements in Growing a Congregation.” It was during this conference that I learned
that 80% of the development potential of a congregation can be measured and
predicted by the first 3 elements he presented. These three elements form a cluster
together. They are
Who
is the Pastor and what does she or he know?
What
size is the congregation and how long has it been that way?
What
are the size limitations of the current facilities?
This “trinity” of dynamics helps
me understand a congregation, its developmental issues and growth potential. In this blog, I will share about the issue of
congregational size which is really about the present culture of a congregation.
Schaller introduced me to the
research on congregations on the then 375,000 congregations in North America. This research showed that congregations
tended to cluster around particular sizes based on average Sunday attendance
and that this revealed particular ways of “being a church.” Schaller presented 8 different and distinct
types of congregations that day.
Arlin Rothauge used this
material to develop Sizing Up the Congregation for New Member Growth which was
published in the late 80s. Arlin reduced
this information to three types of churches.
As he explained it to me, “Most Episcopal Congregations are small. I
didn’t have to worry about sharing how larger congregations could be
divided. Besides, Rectors of large
Episcopal Congregations go to ecumenical conferences and don’t rely on
denomination material.” I thought this
tremendously revealing.
We now use the terms Arlin gave
for these type churches:
Family – normally around 20 to
40 in ASA but ranging from 3 to 75
Pastoral – normally around 110
ASA, but ranging from 80 to 150
Program – above 200 ASA
In the Diocese of Texas, we
refined this adding the fourth size:
Transitional – churches caught
between 150 and 250 ASA
I wrote a somewhat popular book
on the Transitional size (The Myth of the 200 Barrier) in
which I described the difficulty congregations faced in transitioning from
Pastoral to Program size.
I was asked to revise Arlin’s original booklet for TEC,
but Arlin believed that I made too much out of this transition and vetoed the
revision. I explained the difference in
our approaches this way. Arlin had a PhD
and a theory. I had only the practical knowledge
of working with hundreds of congregations. Add to this that less than 5% of all Pastoral
size congregations make a transition to the larger size, and I think the
dynamics of a Transitional size church are significant. (I
suspect the real issue was that I hadn’t done a D. Min from Seabury, but that
may be a bit unfair.)
What is important here is that
Schaller had very different names for these sizes. Schaller called the Family size a “Cat.” He called the Pastoral size a “Collie.” I can still remember the laughter of
recognition in the room as he described these essential differences.
“A Cat isn’t owned by anyone. It owns you.
It is independent and resilient.
It will let you pet and feed it, but at any moment, a cat can turn and scratch
or bite you for almost no reason whatever. “
“A Collie is faithful and loyal to its master. As long as you feed it, love it, and pay
attention to it, a Collie will flourish.
A Collie will even forgive you if you are from time to time a bit
stern. It takes a great deal of abuse to
turn a collie against you, but once this happens, a collie will have a mistrust
of all future masters.” (Note how this
description gives us a much better flavor for how clergy relate to these types
of congregations and how they relate to us.)
So, what I learned from Lyle was
that if you measure ASA for 10 to 20 years, you can answer these two essential
questions: What size is the church
today? And, how long has it been that
way? His conclusion based on a great
deal of research was that the longer a church operated within a particular size,
the more predictable it would stay that size and resist change. This resistance was both to getting smaller
or getting larger.
In more recent days with the
advent of “systems thinking,” we now realized that each “size” represents a
culture or “way of being the church” that becomes predictable and is maintained
by the leadership. So, if you have a
pastoral size church in a town that has been that way for 50 years, and yet the
town has become a suburb of the neighboring city with a much larger population
base, the church will predictably remain in the same size and resist
growth. This also means that the
denomination can go across town and start a new congregation and almost never
affect the current congregation.
Congregational Culture, once established, has power and that power
expresses itself in maintaining what we know and what we expect.
The converse is also true. The more change a congregation has experienced;
the easier it is to grow. It is also
true that the newer the congregation; the easier its future can be
altered. Schaller pointed out that most
congregations have institutionalized their size within the congregation’s first
30 years.
I also learned this from
Lyle. There are two types of growth in a
congregation. The first is congruent
growth. This is growth within the system. For example, a Pastoral size growing from 90
to 130 ASA has grown congruent with being a Pastoral size church.
The second is transformational growth. A Pastoral size growing from 130 to 250 ASA
has experience transformation from one culture to another. The first is easier. The second is much more difficult.
You may want to ask yourself
these two questions. What size is the
congregation I serve? How long has it
been that way? The answers to these two
questions will tell you a lot about your growth potential.
In the next blog after Easter, I
will focus on how the Pastor fits into this cluster of issues.
