Reasons for Decline, 4 and 5

     Continuing my 7 Reasons for the Decline of the Episcopal Church, I would like to list my next two reasons; 

#4  Failure to reach out to new and ethnically divergent people.

#5 Failure to plan new congregations, especially among new and ethnically divergent people. 

This is a very hard thing to point out to Episcopalians>  We see ourselves as a church that is inclusive of all people.  I do think it is true that most churches want to be open places, and many individual congregations have become more diverse in the past two decades.  However, what I mean here brings us into that uncomfortable place between what we want to believe about ourselves and what we actually are. 

I often say at clergy conferences that “I have been a priest so long at 39 years that I can remember when we had a significant number of African-Americans, even African-American congregations, and I can remember when we had a large number of blue-collar congregations.  This usually makes clergy nervous because, of course, our self perception is that the Episcopal Church has become more diverse and more open to other people over the last generation.  Simply said, we have not.  As I said, I do think we have more congregations that have conscientiously added some ethnic and cultural diversity, but this is not what I mean.  What I mean is that we have failed to form new congregations among the newer arrivals to America.

At the 2009 General Convention, the Joint Committee on Evangelism backed a proposed initiative from our Hispanic Leadership put together by our Hispanic Officer, Antony Guillan at 815.  This was a visionary initiative aimed especially at the most receptive people in North America to the Episcopal Church, namely Latinos.  If this initiative had been both embraced and funded by TEC, we could have seen considerable new ministry, new congregations, and new Latino members.  Tragically, in the across-the-board slash of our tri-annual budget, most of the needed funding for this initiative was lost.  This reflects a continued failure on our part to reach out to the significant number of immigrants now present among us.

Our strategy seems to be that if we have a sign that says “the Episcopal Church Welcomes You” or “We Are Here for You,” they will come.  Another way to say this is that once people speak our language, dress like us, and are comfortable sitting in a church where the majority of those present are white, upper middle-class, Americans, they will certainly be welcome.  This is poor mission strategy.

The denominations making considerable strides in reaching diverse people have learned to plant whole congregations made up of precisely the people they intend to reach.  These are led by lay and ordained leaders who are from these groups. 

We seem inhibited in trying this proven strategy because we are (a) insensitive to the needs of newly arrived people, and (b) so caught up in our own sense of being an open and inclusive people that we think it would be bad to plan such a strategy. 

Ironically, what has happened to TEC in the last 30 years is that we are becoming less diverse, not more so.  I commend all Episcopal leaders to read Harold Lewis’ “Yet with a Steady Beat” to see documentation of our abandonment of ministry among African-Americans. 

It certainly is true that we are becoming more gender inclusive.  I would just point out that there are significant numbers of “other” people for whom we should develop an intentional missionary strategy. 

If you have been reading my blogs, you will notice that if you consider younger generation folks as “new and divergent” than my items 2, 3, 4, and 5 are all inter-related, and I believe they are.  They all represent our inability to develop an intentional missionary strategy to reach people different from our present membership. 

If you are looking for good news in my blogs on this topic, here is some.  There are a few dioceses that are learning to do exactly this kind of intentional missionary strategy.  Let’s hope and pray that this becomes contagious.

The Second and Third Reasons for our Continuing Decline

The second and third reasons for the decline of TEC on my list of seven key reasons have to do with young people.

#2.  The failure to keep and to recruit younger generations of people, especially younger than boomers!


#3.  The failure to recruit younger lay and ordained leaders

Of course we have wonderful younger people in the Episcopal Church.  Our own parish has some extraordinary younger members. The diocese has an outstanding ministry to younger people, as does my former Diocese, Texas. 

However, nothing points to our continued decline more than this simple fact; for almost my entire life, I have been near the median age of Episcopalians.  I joined the Church when I was 12 and I am now 64!  This means that during this time span, our community has continued to age.   Today, the typical Episcopalian is a 61 year old, college educated, white female. 

Among some of the reasons for this failure to keep and recruit younger people, I would list the following:

1.       The abandonment in the early 70’s of a National Curriculum for Church Schools. 

2.      The failure to have a unified teaching and age for confirmation, and the lack of emphasis by our bishops of the place on confirmation. 

3.      The moment toward ordination to an older and older age, along with making ordination almost exclusively a “second career” track for people.

     These two reasons are closely related because it is younger leaders who have the best chance of reaching their own generation for Christ.  So for a person ordained at 27, number 3 is critical.  I was ordained in the year in which the Commission on Ministry System was instituted in the Episcopal Church.  While I understand the reasons and certainly the rationale for such a system, I think it has not served the Church well.  For example, we have greatly underestimated the dynamic of a committee selecting candidates for ministry.  Simply said, a committee tends to recruit toward the median of the committee in age, education and experience. 

A second dynamic is that this system was to be “advisory” to Bishops.  Today, almost all bishops defer the decision making to the Commission on Ministry.  Few would ever attempt to ordain a person against a majority vote of the Commission.  So COMs are now “selection committees” in most dioceses.

Since 1971, I have listened to countless justifications for our current way of doing things, but the most common one is “Well, our system has flaws, but it is so much better than what we had before.”  When I compare the extraordinary clergy who came into the ordained ministry between 1945 and 1970 versus today, I think such a justification is nonsense. 

What I think is needed is a concerted effort of Bishops, Commissions on Ministry, and Standing Committees to recruit young leaders to ordained ministry.  Let me be clear, I have no objection to ordaining people past 40, but these should represent a minority of our ordained folks, not the vast majority.

7 Reasons for TEC's Decline

I want to build on my article in The Living Church to point to seven reasons for the continuing decline of the Episcopal Church. I am going to spend time in my blog covering these items over the next several weeks.

#1 Our society is becoming increasingly more secular particularly among the people who we have historically attracted.

This may seem surprising to mention this when 82% of the population continues to believe in God and a very high percentage believe that Jesus was divine, but the numbers are secondary as to who believes these things.

The truth is that increasingly our society functions as a secular society and this is driven by intellectual leaders and opinion framers. Importantly for Episcopalians is that our demographic – highly educated people – are the most secular of all. In the U.S., the higher someone is educated the more they tend to disbelieve.

This is even made more difficult for us by what Peter Steinke calls “The Rise of Militant Atheism.” While only about 6% of the population claim to be atheists, those who are, particularly in the University setting, are much more openly critical of religion.

Recently Bill Maher was asked if he was opposed to building the Mosque near ground zero. His reply expresses the popularized atheistic view. “Yes, I am opposed to building a Mosque. I am also opposed to building a church or a temple of any kind anywhere.” He then went on to express that humanity needs to outgrow religion and a belief in God, and then he expressed the further belief that religions have become a danger to humans – a popular expression of Christopher Hitchens’ “God is Not Great!”

This is all an expression of a growing hostility to religion in the public market place. All this hurts mainline Christians and especially Episcopalians because of our strong connection to education and the educated elite. So, the people that we often reach are becoming less and less likely to find any need for religion and especially the church.

What is needed in the face of all this is a more assertive proclamation of the value of our faith than many Episcopalians, especially clergy are comfortable giving. Certainly our “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You” expresses the DNA of a once socially acceptable Church (dare we say DNA of a State Church) that sees little need to justify our existence.

What we should be doing, of course is reading Dawkins, Hawking and Hitchens and learning how to develop a current apologetic for the place of Christianity in our culture. What we seem to be doing is trying to strike some sort of cultural accommodation to this shift. Of course, a multi-cultural and inclusive church welcoming of all people is irrelevant to people who question the good of any church whatsoever.

Behind all this are both theological and mission issues too complex to go into here. What I am saying is this. One major reason TEC is in decline is because our society is becoming more and more indifferent to the church and in many ways hostile to it.

One modest proposal I keep making to folks is that we need to develop a post-seminary mission training center that prepares our clergy to be mission clergy in a secular world rather than chaplain clergy to a believing world. Maybe if I keep saying it, some will begin to listen.

The Living Church Article

Recently, The Living Church published my article on “Moving Toward 2010.”  They gave it a difference name.  (I have learned as an author that until have your first million best seller, you don’t get to choose the name of your books/articles nor do you get to design the cover.)  What I set out to do was to tell the story of the 2020 Movement and what happened to this attempt to revitalize the church. 

I also used the article as a way of pointing out what the Episcopal Church will look like if current trends continue.  The article wasn’t that positive because the numbers are not that positive.  For example, attendance is down 14% from 2005 to 2009 and is now on track to go down another 15% by 2014.  That is a 29% decrease in regular participation in a ten year time span. 

As I have often tried to point out, the reasons for our decline are complex.  Last week at the clergy conference for Mississippi, I made a presentation on what I believe are the seven key reasons for our decline.  It led to a spirited conversation.  My principle point is that if we understand the decline, no matter how complex, we could develop a strategy to change this.  I find quite a bit of interest about this on the local and regional level, but almost none on our national level.  This blog allows me to add some other comments. 

First, when one writes such an article, some people assume that somehow I want these numbers to be this way.  I was once called a person with “Chicken Little Theology” on the House of Bishops/ Deputies Listserv.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  I want the Episcopal Church to be healthy, vibrant and growing.  I have worked at this for 39 years as a priest.  I love the Episcopal/Anglican expression of faith.  I point out the numbers because you can’t talk about where you want to be without talking first about current realities.  This is as true for a congregation as a denomination.

Second, I’ve found that talking about decline causes people to react in emotional rather than reasonable ways.  For example, one reporter picked up my article and spin it toward saying I was predicting the doomsday of the Episcopal Church.  As I commented to a friend, “read my article because it is actually better and more positive.”  You see, I believe we can do something about all this.

Usually, I also at least one of what I would call the “Preach Jesus” reaction.  This is the person who claims that the Episcopal Church would do well if it “only returned (sic) to simply preaching Jesus.”  This is often contradicted by supporters of the present administration that say things like, “we shouldn’t worry about numbers,” or “Episcopalians have low birthrates, (which with an average age of 60 is certainly true!) or “We got over the Prayer Book change and women’s ordination, so we will get over this.” 

I find these frustrating because in all honesty one reason that I am an Episcopalian is because I thought we were the Christian Community that was capable of reasonable, intelligent discourse. 

So, why did I write such an article?  Because I believe our decline has put our very viability at risk and I want to help create a sense of urgency among our leaders.  John Kotter says that creating a sense of urgency (not allowing too much complacency) is critical for a leader to make creative change possible.  Frankly, I hope younger leaders of our community will read such information and decide to make a difference.  Isn’t this what the core of leadership really is?

In my next blog, I will list what I consider to be the seven main reasons for our decline.  I hope this will stimulate some discussion.  These seven reasons have direct relevance to congregational life.

Where's the blog?

Friends,
In case you are wondering what happened to my regular blogs, the Cathedral offices are being remodeled and I have limited access to my computer.  It is very confusing and frustrating.  However, the offices will be complete on October 15th and I will have several new posts to make right after that date.

Hope for Small Churches

This summer I had the privilege of teaching a class at Nashotah Seminary for some of the Doctor of Ministry students.  The subject was Leading Strong and Vibrant Congregations and I had a great time with the nine students.

One subject of some interest was leadership for small congregations.  Two of the students led “cluster” ministries in Montana and North Dakota.  They were looking for some good news about small congregations.  As they noted in class, most of what is written today about small congregations, less than 50 on Sunday, is not very hopeful. 

Fortunately, I was able to share with them some of the things that I had learned about creating healthy and growing small congregations.  Fortunately for me and the rest of the class, both of these missioners were involved in very creative and productive work in the small churches in their clusters.

What is cluster ministry?  This usually refers to the creation of a common ministry by combining two, three or four smaller, family size, congregations into one ministry, although I think the format works best when a pastoral size church is in the cluster.  This allows a diocese to create a “team” approach with clergy and lay staff who work with the local leadership to provide better support than their smaller size would allow.  In some places this approach is called “Total Ministry” because when successful this requires a greater development of the leaders of the congregations along with a stronger understanding of the baptismal ministry of all the people.  This last aspect is something that all congregations, no matter what size, could grow in doing.

The health and vitality of smaller congregations is of critical importance to the future of TEC because quite honestly we are rapidly becoming a denomination of smaller churches.  One trend that I have observed and pointed out over the past decade is that the number of pastoral sized churches, 75 to 150 ASA, is decreasing.  Some have gotten larger, but most have decreased.  Since the pastoral size church can usually support the services of a full-time ordained clergy person, this means that those that have declined cannot.  I consider finding creative ways to provide ordained leadership to these smaller sized churches to be critical for the future of our community.   

Those who want to learn how to help smaller congregations become healthier and more vibrant should read Kennon Callahan’s, “Strong, Small Churches.” 

Resistance and Sabotage

Recently, I had the opportunity to hear Peter Steinke speak on New Hope for Mainline Churches. Peter is an ELCA consultant who has done some of the best work in translating Family Systems into congregation life. His “Healthy Churches” is a very helpful book.

During the seminar, he pointed out that because most congregations today are in need of revitalization that, like it or not, most pastors are called to be agents of change. Then he observed, “Most pastors are poorly trained as leaders, and when they experience resistance, they seem baffled and confused. Further, when pastors experience sabotage, they seem completely surprised.” Peter’s experience matches mine, and all t his relates to my current series of blogs on revitalization.

First, in what way are we poorly trained? The theological education that most mainline clergy receives is heavily academic. There is nothing wrong with this in my opinion, but what is wrong is the model that seminary professors often offer. This model is that education and knowledge lead people to the right conclusions and my job as pastor is to simply inform them. I see this all the time with clergy. We come into a congregation that is stuck or in decline. We think we know what people need to do to bring creative change and we preach, teach and instruct them waiting for their behavior to change.

In my first parish, I did exactly this. I remember well my first Annual Meeting. Faced with stiffening resistance, I said to the members, “Some of you still don’t seem to understand that this parish must change or it will die.” Immediately, a long time member raised his hand and said, “Fr. Martin, you are the one who doesn’t seem to understand. Many of us would rather see this church die than change.” I was speechless. I thought leading change was a rational process where insight and information would lead to the right choices.

Even more so, I was not prepared at all for sabotage. This is the behavior where members of the parish, often leaders, do things to directly subvert actions of the leader. I remember a Diocese of Texas congregation that had asked the new Rector to help bring in younger families with children. He did, but when the families began to disappear, he found out that long time members were offering to pay the families for baby-sitting in their homes because their children were ruining the dignified and beautiful Episcopal Liturgy. Sabotage! The new Rector asked me, “How could people tell you one thing and then work to undermine it?

On the change issue, I refer folks back to the excellent work by John Kotter on why efforts at change fail. On resistance and sabotage, I have a bit more to say.

First, expect resistance! If change and revitalization were easy then everyone would be doing it. I think it is best to work with a coalition of lay leaders in the parish to build change and to help them respond (rather than react) to resistance.

Second, sabotage happens most when something is about to happen. Sabotage comes forward as the anxiety about change becomes overwhelming to those most invested in the status quo. Remember that what drives this sabotage isn’t rational and rational explanations won’t deal with it. What does deal with sabotage is truth telling and persistence. I often find clergy give up at just the moment when creative change is about to take effect.