Check out the new PBS show, "The Congregation"
Broadcast in later December, it's available on DVD and a study guide is available for download. Check out http://www.pbs.org/thecongregation/
"New Lenten teaching resources for use in 2005 will invite congregations to build hospitality, evangelism, organizational transformation, and advertising to welcome new members to the Episcopal Church."
[Episcopal News Service] New Lenten teaching resources for use in 2005 will invite congregations to build hospitality, evangelism, organizational transformation, and advertising to welcome new members to the Episcopal Church.
Titled “Groundwork” and set for mailing to all congregations in early January, the new resources are centered around lesson plans for use in varied teaching settings. The effort continues a proactive strategy begun by General Convention in 2000 to strengthen local congregations and to counter membership declines experienced in recent years by all mainline denominations.
According to denominational sources:
the Presbyterian Church USA reports a loss of 46,658 members nationally in 2003 to a total of 2,405,311, down 1.9% from 2,451,969 in 2002;
the Episcopal Church reports a loss of 35,988 active members in 2003 to 2,284,233, down 1.6 % from 2,320,221 in 2000;
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America reports a loss of 53,141 baptized members in 2003 to a total of 4,984,925 down 1.1% from 5,038,006 in 2002;
the United Methodist Church – which states that 2003 figures have not yet been released – reported in 2002 a loss of 43,253 domestically to 8,255,207, down 0.5 % from 8,298,460 in 2001.
Meanwhile, among other statistics, pledge-and-plate giving across the Episcopal Church increased in 2003 by some $29.6 million to $1.23 billion, up from $1.2 billion in 2003. Statistical “fast facts” for 2003 are posted at www.episcopalchurch.org/23235_28079_ENG_HTM.htm. The figures have been compiled and posted by Dr. Kirk Hadaway, the Episcopal Church’s director of research.
Aimed to achieve membership growth, the 2005 Lenten study resources emphasize complete analysis of congregational systems at work in local ministry, the Rev. Dr. James B. Lemler, director of mission for the Episcopal Church, said in a recent interview.
“ ‘Groundwork’ will be an educational offering for Lent 2005 that joins together reflection on the study and proclamation of the Lenten Sunday Scripture cycle and learning about evangelism, congregational invitation, and mission in the present changing context,” Lemler said.
“It is part of the goal of personal and congregational transformation that is at the heart of the Episcopal Church's mission and of the National Advertising Collaborative that has been launched. The ‘Groundwork’ learning resources are being developed to be used for study on Sundays, in mid-week Lenten programs, and for leadership/vestry retreats. Its frameworks will assist Episcopalians to consider their own faith stories, how the local congregation invites people (especially young adults), ways of learning about their own context, and the meaning of baptismal identity,” Lemler said.
“It is hoped that 'Groundwork' – and its components developed in English and Spanish -- will be a foundational step for congregations in their mission of invitation and evangelism and will provide links to resources for these important ministries.”
Lemler said the “Groundwork” resources will also provide a thematic complement to the Episcopal Church’s new on-line visitors’ center, http://www.comeandgrow.org/, and to additional related communication initiatives.
Evangelism should be made more active
“We need a more active evangelism,” says the Rev. Charles Fulton, who serves the Episcopal Church as director of congregational development and as president of the Episcopal Church Building Fund.
Priorities of advertising, mission funding, start-up of new congregations, and taking a fresh look at worship styles are key to achieving positive change, Fulton said in a November 24 interview in his office at the Episcopal Church Center. Thorough transformation of a congregation is often necessary for growth to occur, Fulton added, underscoring a point he makes throughout training events titled “Start Up, Start Over.”
Fulton cites the nation’s birthrate as a prime indicator of Episcopal Church membership. “Our growth or decline over decades has closely mirrored the birth rate. What’s a little different is we’re not keeping our own kids in church,” he said, noting that in more evangelical churches, young adults more often continue in the tradition in which they are raised.
The Episcopal Church needs to achieve both conversion and formation of Christians, Fulton said. “Historically, we as mainline denominations have been better at formation than conversion. Conversion is the active stuff, the work emphasized by evangelicals and Pentecostals. We have to do both conversion and formation, and the truth is, we can be agents of conversion, but how do we get Episcopalians to be about conversion?”
The telling of faith stories is a first step, Fulton said, noting a point he emphasizes frequently in consultations with congregations across the country. “Telling your own story brings authentic words to doing the work of conversion. It’s a way of saying ‘I’m God’s child, and I have known God to be like this,’ or ‘this is how God works in my life.’”
Also essential, says Fulton, is effective advertising, such as the national television campaign the Episcopal Church has scheduled for late summer 2005 to reach Generation X persons who are unaffiliated with any church. When asked how the church is building a more active evangelism, the ad campaign is one answer, Fulton said.
“We also need to reach new population groups. We need to reach diverse ethnic groups, and to reach younger generational groups,” Fulton said. “Demographics tell us that new members are not going to come significantly from the Anglo population. The Gospel calls us to widen the call to all people.”
He added: “The best way to reach a new population is often to start a new congregation,” and this is why new funding for mission is vital, especially because it is often “harder for an existing congregation to reach new populations.”
Fulton also sees a “larger issue”: “I think we’re increasingly out of touch with our culture. We’re presenting the gospel the same way we were 200 years ago. It’s not the gospel that needs to change; we need to present it differently to be effective in today’s culture.”
Speed, as well as “beat and sound,” are considerations for evaluating church ministries, especially worship, Fulton said. Video “presents an image per second” while the church often through a typical Sunday sermon – presents “an image per hour.” Given the “rapidity of change, whether we like it or note, it takes more happening to keep our attention.”
Fulton added that authenticity is essential, particularly for young people “who demand passion and integrity. Young people quickly detect what is not genuine, and are suspicious of being manipulated. We’ve got to discover passion of our faith and speak about it with integrity.”
Further information about congregational development in the Episcopal Church may be obtained online at www.episcopalchurch.org/congdev. Additional context and analysis of statistics is posted in a Q&A interview on the Episcopal News Service website.
We trust and pray that we're going to be welcoming many newcomers at Christmas services. How should we greet them?
christmas evangelism 2004
Tis the season of full churches and people singing familiar carols. How can we greet newcomers and occasional church-goers in ways that will invite them back at less culturally-supportive times?
A few suggestions:
1. Make sure your voice mail and web site have accurate and easy-to-understand information about your Christmas services.
2. Pray and prepare so that your Christmas services are absolutely the best they can be. This is truly a time to "pay the rent" with attention to well-prepared sermons, practiced music, and liturgical rehearsals.
3. Welcome people during the announcements with genuine enthusiasm – and no attempts of humor about people's attendance! (I’ve heard stories of clergy saying something like “And welcome back to you folks we last saw at Easter.” This is NOT a good idea!)
4. For all the changes we've seen, Christmas remains one of the most traditional times in America. Whatever you might think, Silent Night and other classic Christmas hymns and carols are still very appropriate. Save the “cutting edge” for another occasion.
5. Proclaim the Good News that God became human in Jesus Christ. Tell that Good News in your own words, through your own life, through your own experiences. Spiritual seekers are not looking to be convinced; they are looking for an introduction to the God who dwells in God's people.
6. Follow up with newcomers. Have a simple way for people to give you their contact info (maybe a bulletin insert to deposit in the offering plate?), and then follow up with a Christmas card during the twelve days of Christmas. Invite them back to celebrate the Epiphany.
7. Be centered. Christians, both lay and clergy, who regularly attend to and support the ministry of the church need to be spiritually centered at this time of year to be open and responsive to the questions and concerns of spiritual seekers.
Christmas Blessings!
Michael Barlowe
"A leading management consultant advises clergy to concentrate on their commission to preach and counsel. Ministers should be relieved of management activities."
WHAT A MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT TELLS THE CHURCHES
Pastors Should be Free for Theological Reflection and Evangelism
By Wolfgang Polzer
Special to ASSIST News Service
MUNICH (ANS) -- A leading management consultant advises clergy to concentrate on their commission to preach and counsel. Ministers should be relieved of management activities, says Peter F. Barrenstein, German director of McKinsey & Company.
He recommends that local churches hire an executive to take care of managerial and administrative tasks. Pastors should be free for theological reflection and evangelism.
Neither should they be restricted to serving a small “core congregation” of faithful worshippers. “They should develop a counter strategy to a shrinking church”, Barrenstein emphasized in an interview with the German evangelical news agency idea.
Churches are surrounded by other missionary competitors, he explained. In Germany, for instance, Islam, cults and the recreation industry register continual growth, while most churches are losing members.
Barrenstein rejects the notion that mission is a thing of the past. There are in fact many missionary opportunities, for example caring for the bereaved. If a pastor delivers an excellent funeral sermon and continues to visit and comfort the mourners, this could result in people re-joining a church.
But, adds Barrenstein, he has often encountered incompetent and ill-prepared pastors at burials. In his experience commercial funeral home directors often do a better job. .
Barrenstein is an active Lutheran himself. On his initiative McKinsey conducted an extensive survey of Protestant churches in Munich about ten years ago. This started a lively debate about the question which management concepts could be helpful for churches.
The management consultant makes one thing clear: “The church is not a commercial venture.” The aim of bringing people to faith in Christ could never be achieved by management techniques. Barrenstein: “That is the job of the Holy Spirit.”
Wolfgang Polzer (54), is senior news editor of the Evangelical News Agency idea, Wetzlar (Germany), which he joined in 1981. His previous work included four years in the editorial department of the Salvation Army in Germany. In all, he has spent 27 years in Christian media. Wolfgang can be contacted by e-mail at: Wolfgang.Polzer@idea.de.
[Episcopal News Service] To gain added perspective on current church membership, ENS Deputy Director Jan Nunley conducted the following Q&A interview with the Episcopal Church’s director of research, Dr. Kirk Hadaway, and its director of congregational development, the Rev. Charles Fulton.
[Episcopal News Service] To gain added perspective on current church membership, ENS Deputy Director Jan Nunley conducted the following Q&A interview with the Episcopal Church’s director of research, Dr. Kirk Hadaway, and its director of congregational development, the Rev. Charles Fulton.
ENS: Essentially all U.S. mainline denominations have posted membership declines in recent years. What do the 2003 figures say about membership and attendance in the Episcopal Church today?
Kirk Hadaway: We have a nearly 36,000-person decline in membership and a decline of almost 24,000 in average Sunday worship attendance.
ENS: How does that stack up against previous years?
Kirk Hadaway: In 2002 the decline was only 8,000, and prior to that it was actually some growth in a couple of years, and minimal decline, maybe a thousand or less, in a couple of other years. It’s the largest decline we’ve experienced since the late 1980s.
ENS: What do these numbers tell you?
Kirk Hadaway: I think we have been somewhat complacent over the last number of years, because the data were basically flat. That is, we were on a statistical plateau in membership and on a slight increase in attendance for a number of years—which led to some optimism and even some comparison to other mainline denominations that were doing much worse. And then in 2002 we saw the start of a decline both in attendance and membership. We hoped that was a one-year blip, but in 2003 the decline continued and in fact got worse. A sobering reality when we had hoped to continue to grow, not to accelerate the decline.
Charles Fulton: We were basically plateaued for 10 years, and in life cycle theory that means it’s time to redefine the ministry — meaning that your basic vision probably holds but you just have to say what’s new that we didn’t expect when we first decided to implement that vision, and fold that new information into the new vision and go on into a new growth cycle. That’s not hard work. Four questions will do it: “What did you start out to do? What have you accomplished? What’s new today that you didn’t know about when you started? Where would you like to be in three to five years?”A good healthy discussion will produce change when you’re plateaued. A plateau means you’ve fulfilled enough of your vision, you’ve got the return you’re going to get on it, and if you take the new information in you can get a better result out of that vision. When the conversation about 2020 first came about, I rejoiced, because I thought we were doing exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, and timing is the key thing in the life cycle. What would work yesterday won’t produce any change today. The timing was a gift. Now we’re at a point where we’re not plateaued, we have a two-year negative trend, which in life cycle is a decline. Intervening in stability is fairly easy; intervening in decline is more difficult. It’s not a matter of taking your old vision and folding in some new information. The new information challenges the vision, who you are, and how you do it. You have to let go of some stuff. You get to keep some of your mission but there’s going to be enough change that it’s going to be perceived by members of the congregation as loss instead of just new ideas. And Episcopalians don’t do loss well. We add very well; we don’t subtract, multiply or divide well.
ENS: Is the data reliable?
Kirk Hadaway: The data are as good or better than any other denomination. In fact our response rate is really higher than anybody else—we have 94% of the churches that respond. We have confidence in the attendance data; the membership data are somewhat less reliable. The main thing is to look at the trend, the pattern, even though there are embedded errors in the data, and we do a lot of error-checking procedures now, so today they’re more reliable than they ever have been. In addition, the data are now online, and we think that helps with the accuracy because people realize that it’s there and they can check the statistics against what they know. The accessibility has improved the reliability of the information and will continue to do so.
ENS: The trend was across the board—all the provinces show a decline?
Kirk Hadaway: This year the provinces were more consistent in terms of the trend than in previous years. The Sunbelt, over the previous 10 years, has experienced more growth than other parts of the Episcopal Church due to population dynamics and migration, new church development, and so forth. But even though there are some variations among provinces and dioceses, it is a fairly consistent pattern of loss. We can’t ignore the timing of the decline and some people will speculate about the influence of the last General Convention on this. We should remind people, however, that the decline began a year prior to General Convention—86 dioceses declined in average Sunday attendance in 2002 and 87, only one more, in 2003.
Charles Fulton: If it’s related to one event, that can be dealt with and we’ll get beyond it. If it’s a systemic, life cycle issue, it will be harder to turn it around, and it will require a kind of radical leadership that we don’t really encourage right now. Resurrection follows death—it does not follow denial.
ENS: Are the “hot button” issues a factor, though?
Charles Fulton: Even the decision to decide on these issues is not made locally. That comes out of General Convention, and the people that do General Convention tend to be the same people, though that’s shifted in the last few years. The issues do resonate locally, but most people in congregations are never going to have to deal with the issues locally. It’s a fairly abstract thing. But what it will take to turn decline around—they’re going to have [to be reminded of] it Sunday after Sunday. It is hard, and it is costly. And when there’s systemic decline, you’re always looking for a scapegoat, an excuse. That’s part of the pathology. The good news is, where there’s an excuse, there’s always an opportunity. Read the Gospels—they’re always telling Jesus there isn’t enough, and Jesus’ answer is, “What do you have?” That’s enough.
ENS: A recent study by the University of Chicago said the Protestant majority in the U.S. is “fading.” Is that part of what you are seeing in this report?
Kirk Hadaway: You can’t look at this information abstracted from what’s happening in the culture and to other mainline denominations. The mainline Protestant share of American religion has been declining, and that’s been tied primarily to the birth rate and also the fact that there’s been a reduction in what’s been called “upward switching”—people from lower-status denominations becoming more affluent and joining denominations more in line with their improved social status. But primarily it’s the fact that more educated, affluent people have had fewer children.
ENS: And the mainline churches aren’t evangelizing those populations where the birthrate is growing.
Kirk Hadaway: We have been at an advantage among other mainline denominations because our rate of retention has been higher, and we have been more successful in recruiting the unchurched—that is, people who are lapsed in other denominations or had no prior religious background—because, it’s been thought, of our spirituality, our liturgy and its accessibility.
Charles Fulton: And our pastoral care. We’re often the ones that will do the wedding for the couple who can’t agree on a church, or we’ll baptize the kids. The Pastoral Offices have been a tool for evangelism. It has to do with our accepting, nonjudgmental approach.
Kirk Hadaway: But you can’t escape these broader cultural influences that are happening to all American denominations. There has been a big decline in the birth rate among white, highly educated Americans, the rate of retention has dropped somewhat for the Episcopal Church, and also the degree to which we’re losing more and more to the ranks of the “nones”—the disaffiliated population, which has affected all denominations, but the mainline more than anybody else. If we remain a white, upper middle-class denomination, we’re not going to grow. There’s just not a big enough supply of those people around, and that’s spread out among all denominations. We’re going to have to reach out beyond our traditional constituency, to the part of the population that not only doesn’t go to church but doesn’t see themselves as church-goers or affiliated with any faith community. There’s been a decrease in joining in general. We’ve had a number of denominations that have in recent years had declines in membership but increases in attendance. One of the interesting factors about the “nones” is that an increasing proportion of them attend church from time to time, but they just don’t consider themselves to have any particular denominational or church affiliation. Religion has become a pastime, to participate in when one feels a need to do so.
Charles Fulton: The bread-and-butter of mainline denominations, what we really do offer people, is belonging. And that’s not what the church at its truest offers people, just to belong. You can belong a lot of places. Younger generations belong to their generational cohort in a much stronger way than older generations ever belonged to church.
ENS: Sociologist Wade Clark Roof refers to present-day spiritual seekers as “tourists” but never pilgrims.”
Charles Fulton: Congregations are notorious for talking about the growth of a decade ago as “the newcomers.” If that’s not branding them as tourists…!The context in which we formed our assumptions of ministry was that the world was already churched, and our “big hairy audacious goal” was 2 percent of the population and that was enough. But all those assumptions are gone. We know how to look at the world as it is; we need to do it.
Kirk Hadaway: We say that we want transformed lives, but we’re more comfortable with “conformed” lives.
ENS: What about the pull of the new non-denominational megachurches?
Charles Fulton: I don’t feel the need to judge those places as inferior. I give them credit—they’re reaching some people that nobody else is reaching. Some of what I’ve heard from people who live in the shadow of Willow Creek is that it produces a lot of good members for mainline denominations! They enter there, and when they get ready for a little more structure, a little more depth or whatever, they check out the Episcopal Church. One of the principles of life that I remind myself of is that the enemy of a ministry is never another ministry, and the enemy of growth is not another congregation. We’re afraid of competition, but what I’m concerned about is people that don’t go to church at all… figures show that on a given Sunday only 21% of the population of the United States is in church.
end