Cross-posted at The Living Church

Now that several leaders are acknowledging the seriousness of the Episcopal Church’s declining attendance, membership and congregations, let’s think about how to change this situation. How can we move toward a more hopeful future for the Episcopal Church? Do we have to accept decline as our fate because other denominations are also in decline and everyone knows Episcopalians have a low birthrate?

If you’re trying to rescue a struggling institution, whether it is General Motors, Dell or Freemasonry, it’s wise to identify what factors will turn the crisis around. These factors are not difficult to identify. Further, if leaders establish a core of critical priorities in time, energy and resources, they would yield fruitfulness.

Our problem is not that we do not know the way toward a turnaround but that, like most failing organizations, we lack the corporate will to make it happen. For example, when General Motors faced its most recent crisis and sought a government bailout, numerous experts in the auto industry addressed what the management of GM needed to do. There was a strong cluster of agreement among the suggestions. Why did GM executives not try those proposed solutions?

The answer, best articulated by John Kotter a decade ago, is that many leaders are too complacent and too invested in the status quo, even if it is failing. Change is often difficult because it means letting go of what we know and moving toward what we do not know.

Throughout the wider North American Church, there are many thoughtful and wise mission leaders who keep pointing to proven strategies and methods. The Episcopal Church’s leadership occasionally plays with these strategies and methods, but we have yet to see a systematic and determined effort to make them dedicated priorities.

What might these strategies be? Here are four proven areas that would help us dramatically turn around the decline in the Episcopal Church:

Develop younger lay and ordained leaders with an emphasis on reaching younger generations of unchurched people. In the 10 years since Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold announced this as a priority, the average age of seminarians has risen by nearly 10 years. We clearly need to do a better job of identifying and developing younger leaders who have hearts to reach their generations for Christ and for the Episcopal Church. A key tool would be to create a Mission Training Center for these leaders and recruit our most successful, innovative, and creative leaders to provide the training.

Start new congregations using proven innovative methods to reach newer and younger communities for the Church.New church planting continues to be the singularly most proven method for reaching the unchurched in North America. If we could learn from other churches how to move away from our Episcopal obsession with buildings, property, and parochial boundaries, we could liberate those new leaders to seek the lost — or those lost to the Church. The Church of England is doing very creative work in this area through Fresh Expressions, much of which can be translated into the North American scene.

Intentionally identify 10 to 20 percent of congregations that demonstrate a readiness for revitalization and give them the leadership and tools to accomplish this.The key word here is readiness. Not all declining congregations are truly ready for revitalization, but some are. Research in congregations shows us the marks of these communities. Once identified, they can receive the resources they need to make a substantial turnaround. These churches are not the hundreds of congregations that would like to have 25 younger families who will join their church, giving on the same level as the most committed givers, and who will not ask that anything change. Such churches are not ready for revitalization. If we could assist 20 percent of our churches and add this to the just over 20 percent showing steady numerical growth now, we would make a substantial change in our future.

Enact a plan to reach different ethnic populations, especially Latinos in the U.S. There are two important points here. First, whenever Latinos are mentioned as a target for development for Episcopalians, a coalition of other ethnic and minority groups within the church undermine this emphasis by insisting that we should aim at all people. The sad but simple truth is that few of these other groups show the openness and receptivity to the Episcopal Church currently shown by Latinos.

Of course we should welcome all people, but we need to give ourselves permission to pick the low-hanging fruit first. We have a great advantage in this area because we already have just such a plan. This plan was presented at the 2009 General Convention. Sadly, it failed to receive sufficient funding to make it more than a mere token effort, but every Episcopal leader should read “The Strategic Vision of the Episcopal Church for Reaching Latinos and Hispanics” by Anthony Guillen, who wrote it in collaboration with many of our outstanding Hispanic leaders.

There are other areas that would work, but these four comprise a workable cluster of strategies that would lead to dramatic results. It is not too late for those of us who care about this community to start to demand it. It is also worth noting that these strategies can begin right now on the local, diocesan, and regional level and do not need leadership, staff or funding from 815 Second Avenue to happen. We all can contribute to making these our priorities for the days ahead.
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Kevin:

You wrote:

Not all declining congregations are truly ready for revitalization, but some are. Research in congregations shows us the marks of these communities.

Could you elaborate on the marks of communities ready for revitalization and what specific help dioceses and Episcopal Church Center might give?

—Tom+

The Rev. Tom Sramek, Jr.
Priest-in-Charge
St. Edward’s Episcopal Church
San Jose, CA

Following upon Tom’s question, I’d also like to ask what the changes might look like that are necessary for attracting a younger generation.  Is it all about music and a less structured liturgy?  If so, I fear that few of our congregations will make that sacrifice. 

John Liebler

Tom,
I can and I will probably more extensively on my own blog, Kevin on Congregations, http://www.kevinoncong.blogspot.com
Here I would start with those congregations where the leaders are telling the truth about the decline and open to consider new strategies.  The preliminaries to all this are a good profile of both the parish and the surrounding community.  Then having the right leaders in place is critical and a willingness to shift toward younger leaders by those who have been historically in charge.  More at my blog later.

John,
While there are some issues about “style” of liturgy are are important, and music is VERY important related to all this, the simple fact is that too many mainline people think that attracting new people is all about tinkering with the liturgy.  Much of it has to do with recruiting new leaders and creating programs that speak to today’s younger generations rather than to the previous generation.  You might see my chapter on “pay attention to generations” in my book 5 Keys for Church Leaders.  Kevin

I have to repeat my dismay that we continue to talk in terms of how we attract people, young or old, TO us, which looks to me to be placing the Great Commission on its head. We are still stuck in that development which happened with the rise of denominationalism. Hitheto the church. that is the building and the activist parishioners was set within an identifiable community attached or served by the building, priest and activists and at the center of community life in almost all of its activities.

With the rise of denominationalism we moved the the paradigm of the church to that of being the building, its activists and their cultural/ethnic/theologically close elements, relying on the fertility of their parishioners, mixed marriages and a sufficient number of converts, who usually converted from one brand of Christianity to another. The shift to denominationalism was from the area community to discreet communities of adherents. The focus became that of attracting people in rather than extending ministry out.

We are now in the third phase where the stress is on “viability” a polite term for survival, in a world where neither my first nor second paragraphs obtained. In a real sense the church, aka building more and more becomes the millstone around the neck of “activists” and surviving churches depend more and more on urban settings which provide a large enough population base to provide a sufficient number of converts.

Nor are we entirely in the pre-Christianity scene where the Faith was new and missionary: I speak of our Western context. We may not yet comprehend what the root question is that we are to ask, but I am not sure it is best framed in terms of how we attract people IN, but perhaps in asking how the IN is not the problem.  If we are in a missionary situation just how viable or utilitarian are our “parish” churches and structures in propelling us into the lives of our contemporary mission field?

PS Perhaps we more and more resemble the Swiss Army which never fights but spends national resources on doing army things for the sake of doing army things!

I have to repeat my dismay that we continue to talk in terms of how we attract people, young or old, TO us, which looks to me to be placing the Great Commission on its head.

I think I have used this image before: We fish by building beautiful aquariums my the side of the lake, and hope the fish jump in.

If we are to go out into the world, there is one condition that must obtain: We have to have a reason compelling enough to surmount a great deal of inertia. A vague moralism is not enough. It is not enough either for liberals and their neo-Pelagianism, nor for conservatives and their nascent legalism. It takes spiritual transformation of a kind we are unable to achieve on our own.

Outsider’s commentary:

Regarding the young, although widespread scepticism has been normal in your denomination since the ‘Enlightenment’ I don’t see it turning unitarian tomorrow but rather - witness Derek Olsen at haligweorc and Episcopal Café - the start of a back-to-basics movement, credally orthodox and emphasising your formularies and classic liturgy but liberal on controversial issues. (Rather what Covenant is about.) Something parallelling Pope Benedict’s Catholic renewal, which appeals to the young, and, among slightly older people, the conversions to Orthodoxy starting about 20 years ago. I have no idea how long your ‘new Oxford Movement’ would last.

Regarding Latinos, you’ve done that before, with Italians 80 years ago. It didn’t work: you had a few independent parishes come on board; most are now closed and the one remaining, St Anthony’s in Hackensack, NJ, is conservative, opposing the rest of your denomination on the issues.

This article is an excellent example of the Baby Boomer style of quasi-corporate management: whatever you do never, ever, ever leave enough alone!  Tweak, tweak, tweak!  Even if it’s dead - tweak, tweak, tweak!!!  TWEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We would all be better served to read Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and apply his political ideas to the church at present.  Stability is found not by incessantly fooling with what has been inherited, but by letting the present rest upon the weight of the past.  Growth - healthy growth - comes only over the course of ages.  A revolutionary generation - whether that in France in the 1780s-90s, or that of 1960s in any Western country (and even some African countries) - seems to be incapable of understanding this.  They destroyed so much, and celebrated their destruction as freedom from oppression - and yet all that came about was a new tyranny, like Oedipus lording his youth over his children, such that the children, in both the political and ecclesial spheres, could only grow in apathy.

I propose that if you want your parish to grow, do the following:

1.  Don’t let an idiot be the rector.  Don’t let a heretic be the rector.  Rather, let someone with a clear theological vision, deep piety, liturgical reverence, and solid communication skills be rector.

2.  Don’t let idiots sit on the vestry.  Don’t let popes sit on the vestry.  Rather, let people who care about the long-term well-being of the parish, and who care about preserving the heritage of our tradition, sit on the vestry.

3.  Remember: every religious group has an identical sociology.  The inner core is comprised of the truest believers; outside of these are true believers; beyond this are believers; and eventually there are those who simply want a hand out (Rodney Stark does a nice job explaining this in his The Rise of Christianity).  Don’t waste your time bending over backward for the people who don’t care about the parish or its traditions.  Rather, follow Burke and preserve what has been received, because those who are the truest believers will be most attune to that sort of thing; those who are true believers will also be attune; some will be far less concerned; and the freeloaders won’t care at all.  Of course, if you come at this from the standpoint of making the truest believers happy, you have already failed, because the truest believers will only be happy if their happiness is not the concern of the rector.  Rather, they want someone who administers Word and Sacrament with the dignity that these holy things deserve.

I conclude with the following story: in the nineteenth century, in the early phases of the Gothic revival, a government committee for the preservation of ancient buildings was created.  But this committee was not created in order to make everything neo-Gothic.  Rather, it was created to prevent neo-Gothic “restorers” from mangling buildings with an excessively gaudy aesthetic style.  A number of the greatest opponents of neo-Gothic excess, incidentally, were other neo-Gothic restorers.  My point is that it is one thing to restore and reform gently and gracefully amidst the change of seasons.  But most people do not have the necessary lightness of touch.  They choose instead to tweak, tweak, tweak, and what we end up with is an ecclesiastical monstrosity - a veritable eyesore to look at.  This, I propose, is the way that the Baby Boomers have run - and destroyed - things.  Rather than disciplining themselves, they were obsessed with changing everyone and everything else around them.  This is why so many Baby Boomers have had failed marriages: they never took the time to look within, but instead looked incessantly without.  The revolutionary generation never knew what it was fighting for, I propose - it just fought because having a cause (any cause!) can be downright morally intoxicating.  But this is not what the Church needs.  We need faithful men and women who will simply do their jobs.  That job begins not with the parish, but with themselves.

I am glad to see that my article has generated such responses that tells me that at least I “evoked” some responses.  I have written so extensively on evangelism (and practiced it for so long) that I do not feel any need to respond to criticism about discussing “attracting people” since evangelism as such wasn’t the subject of my post.  I would point out that planting new churches to reach un-churched people is the MOST effective form of evangelism that is practiced in the United States.  In addition, while most Latinos have been exposed to Christianity in the Roman form, most Latinos are not Roman Catholics, they are un-churched people.  Hence, I did speak about evangelism and addressed the Great Commission just in more practical terms then those who live in the world of ideas and ideals would like. 

I for one would be delighted to hear examples of Episcopalians ignoring their buildings and doing strait forward evangelism and great Commission work, reaching the next generation, etc.  I often find that those who, especially on the theological right, criticize my writings on church development, courageously demanding that we “do” true evangelism instead, do neither.  But perhaps my observations are not fair.
Kevin

Confession, I am a baby-boomer and will and have generally conceded that my generation has essentially ruined TEC.  However, the observations about not calling or electing idiots to lead churches reminds me of what I often say to laity who complain to me about their clergy.  I usually say, “Well, you see the churches problem is that we are forced to recruit our clergy from the lay order.”  Idiots may be the only choices that we have.

Ben,
Let me add after re-reading your post that it is interesting to me to find a person younger than boomers who has as much contempt for boomers as many boomers had for the generations that went before us. (grin)  I would kindly suggest that your post reflects the disease of humanity - pride - rather than its Christian cure - humility. It seems to me that human history is full of examples of the current generation believing itself superior to the generation that went before it.  May I kindly remind you that if you think you see these issues with clarity, perhaps it is because you stand atop those who have gone before you even if some of us were boomers.
Kevin

Dean Kevin -

I have frequently mused on the point you have raised here - namely, a member of a younger generation disdaining the legacy of an older generation.  However, there is a difference here (at least, in my thoughts on point) that I must point out: I don’t see my generation as superior, in any way, shape, or form, to the Baby Boomers/‘Me’ Generation.  I simply see us as broken by them.  I don’t want another revolution; the last thing we need to do is reinvent the 1960s today and then set it against the 1960s.  I want to think beyond the categories that are imposed upon us.  The place to begin, I think, is critiquing the present and the recent past without exalting ourselves above them.  So again, I don’t think that my generation is better or that we will change the world and fix what the Boomers broke.  I have no hope of this.  I am satisfied to simply clear a space in which we might think about what it means to think without the narrow horizons of the last fifty years.  My protest leads less to triumphalism than quietism.

There are a few Baby Boomers who I genuinely admire; they transcend their own generation.  I don’t know you well, so I can’t comment on point, but if you are one such person, I thank you for your life and witness.  When I look at the present state of the Anglican Communion, I see modes of conflict and conflict resolution that mirror, all too perfectly, the larger sociological trends among the original ‘Me’ Generation.  It would, perhaps, be most interesting (for me, at least) to read a post written by a Baby Boomer that focuses on how to free and preserve the Church - and especially our church - from your generation’s legacy (at least, as much as possible).  If members of my generation (and we have no self-consciousness as a generation, as far as I can tell) are part of the way forward for our church, how might we pave that way forward without being impoverished and enslaved by what is now dominant?  What might our church look like if it were shorn of the last half century of chaos and confusion?

Thank you for your time and for your response.

Best,
Benjamin

As Christians, we are to be “fishers of men.”  But all too often those who are leading the fishermen have only dabbled in the sport themselves and attend “master fishing classes” that are led (as often as not) by men and women who have even less experience fishing.

Now I know Dean Kevin well enough to know that he enjoys good fishing and knows that fishing is vital to reversing the Church’s decline.  But I suggest that the whole academic model of clergy preparation is also part of the reason for decline.  Our seminaries are built on a Christendom model where everyone in the area is pretty much a Christian and all we are really concerned about is with which flavor of Christian they are.
I don’t believe that we will reverse the decline in our church until we change the way that priests and deacons are formed.  We also need to change the way that the laity is formed because as Dean Kevin mentioned, is is from the laity that we get the clergy.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

I am not sure that Baby Boomers have brought us to this place. I write as one of the pre Boomer generation. I am re-reading Flora Thompson’s wonderful record of late Victorian village life in England.  In the chapter entitled “To Church on Sunday” she writes: To him (the vicar) his congregation were but children of a larger growth…..A favourate theme was the duty of regular churchgoing. He would hammer away at that for forty-five minutes, never seeming to realize that he was preaching to the absent, that all those present were regular attendants, and that those stray sheep of his flock were snoring upon their beds a mile and a half away.

The difference being that those “a mile and a half away” are not stray sheep, and that the “mile and a half” is now a generational distance. Elsewhere Flora Thompson describes the vicar’s occasion rant about heaven and hell, which seemed to miss “human griefs and joys, or the kindly human feelings which bind a man to a man (sic).”  Now we may not be guilty of that sin, but what we face is almost invincible ignorance about the relevance of faith to life as it is lived on the part of people to whom the goings on within our red doors is as obscure as the content of activities in a masonic lodge.

I do not advocate our abandoning our buildings, at least those which have strategic presence, for it is in worship that the community puts itself in the way of the grace which enables and emboldens evangelism where people now gather, in “real time” and in cyber place. What bothers me of my encounter with organizations such as CDI is a concentration on reviving parish life as it was, rather than developing strategies for the mission field as it is. It all seems much like the sort of training sales persons undertake to get people to the car lot.

I am not sure how exactly to respond to Kevin’s article - I liked it and approve of his four strategies. 
Age: - When I was in Theological College I was in my later twenties and ordained at 30.  I was regarded as “old.”  That being said our youth compared to today’s generations in seminary was no guarantee of a vigorous Church nor of a vigorous seeking after the “lost.”  Having said that some of us remain who are seeking to be so.  My contemporaries were consumed with Vietnam and Civil rights as well as Richard Nixon.  However we still seemed to live in Christendom.
I contrast that with my experience last year at Mission Training International in CO.  There I was surrounded with vigorous and dedicated young missionary people, whole families, who were heading to other parts of the world, often to danger.  I just do not see these folk in TEC.  In other words what are we doing to raise up a vigorous and robustly Christian generation?  It must start with the young and it must be about Jesus and NOT simply about the Church.

My generation failed and it is NOT because we were or were not Baby Boomers.  I believe that may have predisposed us to causes and not the Gospel.  However in other denominations such vigor and zeal is encouraged.  My generation was tamed and told not to rock the institutional boat.  Those of us who did generally paid for it, both in England and the US.  Many left the “institution” and went beyond.

Let me give an example from my recent history.  It backs up Kevin’s strategy.  I was involved in first helping to save and then close down what used to be a cardinal parish.  They had all sorts of reasons to exist and none were gospel reasons.  Finally they abandoned the church and the few scattered to other parishes.  Meanwhile they rented the building to a pentecostal/Evangelical Hispanic group.  They packed the place.  Eventually the church building was sold, but not to the Hispanic group. They were by then too big!

I have seen certain parishes that would fit Kevin’s description, ready to grow.  However the monumental hurdles they face make it all too often discouraging and best and impossible at worst.  The very system discourages initiative.  If one does have a strategy for new church plants - I agree with Kevin that this is the best way to grow the Kingdom of God - are these going to be allowed to develop their particular spiritual character or will they be forced into some idealized form of Anglican parish?  Again from experience I have seen congregations that might have birthed a new church plant baulk at the idea of losing somehow their fellowship and identity as a “family.”  I have seen some of the most creative possible clergy, with incredible likelihood to plant and build new churches turned down by COMs who cannot see clergy as more than sustainers of the old institution.

Benjamin is correct in that we need orthodox clergy and deeply Christian lay people on vestries.  However what is orthodoxy?  It is faithfulness to some tradition of Church or to the Apostolic Gospel?  None of the above will compensate for a stultifying climate of institutionalism in a diocese of congregation.  The gifted, those who are willing to think outside the “bun” are all too often encouraged to conform or depart.

In my ideal Church - not unlike Tony Clavier’s vision - we are able to combine heritage, deep spirituality, for the clergy the concept of the “cure of souls” with a radical ability to connect with the current generations on a spiritual level and thus bring them to Jesus.  THEN let Jesus and the Holy Spirit loose in their midst!  WE actually seem only to want to make clones of ourselves.  I agree with Benjamin, that would be tragic.  On the other hand do not elevate a particular set of traditions, call them Anglican, and make them a straight jacket into which we try to cram these young folk.

Young people today - from my aged place - seem to crave an authentic experience of God.  They are not patient with the compromises and often hypocrisy of earlier generations (mine).  I do not blame them. 

Meanwhile let’s support Kevin’s thesis, his strategies.  Let’s go beyond them.  I know of clergy and lay leaders who will act and “go forth” and work at bringing about what Kevin has as his vision.  My question sadly is whether TEC will tolerate them as their new orthodoxy neither encourages me nor gives me hope.  I also wonder if diocesan institutions and parish entities will actually support out of the box Gospel thinking.  They may well prefer a quiet liturgical funeral such as we conducted in XXXX XXX.

Meanwhile welcome to the mission field.  It is here and not somewhere out there.  Pentecost is coming.  Pray for tongues of fire to set us alight and wind to blow and send us out to the market place and the ends of the earth.  How about praying for a true Pentecost and then a pentecost witness such as Peter’s.  What a harvest of souls!

In our enfeebled Church, pray, PRAY, OBEY

Thinking about Kevin’s admonition to open the door to Latino’s, Phil’s encouragement to go fishing, and Tony’s reflections on preaching the choir—the common thread seems to be “GO!”  And I am torn.  Most churches function at the level of “attraction,” expecting people to walk through the doors on Sunday morning if we just make things appealing enough.  Yet churches that seem to be gathering more people (whether that’s the best means of measuring church health is another subject) usually have some means of making connections with others outside in the community.  Gone are the days of the agora; there is no genuine public square any more that serves as an easy place to start to meet people where they are (with the possible exception of the Internet, but that leaves things at a very impersonal level too often). 

So the question is—how do we “go into all the world”?  I don’t think that it’s going to be the same answer for every church, but I know that 1) we won’t see that happening often enough in our churches, and 2) as much as I advocate for the concept, I am personally scared and feel ill-equipped to do so.  I am suspicious of programs, because they come and go—often with the high price of committed people who are burned-out, long-term families who are disaffected, and transient people who came for the show/party/event only for a little while.  I am also wary of following Ben’s advice soley, for there seems a risk of becoming insular—which is where I believe most of our Episcopal parishes operate (and we see how well that’s working for us currently).  Any sage thoughts?