A congregation's hopes and fears

Many of my blog posts the past year have been about the contemporary trials and travails of the church and its congregations. So it seems appropriate that I reveal a bit of my own situation in that regard. The annual meeting of my congregation, Acacia Park Lutheran Church, is coming up. Here is a portion of my report for that event. I’ll comment more at the end.

As I wrote in my report last year, and as I have said and written on many other occasions, Acacia Park’s ability to continue to offer these opportunities [for ministry] is increasingly in doubt. In that we are not alone. Last spring, Metropolitan Chicago Synod Bishop Wayne Miller reported that two-thirds of synod congregations are losing members. Later, one of his assistants reported that the 15% of synod congregations that are growing are doing so primarily by transfer of members from other ELCA congregations. Very few genuinely new people are joining synod churches. Thus, most congregations are growing smaller and older, just like Acacia Park. This story is repeated across the country and across denominations.

This situation has been developing and intensifying for at least forty years. Needless to say, people across the church have been trying to figure out why this is and what to do about it. Most responses have been of the type I first heard described by a Methodist minister: “If it doesn’t work, do more of it.” It is incredibly difficult for organizations to create really new ways to carry out their mission or to redefine their mission altogether (think General Motors). Churches are no different.

For tens of thousands of congregations across the country, this is a time of experimentation and trial-and-error. As is always the case, most such efforts don’t work. Every year an increasing number of congregations run out of time and resources for these efforts and close their doors. Yet some congregations do succeed, or succeed enough that they can continue this project of rediscovering what it means to be Christian communities of faith and service in 21st century America.

As we will discuss at this year’s annual congregational meeting, we are facing serious decisions about the future of the congregation. For many years, Acacia Park has been meeting some of its budget with reserve funds. That spending, plus the stock market’s fall in 2008, has significantly reduced those funds. As a result, the finance committee has proposed that the congregation cut its spending by no longer having a full-time pastor.

It may well come to that but I don’t believe Acacia Park is at the point where it needs to take such drastic action. To avoid this in the short term, the congregation will have to allow use of endowment funds to meet budget expenses. More importantly, however, we need to consider how we can re-make our congregation and its mission in order to become financially viable.

One possibility which I believe has real merit is to transform Acacia Park into a center for community service. In doing so, we would make better use of our under-utilized yet very functional building. Rent and building use fees would provide additional income to support our more traditional ministries.

To make this happen, we would need to explore as many ways as we can to offer programs that meet the needs of people in surrounding communities. These could involve children, the elderly, recent immigrants, those experiencing financial difficulties, providing family and mental health services, programs promoting the arts and education, and creating new opportunities for physical and spiritual health and wellness. We would contact community leaders, schools, and other organizations that are aware of local unmet needs. We would make use of church resources and organizations, such as Lutheran Social Services. We would learn from other congregations that have taken this path (Concordia Lutheran in Chicago has been a pioneer in undergoing such a ministry transformation).

Such a rethinking of ministry would enable Acacia Park to continue to carry out the traditional functions of parish ministry. At the same time, it would create a new mission of service to our community. At a recent pastors’ gathering, a colleague said that the key to the church’s future is for congregations to make themselves essential to their communities. The question then for us to ponder is: What do we need to do and to become in order that people in our community will say, “We can’t do without Acacia Park Lutheran Church?” Rather than succumb to our fears and anxieties, I believe the Bible calls us to be inspired by our visions and our hopes.


The heyday for Acacia Park (as for so many congregations) was in the 1950s and 60s: multiple Sunday services, bustling Sunday school, and active youth, men’s and women’s organizations. All that has changed. Many former members have moved to further out suburbs. The community has become heavily Eastern European (many first-generation), who are not traditionally Lutheran (though most don’t seem to be attending Catholic or Orthodox churches, either). Approximately half the congregation now is retired and many of those are elderly. Most mainline churches in our area are struggling as we are. Many have already closed.

The temptation for congregations like mine is simply to coast to the end. They want to conserve resources in order to offer the bare minimum of services as long as possible. People openly talk of wanting the church to last long enough for their funeral. Then: Last one out, turn off the lights. As I indicate in my report, it is a very common story.

My goal is to offer another possibility. The challenge for Acacia Park and the church generally is to re-imagine its role and identity. What I describe briefly above is one option: to become a community services center which also hosts a worshiping congregation. We have a pretty good physical facility and I think it could work.

The needs are certainly there—and growing. Just recently I read an article about the movement of poverty into the suburbs and how many of these communities are not well resourced or experienced to handle this. Knowing how popular it is in the city, I had been thinking yoga classes might worth a try. Sunday a member, who I would not have expected to hear this from, told me he had fallen in love with the yoga class at a nearby health club. The principal of the school across the street says there is a need for affordable after-school care. You get the idea.

Is this church? Does the tail start wagging the dog in such a scenario? Does it matter? These and other questions keep me puzzling and pondering. Right now, I think the answers are: Yes, perhaps, and no. The bottom line, as I say in my report, is that we would be making ourselves useful, finding creative ways to be of service to our neighbor. I think you can make a case for that being God’s work.

The PARADE passing us by (Sunday Reflections for November 1, 2009)

Last month, PARADE magazine (the Sunday newspaper insert) reported the results of a national survey it conducted on religious attitudes and practices. Here are a few of its questions and answers.

1. Which of the following best describes you?
I consider myself a religious person 45%
I'm not religious but I observe the holidays/traditions of my religion 17%
I'm not religious but I am a spiritual person 24%
I'm neither religious nor spiritual 14%

3. Are you more or less religious than your parents?
More 19%
Less 38%
About the same 43%

6. How important is religion in your life?
Religion is the most important thing in my life 24%
Religion is an important part of my life, but not the most important 33%
Religion is part of my life, but not particularly important 22%
Religion is not a factor in my life 22%

9. How often do you attend religious services?
Rarely 30%
Never 20%

(The survey’s full results can be found here.)

For anyone who has been paying attention to national religious polls in recent years little of the PARADE survey results will come as a surprise. Nor should they come as surprise to anyone active in religious organizations in this country. They shouldn’t—yet it seems they still do.

I write frequently about the decline of religious activity and belief and if you’ve read those previous stories you may be thinking, “What, again?” But as I talk about these kinds of reports and listen to others talk about the state of organized religions, I continue to experience denial, disbelief or incomprehension. It’s not that people reject these kind of results as much as it is a kind of deafness and blindness—the proverbial head-in-the-sand. “If I don’t look at it maybe it will go away.”

Briefly, here’s what PARADE’s survey tells us. Over half of those asked do not consider themselves religious. For each person saying they are more religious than their parents, two say they are less religious. More than 4 in 10 say religion has little or no importance to them and half say they rarely if ever attend worship. At the same time over 80% believe in God or a higher power and three-quarters of respondents pray at least once-in-awhile. Only 1 in 10 believes theirs is the true religion while 60% say all religions are equally valid.

One interesting question PARADE asked was what movie dealing with spiritual themes people liked the best. The winner at 25% was the religious classic Ten Commandments. Over half, however, selected a not traditionally religious film, such as Ghost (the next most popular), It’s A Wonderful Life, Da Vinci Code, or Sixth Sense.

The survey doesn't help us much in understanding trends (no comparison with previous results) or with demographic differences (region, age, gender). When combined with other recent surveys, however, the picture is pretty clear. Interest in organized religion is falling and falling fast. Some of this is the result of people discontinuing religious involvement but more is due to younger people not adopting the religious practice of older generations. At the same time, however, people continue to be interested in spirituality and spiritual practices (and fairly conventionally as there was little interest in either astrology or psychics).

The implications, obviously, are sobering and ominous for America’s traditional religious organizations. We can expect that congregations will continue to close and national and regional church budgets and programs will continue to be reduced. The question is whether any creative response is possible. To this point, most churches have followed the strategy of “if it doesn’t work, do more of it.” For thirty years (at least) church administrators and independent gurus have trotted out one “exciting” innovation or program after another. Unfortunately they all have born a striking resemblance to each year’s “new” lineup from GM, soon forgotten as more of the same.

It isn’t very daring to prophesy a Christianity decades hence shrunken to a cultural footnote. As people today say “Let’s go to the Amish country in Pennsylvania,” tour guides in the near future may be giving bus trips to see the Lutherans in Minnesota. Already today, many churches in Europe are operated mostly as museums supported by taxes, admission fees and tourist contributions.

Unfortunately, most people within churches can’t imagine such a scenario or dare think of it. As a result, for example, the ELCA continues to operate eight seminaries despite having lost nearly a quarter of its membership. Similarly, we continue to imagine ministry done primarily by congregations with expensive, stand-alone buildings and expensive, full-time professional clergy. The impracticality and even impossibility of this, however, will soon be impossible to ignore.

Shrinking the church, while inevitable, is by itself not a response but a capitulation. Perhaps realistically it’s all the church can do. I keep wondering, however, how the church can re-invent and re-imagine itself to be a cultural agent for genuine good which addresses the needs of people and society as they really are today.

There is so much about the church and Christianity that we consider “non-negotiable.” Much of that, however, is exactly what people today have no interest in or use for: our traditions, liturgies, structures, theology and doctrines. Yet those same people continue to need and look for values, ethics, meaning, beauty, and spiritual depth for their lives—those things which religion has provided across cultures and across the ages.

In the midst of all this I continue to think of Jesus and his practicality. He reached out to meet the needs of people whoever they were and wherever they were. He was happy to just eat and drink with people. He showed little interest in participating in formal religion and was highly critical of its leadership. He showed the most interest in people society said were of little or no importance. And his philosophy was stunningly simple yet true to the scriptural tradition: love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself. It just seems that somewhere in there ought to be the seeds for a renewed and reborn church and Christianity.

Another one bites the dust

Chicago’s downtown Lutheran church, Christ the King, is closing after more than a half-century of existence. CTK was never large and has been housed in a variety of locations over the years. The irony is that just as the Loop and surrounding neighborhoods became a viable residential area, the ELCA’s one church there dies.

The story of Christ the King is long and convoluted and I certainly don’t know all its details. Let’s just say, “Mistakes were made.” Nonetheless, as with the announced closing last spring of Wilmette Lutheran Church in Chicago's wealthy north suburban lakefront, here is another congregation in a healthy and thriving community that couldn’t make it. Whatever the explanations or excuses, that simple fact can’t be denied and it is yet another sign of the church's anemic state.

Competing with ourselves

Last spring our bishop announced a new plan to reverse the decline of congregations in our synod, roughly two-thirds of which are losing members. It was never clear what methods were supposedly going to affect this change, given that churches around the country and in most denominations have been declining for decades. Frankly, I can’t imagine how the “Turnaround Synod Initiative” (as it’s called) has any chance of succeeding or even coming close to its goal of reversing the decline of half of our shrinking congregations.

At this past week’s clergy conference, TSI was again plugged and brochures distributed. During one session, the synod staff member responsible for evangelism told of statistical research he had done on the minority of congregations in the synod that were growing. By far the single largest source of their new members is people transferring from other Lutheran churches. In other words, our congregations are competing with each other and the synod is cannibalizing itself. From other reports, this seems to be very typical.

Successful congregations are often lifted up as examples for others to follow but obviously that can’t work here. The picture this presents is of a limited pool of Lutheran church members (and other denominations are experiencing the same) who are gradually moving to the congregations they find most appealing. It’s survival of the fittest. The Chicago area has a dense network of Lutheran congregations, many in close proximity to each other. When one has problems or begins to decline for demographic reasons, it’s easy for members to relocate to a new church more to their liking.

The challenge is not to find methods to get congregations to grow. In the current situation, some will adopt these but many more will simply be unable to. The real issue is the much larger question of how to increase the size of the pool. By focusing on the micro level of congregations we are ignoring the crucial and more difficult macro problem of how to make church more appealing to the population at large. In other words, we would have to ask the more fundamental question: Why don’t people want to be Christians, or at least church members, anymore? Right now, it seems, that’s not a rock we want to pick up and look underneath.

Wandering in the wilderness (Sunday Reflections for September 27, 2009)

I attended our annual synod pastors’ conference this week and, as most of these have been in the past, its focus was on revitalizing the church. Mainline Christianity reached its peak in size and influence sometime in the late 60s or early 70s, so its decline was well underway when I was ordained in 1983. That slide has only accelerated in the years since. Just about every formal gathering of clergy that I have attended has dealt with this issue one way or another. That’s a lot of handwringing.

The two speakers for this conference couldn’t have been more different. One was a semi-retired Methodist minister. His last full-time position was as pastor of the Chicago Temple, the famous Methodist church housed in an office building in the Loop and believed to be the oldest congregation in the city. The other speaker was a female ELCA pastor developing a new congregation in central Denver, following an Emerging church model. Its members tend to have a lot of tattoos and piercings—just as she does!

While Gene grew up in the church and has been a minister his whole adult life, he clearly recognizes how much has changed and how many ministry practices no longer work. The church is now in the wilderness, he says, like the Israelites who escaped from Egypt. We’re about half-way through the journey, he thinks, so the church has about another twenty years yet to go before it gets to the Promised Land.

What is important about this image is that it recognizes the wilderness to be a condition that needs to be lived with and adjusted to—not a problem that can be solved. Unfortunately, as Gene said, too many churches are wearing themselves out trying to come up with schemes to “solve” Christianity’s current state of decline. It can’t be done. For now, we just gotta live with it.

Of course, the key point of the Exodus story it that the Israelites didn’t go back to Egypt—and neither will the church go back to where it was. When Gene was asked what he thought the “Promised Land” would look like, there was a long silence. He didn’t know—no one does. Except we know it won’t look like where we’ve come from.

It’s often observed by commentators and preachers that the forty years of wandering in the wilderness was the time it took for the generation that remembered life in Egypt to die off. No more pining and whining for the leeks and cucumbers (Numbers 11:5). Life is going to be different now—get over it. And on into Palestine they marched.

But we haven’t gotten to the Promised Land yet. We’re still wandering around in the wilderness, still remembering how good life was in Egypt, still wondering how we might get back there. It was kind of amusing that as the conference went on it was obvious not many had really heard what Gene had said. Most of the questions and discussions were still about “fixing” the church’s problems, still wondering who had the map that could show us the way back to Egypt, back to the church of the past that we remembered and loved.

Nadia’s presentation certainly gave us a glimpse of a very different church. Was this what the Promised Land would look like? Starting with just nine people two years ago, “House for All Sinners and Saints” has grown to—well, about three dozen. She was remarkably honest about the trials and tribulations of her congregation. Would the church ever get big? Oh no, she admitted. Would it ever be financially self-supporting? Probably not. As earnest and enthusiastic as her band of urban, post-moderns is, they nonetheless have the frustrating characteristics of most young adults: they’re over-committed, not entirely reliable, and move a lot. Planning and execution is a real challenge.

We all seemed to realize that not a lot of her church experience could transfer to ours (nor did she encourage us to try). And the irony did not escape us that this new way of doing church was only possible because it was being underwritten by a bunch of traditional churches. So it left the problem solvers in the group kind of frustrated. While Nadia’s presentation was appealing, it didn’t leave us with much we could “try back home.” And besides, was this the outcome pastors were looking for: a congregation smaller, poorer and even more erratic than what they already had?

In its own way, then, Nadia’s story reinforced the point Gene had made earlier. Whatever Christianity is going to look like when we get out of the wilderness, it’s not going to be what we knew before. “House” is a ministry to the population most disconnected from the church. To reach them, this experiment indicates, means doing church very differently—and even then the results may be numerically pretty meager.

All of this reinforces my growing suspicion that it is the formula “Christianity = Church” which is really at issue here. Nadia is still trying to do church in some conventional ways. Their worship is very innovative yet it follows the church calendar and a liturgical format. Her church is looking for members who will join and support it with time and money. It’s appealing, but only to a few.

A study was released this week of the 15% of the population (double what it was less than twenty years) that claims no religious affiliation—the “Nones” as they are called. (This group makes up 22% of those under 30.) What is noteworthy about this group is that a majority of them still claims a belief in God or higher power. What they apparently don’t believe in is religious organizations. And those numbers would swell significantly if we include those who still claim a religious or denominational identity but haven’t darkened the door of a church in years.

Christianity without church? Can we even imagine such a thing? To church members it’s like talking about a square circle. Yet it is the reality more and more people know. People no longer need church as a social outlet. Traditional religious activities are replaced by personal prayer, meditation, yoga, psychotherapy, 12-step groups, books, the arts, and TV and radio programs. Thousands of local, national and international nonprofit service organizations function with little or no religious involvement or affiliation, yet are often guided and inspired by religious teaching and tradition.

Will churches—and the Church—just disappear? I doubt that. Yet—rather obviously since it’s already happening—there are going to be a lot fewer of them. But instead of fighting this trend and exhausting ourselves (trying to “fix the problem” as Gene said), I am wondering if in some way we shouldn’t just be rolling with it. Perhaps we should be watching it, thinking about where it’s going, and wondering how we can be a part of it. One model—and an ancient one, at that—that some have said we should consider is Buddhism. It has almost no formal organizational structure and relatively few congregations, yet it has existed as long as the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Or perhaps what will evolve will be something completely different and unprecedented. To allay our anxiety, however, we need to seriously consider that, while what follows the wilderness won’t be Egypt, it could be just fine. It’s happened before, and when the Israelites arrived in the Promised Land they said, “It is God who has led us here.” It was his idea all along.

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19)

Ditch the religion? (continued)

I am attending our regional church professional leaders’ conference. Like most of these events the past ten or twenty years, the focus of this one is on church renewal. In this case the buzz word is “reimaging” the church. I’ll have a fuller post later in the week when I’m home.

The speakers and conversation have made me think more about my earlier post about branding Buddhism. Overall, church membership is declining rapidly. Congregational innovation (of whatever kind) is leading some churches to succeed but only at the expense of others. It’s simply the case that fewer people are interested in belonging to a religious organization, whatever its size, shape or flavor. Yet surveys, reports and personal experience show that interest in spirituality and some traditional religious activities remain.

So, as I asked in the earlier post, is religionless Christianity a possibility? Is this the “new thing” that we need to be looking at or is it in fact already beginning to happen? For traditional Christians, of course, this is practically beyond comprehension. Whatever could it mean?

Here are some quick “back of the envelope” thoughts and fantasies. In particular I am wondering about existing congregations transitioning into something new, something other. So here is an outline for church reimaged as a non-sectarian provider of spiritual services. Feedback is welcome and appreciated.

• Churches become community spirituality centers. The existing congregation would be one user of the space. Other congregations could also meet there. This takes advantage of existing church buildings, many grossly underutilized. It could also facilitate the preservation of architecturally or historically significant buildings.
• The center could be incorporated as a separate nonprofit organization. The congregation could donate its building to the center in exchange for free and priority use of space for a set number of years.
• A variety of services and programs are offered, open to anyone, on a fee-for-service basis.
• These could include: counseling services, yoga and meditation classes, 12-step and support groups, book and arts groups, studio and gallery space, rehearsal and performance space, youth activities and groups, community service activities (food pantry, basic health needs, tutoring, etc).
• Worship/assembly space would be available to the public for weddings, funerals and other rites and worship services. These could be led by on-staff clergy or others.
• Rites of passage would be available to all. These could be combined with preparation programs. Such rites could include baptism and confirmation or similar but renamed events. Other rites could be developed, including community services of blessing for pets, beginning of school, graduation, deployment, and activities or events of local interest. Regular services of healing, memorial services, and services for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter could be held.
• Such centers could exist without any resident congregation at all. Membership could be offered in the center, as with a health club. Center activities and services would be free or discounted for members. Center members would be encouraged to take leadership in programs. A sense of community would likely develop for some but not all.
• Such centers could be branded and franchised. Training of leaders and a consistent quality of programming would be supported and promoted. Certain programs would be available at all centers but local needs would also be acknowledged and met.

Thoughts?

Ditch the religion?

From two very different places on the religious spectrum come similar ideas: maybe we should just ditch the religion part.

Over on Beliefnet’s Buddhism blog, "One City," Jerry Kolber has created a bit of a stir by suggesting American Buddhism really needs to consider its branding. Specifically, it needs to pare down all the stuff that shouts EASTERN RELIGION, which can turn off Westerners. By its own teaching, much of this is just accessories to Buddhism: the robes, bells and even Buddha statues. The essential core is meditation practice, which he believes can be promoted in a way to appeal to anyone.

With the right branding and advertising Buddhism can be the iPod of philosophies, cool first then available at Walmart three years later.

From another corner comes Anne Graham Lotz, the daughter of evangelist Billy Graham. She is promoting her new book which, among other things, recounts her many frustrating experiences with churches. In interviews with both TIME and Newsweek she frankly says that religion is one of the greatest impediments to finding God.

And by "religion," I don't mean "faith." I mean rituals, creeds, traditions, and often leaders--all of our means of trying to connect with God.

Lotz somewhat confusingly still thinks Christians should belong to a church. It’s better that way, anyway, but often just not going to work out. In some ways this echoes the ambiguous message of her father. While he encouraged those who came to his revivals to join a church, his own ministry was intentionally unrelated to any denomination and he avoided sectarian doctrine in his preaching and teaching (something which fundamentalists in particular criticized him for).

Can you be religious without being part of a religion? That paradoxical state is increasingly true for many people, often without their even recognizing it. In addition to avoiding sectarian labels, people often have no interest in being part of an organization with buildings and staff to pay for, organizational structures to maintain and meetings to attend, and cranky and neurotic members to endure.

American churches especially are missing this challenge. Their evangelism and outreach efforts try to connect people with God and with Jesus. The case that isn’t being made, though, is what that has to do with belonging to a local congregation. Indeed, as Graham Lotz shows, many have found church life to actually be a detriment to their faith.

Christianity without the church? It may be the fastest growing religion around.

Drip, drip, drip

I just read in our synod monthly newsletter the surprising announcement of the closing of Wilmette Lutheran Church after 88 years. Wilmette is one of Chicago's wealthiest suburbs and while the church was never large, in the past it had been a siginifcant source of revenue for the local synod. I knew it had "faded' somewhat in recent years but had no idea it was on the verge of closure.

The question is how does a denomination lose a previously thriving congregation in one of the most prosperous areas in the country? Undoubtedly there is a back story here--internal conflicts, scandal, mediocre pastors, or some combination of the usual suspects. Looking at the online statistics, however, it mostly seems to be a case of a long but steady decline. The loss of such a congregation speaks volumes about the state of the ELCA and mainline Christinity. It would be interesting to learn about the general health of mainline churches in Chicago's suburban "old money" North Shore. In any case, the steady decliine of the ELCA obviously continues.

A meeting of magical thinking (Sunday Reflections for June 14, 2009)

I attended one day of the synod’s day-and-a-half long annual assembly meeting. The synod assembly has been shortened in recent years to save money and because of the difficulty in getting people to attend. Being so brief it’s hard to really accomplish much. It would be tempting to blame these bare-bones meetings as a cause of the fraying of church life but it is almost certainly more of a symptom.

On this occasion, the main event I was interested in was the report of our bishop. I especially wanted to hear what he would say about his proposal to reverse the decline of synod congregations, called the "Turnaround Synod Initiative" or TSI. (You can find my earlier thoughts about this in the Reflections columns for May 17 and May 31.)

Predictably, the language was traditional and tired. For reasons that completely escaped me, the bishop tried to invoke a kind of “old time religion” mentality. He consciously used the evangelical term “testimony” to declare that we should be telling our neighbors about our experiences with God and the church. Then he shifted to more recent language in talking about “sharing our story”. But recent doesn’t mean new. Nearly thirty years ago, the LCA (a predecessor church to the ELCA) produced a combined Bible study and evangelism program called Word and Witness which emphasized this. I can still picture its Venn diagram of “your story, my story, and God’s story”. In seminary we often joked about “sharing our story” and the intervening decades haven’t improved its value.

All of which is to say that the bishop was simply re-plowing old ground. His language often betrayed awareness that there really wasn’t anything new here. One of his more unfortunate tacks was to try to revive a church-world, us-them dichotomy. “The world is thirsty. We must believe we have something the world needs.” And so on. All we needed was a tent and some saw dust. In fact, to top it off, we closed by singing that 19th century evangelical warhorse, “I love to tell the story”. It is fun in a nostalgic way but it left no doubt that the hope really being proposed here was to turn back the clock.

As I listened to this revival of “tell what God’s done for you” style of evangelism (which Lutherans have never been good at), I wondered just how real it ever was. Do we know it even works? In other words, are people really drawn into the church by hearing about other peoples’ religious experiences? In the New Testament, especially in Paul’s letters and in Acts, the emphasis is on telling the Jesus story, i.e. the gospel. From what I can tell, it’s really not until the rise of post-Reformation pietism and evangelicalism that this “testimonial” style of evangelism takes hold. It parallels, of course, the modern era’s rise of individualism. But I wonder if it doesn’t also parallel the fading of the power of the Jesus story, the traditional message about incarnation and redemption. “I don’t really care what happened to somebody named Jesus umpteen centuries ago. I want something to happen to me.”

I also paid a brief visit to a “workshop” about TSI. I didn’t stay long because the presenter was basically repeating what was in the printed brochure everyone had received earlier. As I listened I was reminded again of the contradictions throughout this plan. On the one hand we are told that this is not a top-down program because only people in the congregations can really know what’s needed. Then we are told that a variety of outside consultants, coaches, experts and resources will be made available. It’s hard to see how both of these can be true—and actually neither is.

The first assertion is mostly politics. Congregations (presumably) don’t want to be told what to do by church authorities above them. The second promise is just wishful thinking. “Surely there is someone out there who knows what to do!” Yet there is no evidence that is the case. Obviously, if congregations themselves knew what they needed to do to “turn around” they would be doing it. As for the outside experts and resources: who/what are they and where are they coming from? The church’s decline in the US is happening in congregations of all types and across the denominational spectrum.

Despite all the seminars and how-to books available there is nothing to indicate anyone has figured out how to keep the existing church model going. Here in the ELCA, there are not more than a handful of congregations that are growing and which are not also in growing communities (usually with lots of young families). When hearing about learning from coaches and consultants who all come from within the church establishment, it’s hard not to think of Jesus’ warning about “the blind leading the blind”.

A question and a phrase keep coming to mind as I think about all this. The question is: Why is this so hard? It’s a rhetorical question really because it obviously shouldn’t be this hard. Religious fervor spreads like an infection. Everybody catches it. That’s how it starts and grows. Then when things settle down a religion is maintained by being built into the culture. It’s what everybody does. Now, neither of those is the case. Christianity has lost its fervor and lost the support of the surrounding culture. Which of these is coming back?

The phrase I keep remembering is from the title of Joan Didion’s recent book, The Year of Magical Thinking. In it she tells of her grief-induced craziness as she tried to cope with the sudden death of her husband of forty years. “Magical thinking” describes what I keep hearing from church leaders responding to the current crisis. And grief may well be what’s behind all these fruitless rescue efforts. The church’s heyday in the US was barely a generation ago, in the 1950s and 60s. It’s what I grew up with and I am stunned at how quickly the church has declined since then. We in the church are grieving the loss of that earlier time: the filled pews, overflowing Sunday schools, constant stream of baptisms, confirmations and weddings. Now suddenly that’s gone and as with the death of a loved one, we are all prone to “magical thinking”. Surely he/she/it is coming back? Well, no, but everyone’s too polite or embarrassed to say so.

The experts have taught us about the stages of grief. It follows a natural progression which shouldn’t be rushed. Yet it’s also true that people sometimes get stuck in their grief, preventing them from returning to a normal and productive life. I am not sure whether the church is still in “normal” grief or if we’ve gotten stuck somewhere. Institutions aren’t people and I assume different rules would apply. All I know is that American mainline churches, at least, have been in decline for forty years. If we’re not stuck then we must be pretty close. In any case, it certainly seems time to put away the magic and start dealing with reality.

Finding wind for the church's sails (Sunday Reflections for May 31, 2009)

Earlier this month I wrote to Metropolitan Chicago Synod Bishop Wayne Miller to express my doubts and even dismay about a new church renewal program he had announced, called the Turnaround Synod Initiative (TSI). I published that letter two weeks ago as my Reflections column for May 17. Since then Bishop Miller and I have had a brief email exchange and, as promised, I’ll share the gist of it with you here.

Bishop Miller did not dispute my assessment of the church’s predicament, saying he is “much more realistic about the plight of the church” than I might think. Nonetheless, he remains convinced that “the truth of the cross is a matter of life and death for the cosmos”. Therefore, the church must be revitalized but not in a way that simply keeps old institutions alive. “This is not about institution building for me. I am not the least bit interested in clinging to dead forms…. What I am suggesting is that resignation, apathy and passivity in the face of the challenge will absolutely guarantee death.”

In his second email he added, “I find that in the climate of this synod there is so much discouragement that it takes enormous personal energy to try to find some way to put some wind back in the sails.” Most of that energy will have to come from below (“up from the earth”), of course, but he believes he has “a modest role to play in calling that energy up and then giving it a bit of shape and significance.”

Whenever you are the head of an institution in crisis, it’s inevitable that many people will expect you to be the “answer man” and I know that is occurring in our synod and across the church. As I said in my letter, the urge “to do something” is understandable. But the questions remain, “Do what? And to what end?”

As I read and listen to what others are saying, more and more agree that there is no going back. The church of the future will not and cannot look like the church of even the recent past. And so Bishop Miller says he is not interested in “clinging to dead forms”. Yet, while more and more are agreeing it can’t be done, it is hard to see how TSI and other recent proposals are really trying to do anything other than prop up our existing churches and ways of doing things. I am afraid that even as we say our intention is not to preserve “dead forms”, when those forms are all we have known it’s hard to imagine what the alternative might be.

I have said before that the church’s dilemma is very similar to that of the automobile and newspaper industries. Young people, especially, don’t buy American cars, don’t read newspapers, and don’t go to church. Those aren’t coincidences but are part of a much broader phenomenon which is affecting our society, and indeed the whole planet. And that is probably the single most significant change, which is that we are in the beginning stages of the creation of a genuinely global culture.

Dramatic improvements in education, communication and material prosperity around the world are suddenly thrusting us all together with dizzying speed. The forces of this transformation are pulling apart the bonds of traditional religion from multiple directions—and that is true not just here in the US, nor is it true only for Christianity. People’s lives are changing the world over, and one of those changes is that increasingly they find that they don’t need organized religion, at least as it has traditionally existed.

Like Bishop Miller’s passionate belief that “the truth of the cross is a matter of life and death”, I often hear it said that there is something the church has that is essential to people’s and the world’s wellbeing. This is why the church and its mission “must go on”. Yet in reality, not only do people outside the church not believe this, fewer and fewer people inside the church really think this way. Much more common is the attitude that religious involvement is a matter of personal preference. Just because it’s good for me, I don’t assume it will be equally good for you, let alone essential. Even fundamentalist churches have pulled way back on their “believe in Jesus or you’re going to hell” rhetoric, though that may still be part of their official doctrine.

Bishop Miller accurately points to the difficulty of energizing the church—putting “wind in its sails”. But the reason we aren’t raising the sails is because we don’t know where we want to go. If we aren’t saving souls from hell, and we aren’t trying to preserve religious institutions (those “dead forms”), then what are we supposed to be doing? This is another one of those elephants in the room, the awkward reality everyone knows is there but no one wants to talk about. The church’s lack of energy is really a loss of purpose and most of our movement now is momentum leftover from our past which is rapidly running out.

My suspicion about TSI and similar efforts (like the Book of Faith Initiative) is that their real purpose is to help us avoid talking about these awkward subjects. TSI proposes to re-energize the church to carry out its mission when the real problem is that the church doesn’t know anymore what its mission is supposed to be. For similar reasons engineers at Chrysler and GM debate what the next season’s hot colors will be when the problem is that too many people don’t want their cars whatever colors they come in.

We don’t discuss the church’s purpose because we are afraid that there isn’t one anymore. That’s our bogeyman—if we don’t think about it maybe it will go away. We all know how well that works. I say, what have we got to lose? I had been hoping that perhaps the church was near enough to desperation to finally start asking the tough questions. When I read about TSI I (admittedly) went into orbit because it was yet one more round of “let’s pretend”. Let’s pretend we really know what we’re trying to do and that the problem is that we just need to do it better.

People everywhere continue to have spiritual needs. People continue to search for meaning for their lives and struggle to accept and deal with life’s inevitable limitations: time, randomness and death. And in various ways, people continue to want to come together to meet those spiritual needs with others as a community. But the more a person is connected to our expanding globalized, post-modern culture, the less likely are they to find traditional Christianity or any of the other ancient world religions a satisfactory place to pursue that spiritual quest.

The church won’t disappear but the radical transformation it must undergo won’t come from its official leadership or from programs like TSI. Rather, to use Bishop Miller’s phrase, it must come “from the earth”. And it will.

Letter to my bishop--or how not to advance my career (Sunday Reflections for May 17, 2009)

I recently wrote our synod bishop to express my frustration with his “Turnaround Synod Initiative” (TSI), a plan to assist congregations to reverse their loss of members. There are few details at this point (those are promised for our convention next month), but what is obvious is that it is yet another attempt to patch our leaking boats with no more prospects for success than any of our previous efforts. Here is what I had to say:
 
Dear Bishop Miller:

I have been thinking, speaking and writing about the church’s decline for quite awhile. I am very aware of the challenges churches are facing and understand the inclination and even the sense of urgency “to do something”. In a crisis situation, however, that is often not the best first step and I think that is true in this case. “Doing something” implies we understand the problem when, in fact, I don’t believe we do. As a result, the “Turnaround Synod Initiative” (like similar previous efforts) will fail to achieve its goals, resulting in wasted resources, discouragement and frustration.

As I know you are aware, the decline of the church in the US has been long in the making. Membership in mainline denominations peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Both the ALC and LCA were shrinking prior to the merger forming the ELCA and reversing this was one of the hopes for the new church. Instead, the decline has continued with hardly a pause. The recent ARIS report showed that the number of self-identified Lutherans (of all stripes) has declined 25% in less than twenty years. By most measures, that would qualify for “falling off a cliff” status.

There is nothing to indicate these trends will change in the foreseeable future. Indeed, things may get worse. ARIS showed 30% of Gen X/Y young adults claiming no religious affiliation, the highest percentage ever recorded. The mortality rate of our congregations’ members will only increase as their average age continues to climb and we have little prospect of balancing that, let alone improving on it, with new younger members. The well publicized ARIS and Pew reports show this trend is nationwide and, to varying degrees, across the denominational spectrum.

As a result, I don’t see how TSI is going to be anything but an exercise in frustration. Your letter’s words about how every congregation “is a potential mission outpost” and many “are ready and willing to rise to the challenge” and “unleash the energy for mission” intend to stir enthusiasm but sound to me more like whistling past the graveyard. I fundamentally disagree that giving our congregations “some help and encouragement” will reverse or even stop the slide so many of them are experiencing. This kind of thinking serves only to enable us to hide from unpleasant realities and avoid dealing with real problems. Where is there any evidence that this situation is now changing? What have we learned that we didn’t know before, that we can now apply and which would make a difference? Setting ambitious goals and providing leadership training, coaches, consultants, and “resources” are the types of things we have been trying for decades. This is a classic example of “If it doesn’t work, do more of it” thinking.

The obvious rejoinder to this is: Well what would you do? In regards to our shrinking membership, I don’t know that there is anything we can do. I believe there are cultural forces at work here that are beyond our control. That does not mean, however, that the church will simply evaporate. It does mean that the church is going to be a different institution and play a different role in our society. We can influence that transition but only if we work at it. Efforts like TSI, however, prevent such planning and action by maintaining the illusion that fundamental change is not necessary and that if we all just work a little harder we can get things back to where they were before. That dog just won’t hunt.

Therefore, one of the most important things to be done now is to stop the denial that is going on at every level: churchwide, synods, and congregations. I believe this is a real leadership need, to name the situation clearly and honestly and to acknowledge that it is unlikely to change anytime soon. Engaging in this denial is resulting in frustration, anger, blaming, and guilt. Parishioners, pastors, bishops, and national church executives and staff all engage in finger pointing accusing each other of being lazy, incompetent, unfaithful, unimaginative, etc. Such behavior only serves to make the situation worse. To counteract the denial we need instead healthy doses of honesty and empathy.

We need to be talking at all levels about what should be done now to manage our shrinking resources. What kind of national and regional church management do we really need and can we really afford? Can we honestly expect to continue operating eight seminaries as we do? Can we continue to maintain the model of full-time professionally educated clergy in the face of higher seminary costs, rising student debt load, and the declining number of congregations able to afford a full-time pastor? Can we continue to maintain the model of the stand-alone congregation, with its own staff and its own building? Are there other ways to do ministry? What ministry ought we to be doing? In short, how can we think about new ways of “doing church”?

While I grew up when American Lutheranism was at its peak, my ministry has been during the years of decline. I have seen an unending parade of proposals, from the sublime to the ridiculous, to “fix” our problems. I have been in countless conversations with the theme of “What we really need is . . . a new pastor, another pastor, a youth director, a new building, a new hymnal, more Bible study, air conditioning, a new organ, guitars and drums, free child care, an elevator, more liturgy, less liturgy, better stewardship, more advertising.” And the list goes on and on. We’ve all been there. And now comes TSI to continue this unending and fruitless search for a panacea. When will it occur to us that we are barking up the wrong tree? That we are asking the wrong questions? That we need to think about the church and the world in which we live in a new way?

Right now, at a minimum, we need to be talking to each other. There is so much pain, anger and frustration among pastors and congregations as they try to manage the continuous loss of members and resources. We need our leaders to publicly and honestly recognize our difficulties and admit we really don’t know what to do about them. This sounds simple but I don’t think it will be. Denial has a very strong grip. That grip needs to be loosened, however, before we can move forward. We need to let go of what was and isn’t coming back before we can recognize and reach out for the new opportunities before us. In other words, there needs to be some dying before there can be a rebirth (John 12:24).

I know I have been blunt but that has only been because I see us trapped in an endless loop of stale thinking and fruitless endeavors. We need to shake ourselves out of our stupor. To take a genuinely new direction will be a long and difficult project which we haven’t even begun yet. This is my appeal for us to get off the treadmill and actually start moving, or at least shoot the starting gun.

I will post his reply and my thoughts about it in a couple days.

Sunday Reflections for April 12, 2009: "Newsweek: End of Christian America?"

The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture. (Albert Mohler in Newsweek)

Albert Mohler is the President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville (one of the world’s largest seminaries). He was interviewed for the cover story of the most recent issue of Newsweek, titled “The End of Christian America”. As the quote above indicates, he is very disturbed by the religious trends in this country that have been highlighted in two recent surveys, the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) and the one released last year by the Pew Trust. Both showed a continuing trend of fewer people identifying themselves not only as Christian but as having any religious identity at all. The ARIS results showed 15% answering “None” when asked to name their religion. Newsweek’s new poll reported 30% of Americans identifying themselves as “spiritual” rather than religious.

There is no question that this is a dramatic development and a genuine change in our cultural character. It is less clear what its significance is. Some, like Mohler, view it as a “the country is going to hell in a hand basket” moment. Conservative Christians like Mohler believe that Christianity is an essential element of our national identity and to lose it, or to have its influence significantly reduced, threatens its very foundations.

The author of the article, Newsweek religion editor Jon Meacham, is more sanguine. He believes religion doesn’t go away but it does change over time: “America, then, is not a post-religious society—and cannot be as long as there are people in it, for faith is an intrinsic human impulse.” In his view, the growing rejection of Christianity is the result of the church shooting itself in the foot. Evangelical Protestantism and conservative Catholicism both overreached in their attempts to impose their values on American society as a whole. Their strident battles against abortion, homosexuality, stem cell research, the teaching of evolution, and so on have not just alienated those holding different viewpoints. These struggles have led many to view Christianity as a threat to an even more fundamental value of American society, that of liberty. Meacham writes:

If we apply an Augustinian test of nationhood to ourselves, we find that liberty, not religion, is what holds us together. In "The City of God," Augustine —converted sinner and bishop of Hippo—said that a nation should be defined as "a multitude of rational beings in common agreement as to the objects of their love." What we value most highly—what we collectively love most—is thus the central test of the social contract.

For decades the Catholic Church has lived with the reality that a large portion of its members often disagree with and even disobey church teaching on social and moral issues. This same phenomenon is now being recognized in evangelical churches, especially among younger members. The haranguing by bishops and pastors to vote this or that way has turned off not only secular voters but even members of their own churches.

More importantly, the increasingly strident arguments that these various trends are evil and dangers to society just haven’t been persuasive. Younger people, especially, take our growing cultural diversity for granted. They use birth control, have gays as friends and family members, were taught evolution, and have increasing contact with members of other religions. At the same time they wonder why churches have shown little concern for global warming and the environment, clergy sexual abuse, and Third World poverty. In short, a growing number simply disagree with church positions in the “culture wars” while others, even if they are sympathetic, have just grown tired of all the shouting.

I think Meacham has this part right but I also think that this isn’t the whole story. What is significant about the recent survey results is not only that a growing number are leaving churches but also that they are not joining new churches (or even other religions) that they are more in sympathy with. Large numbers of younger people (under 40) especially have made the decision, consciously or not, that they can simply do without the organized religion experience altogether. The problems Meacham identifies may have pushed people out the church door but in the past most would have then searched for a new more comfortable pew to sit in. That isn’t happening now.

In a recent conversation with local ELCA pastors, one commented on the “deafening silence” from our bishops on the avalanche of stories about declining church membership and the succession of church closings just in our synod. The silence is telling but it may be a good sign actually. Mainline churches like the ELCA have tried just about everything to reverse their decline with no real results. Church leaders may be silent because they literally don’t know what to say anymore. It could be then that, like an alcoholic, the church is close to hitting bottom. By which I mean churches may finally be willing to consider genuinely radical change.

Until now congregations and denominations have been engaging in crisis management: How do we increase membership and offerings? What new staff and programs do we need? What staff and programs do we cut? How can we afford to fix the roof, keep the lights on, and pay the pastor’s salary? The assumed objective has always been to maintain the institution.

But what if this isn’t the goal? Does church or religion necessarily mean structured organizations with constitutions, officers, members, weekly gatherings, professional full-time clergy, and buildings costly to build and maintain? Frankly, the church has focused on these things for so long it’s hard to imagine it means anything else. Yet these are the things increasingly rejected by society or becoming economically unsustainable.

I disagree with Pastor Mohler that we are in a “crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture”. I think he is right that “there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative that is animating large portions of this society". It is a time for soul-searching, for innovation, and for genuine listening to the people and culture around us. As Meacham says, people will always have spiritual needs (and propping up ancient institutions is not one of those needs). What changes is how and where those needs are met. We need to face the fact that we are in the midst of one of those changes.

Modern Christianity? Not so bright

Andrew Sullivan interprets the ARIS results (see March 14 post) for a British audience in an article in the Sunday Times of London. He corrects the common European stereotype of US religiosity: Yes, Americans are more religious than Europeans but the US is certainly not immune from the forces that have been devestating religious involvement in other Western countries. In offering one explanation for the decline of American Christianity he notes its increasing shallowness.

The days when America’s leading intellectuals contained a strong cadre of serious Christians are over. There is no Thomas Merton in our day; no Reinhold Niebuhr, Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor. In the arguments spawned by the new atheist wave, the Christian respondents have been underwhelming. As one evangelical noted in The Christian Science Monitor last week, “being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence”.

Sullivan hopes for a new Christian "middle way" that recognizes both Christianity's historical limitations and the new challenges of the modern and post-modern world. He gives no indication he expects such a development or has any idea how it might come about.

What one yearns for is a resuscitation of a via media in American religious life – the role that the established Protestant churches once played. Or at least an understanding that religion must absorb and explain the new facts of modernity: the deepening of the Darwinian consensus in the sciences, the irrefutable scriptural scholarship that makes biblical literalism intellectually contemptible, the shifting shape of family life, the new reality of openly gay people, the fact of gender equality in the secular world. It seems to me that American Christianity, despite so many resources, has ignored its intellectual responsibility. And atheists, if this continues much longer, will continue to pick up that slack.

Sunday Reflections for March 15, 2009: "More signs of the end of religion as we know it"

“None.” That’s the identifying label for people in the fastest growing religious group in the country. This is one result from the massive (over 50,000 responses) American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS) 2008 released this week by Trinity College in Connecticut. This is the third such survey, with previous ones done in 1990 and 2001.

Now making up 15% of the population, the “no religion” group is the only one that increased in size in every state and now ranks third behind only Roman Catholics and Baptists. If those who didn’t know or refused to answer the question were added to this group, it would rise to second place. The number of those declining any religious identity has doubled since the first survey in 1990.

The ARIS survey puts hard numbers to trends that have been growing increasingly obvious. Americans’ religious affiliations are changing in a hurry. Some examples:

• The number of white Catholics is declining, especially in the Northeast and Midwest. Nationally, however, Catholic membership remains basically steady because of the growing Hispanic population, particularly in the Southwest.
• Evangelical denominations, like Baptists, seem to be declining in favor of non-denominational churches.
• Mainline church memberships (Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, etc.) continue to be in near freefall, declining by a third in less than twenty years.
• In fact, in the time since the first survey no denomination or religion grew by more than half a percentage point. As a result, the number of those identifying themselves in some way as Christian fell from 86% in 1990 to 76% in 2008, with the resulting movement almost entirely to the “no religion” category.

Another interesting result is that the only Christian identities showing any significant increase are those that are the vaguest. Among these are responses like “Christian”, “non-denominational Christian”, and “Evangelical/Born Again.” Groups often thought to be growing (Assemblies of God, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses) actually just held steady, thus growing only relative to other declining religious groups.

And finally, closer to home, Lutherans (of whatever brand) declined by 25% from the 1990 to 2008. This is a little better than the average for mainline denominations but is nonetheless an astonishing drop for such a short period. Some of this decline seems to be among those who had already ceased being actual church members but still identified themselves as Lutheran. Even now the survey reports more Lutherans than are actually on church membership rolls. We might guess that many of these have switched to calling themselves “Christian” or “Protestant”, and some certainly are saying “none of the above.” In any case, this fits with a 30-year decline in official Lutheran denominational statistics.

ARIS indentifies some causes for these trends. The significant drop in Roman Catholics in New England is certainly due in part to the clergy sex abuse scandals. This is very similar to what happened in Ireland. Also, the Northeast now has the largest number without a religious identity (displacing the Pacific Northwest from that spot). ARIS speculates that the drop in those identifying as Christian in New England and elsewhere may be because that label is increasingly identified with conservative political and social views. It has been true for some time that when “Christian” is added to “radio, music, books, lifestyle”, etc. it almost always means evangelical or fundamentalist.

For a number of years, a common view was that formerly “establishment” or mainline Christian denominations were losing members to more conservative evangelical churches. While true in part, this survey confirms that this is only one aspect of a larger trend away from organized religion altogether.

Mainline churches are straddling a shrinking middle ground which, like a fault line, is moving in opposite directions. Increasingly their members either join more conservative churches or stop participating in church at all. These Protestant churches, with their roots in the Reformation, are finding it more and more difficult to make the case for their moderate theology and traditional worship. They’re viewed as too modern for some and not modern (or postmodern) enough for others. And ARIS shows something similar is happening in Catholicism.

For the Protestant mainline these changes are coming with breathtaking speed. Congregations are closing by the hundreds each year. Denominational administrative offices go through successive rounds of budget cuts and layoffs. The current economic upheaval will undoubtedly cause more staff and program trimming in congregations and church bureaucracies. And the traditional model of a highly (and expensively) educated fulltime clergy will likely soon be unsustainable, as rising student debt loads collide with stagnant or declining clergy salaries.

Remarkably little of this is being discussed publicly in these churches, though it is the frequent topic of private conversation among clergy and church leaders. For the moment, the response has been piecemeal and ad hoc, shrinking and closing existing institutions as necessary.

This certainly won’t work indefinitely. The challenge now is to have the courage to honestly admit the new realities. Then, and only then, can the church take up the necessary task of thinking creatively how to reimagine itself for this new time when, for more and more people, religion has ceased to be a necessary or even meaningful measure of one’s identity.

Denominational faucets keep leaking

Here is the annual update on changes in church membership in the US. Once again, mainline Protestant churches have the greatest hemorrhage, but Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics also take a hit. And continuing an interesting trend, the moderate/liberal ELCA and the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod continue to shrink at the same rate.