Reversing the Decline

Reversing the Decline

I love these holy places. 

That is why in my free time during the past year, I’ve been writing up my latest book; “Reversing the Decline”. It is based on a number of power point presentations I made while I was in the Diocese of Montana last year. The thesis of my book is that we Episcopalians and other mainstream churches have been in decline for a long time and we have forgotten so much about congregational development and evangelism, that we are now almost preoccupied, even planning, in some cases for the closing of way too many congregations. 

I have specialized in “turn-around” ministry throughout my career, and in recent years have “stumbled”, if you will, upon the idea of organizing our church’s life around the notion of Membership Drives.

With the community as the context of that development; with mobilizing the church around the issues of justice, and courageously organizing the church around issues of human suffering and need, a church will then become a place where its mission and ministry will become unmistakably valuable. After all, if we are the Body of Christ, we can do nothing less that what Jesus attempted to do while he was with us to become a healing presence in the midst of those he met. 

The community becomes the basis, then, of the congregation’s development. With a membership management committee at the helm, the congregation will direct its life around raising the visibility of the place by doing Every Door Direct Mailings, Mailings to folks newly arrived in town, perhaps purchasing billboard space, being sure to submit interesting articles to to the local press from time to time, perhaps monthly; by lifting up the life of the place; people will begin to visit the place. The natural times to do our “marketing efforts” will be in September, when the church gears up for its fall program, in the run up to Christmas, when we all have a natural “tug” toward church, and Holy Week and Easter when we proclaim the core of our faith namely that Jesus Christ is Risen today!

Then our greeting skills, our willingness to help orient and incorporate people to the life within a congregation, and finally our efforts at sending folks out to do the work God has given us all to do, we complete the cycle.

But the membership question is not answered until we ask each person during our annual membership drives to work and pray and give for the spread of the kingdom of God. You will remember this essential teaching of our catechism. Thus we don’t ask people for pledges alone. We ask of our selves and others to consider what it is that God’s work is; i.e. to respond to human suffering and need, and to seek God’s justice. We ask for the prayer of the church which is a coming together weekly for the Holy Eucharist, and daily to pray the prayer of the church in the Daily Office. And then, and only then do we ask people to give in proportion to what God has given them; perhaps 10%, perhaps 5%, but in any case, we tap into the gift of generosity which is at the heart of our spirituality.

One of the highlights of my career was an invitation by Frank Brookhart, Bishop of Montana, to fly out to the Camp and Conference Center on the shores of Flathead Lake, to be the primary presenter at the annual Clergy Conference. Frank was expecting me to do present some work on congregational development and evangelism which has always been something of a specially of mine.

As we drove up to Camp and Conference Center from Helena over the continental divide, we had plenty of time to talk. We had been good friends when we served in West Virginia in a previous life for both of us. I explained to Frank that my thinking on congregational development had evolved significantly. I felt that, like NPR and PBS we needed to do regular Membership Drives. 

At the time I was preparing the material for this clergy conference, I was also working on a model for a Membership Drive with the folks at St Gabriel’s Church, in Douglassville, PA. We were experiencing encouraging results. My presentations in Montana were very well received; so much so that I was invited back to be the Keynoter at their annual convention and then to tour the diocese by Deanery and continue my presentations. It was an exciting time for me. At the conclusion of the week Frank and I had to drive back to Helena, from Flathead Lake; almost a five hour drive.

So I asked the Bishop; “Tell me, Frank, have you ever heard this expression from any Bishop, Priest, Senior Warden or other Episcopalian in any capacity; have you ever heard any of them say; ‘Let’s have a membership drive?’” 

There was a long and telling silence. I asked the question one more time; “Tell me, what do you think? Have you ever heard that expression ‘Let’s have a membership drive from anyone in the church from the House of Bishops on down?’”.

Frank had to admit that he had never heard that particular turn of phrase from anyone in the Episcopal Church. Is it any wonder we are in decline and have been for so long a time. This last Thursday, I was at the Diocesan Headquarters to speak with Libby Berman, the Canon for Congregations and Jean Baptiste Ntagengwa, the Canon for Deployment. I asked the same question and received a blank reply.  

I shared with them my manuscript, based on the power point presentations I made in Montana and a lifetime’s worth of experience with congregations. “Reversing the Decline”. Thankfully I received a warm welcome for my work. I am so very hopeful that I can perhaps share this work in a wider setting, now that I have the time to do so as a retired simple parish priest. 

For as long as I can remember, we’ve been in decline. We have fought internal battles over race, gender, liturgical renewal, and then the granddaddy of them all; sexual orientation. Interestingly enough all these internal struggles have reflected what is going on in the wider culture around us.

Thankfully, we’ve been able to say in no uncertain terms that God’s embrace includes all humanity; just as Jesus said in today’s Gospel when he directed us to; “Go ye therefore into all nations, to all people and baptize them, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

So now then I ask you this question; shall we have a membership dive?

If we did, what would it look like? 

Can you prepare your hearts to receive an influx of new members here?

Can you pray for the courage, intelligence, and imagination to invite someone to come and see. Each of you; one person over the next year or so?

After all, let me make it clear that we are not seeking people who will merely come to church; we are seeking people who will have the courage to be the church.

Your vestry and membership committee are making preparations now. In fact an Every Door Direct Mailing is being prepared to send out in September to invite residence to attend services and our Sunday School and experience a church which has the courage to say; “We are a house of prayer for ALL people.”

I feel like Jacob at the Jabbock sometimes. I feel like I've been wrestling with God as I write long into the hours of the day or the night. And I refuse to let God go, not without a blessing. God has now blessed me with a manuscript. May God’s blessing now reach beyond that manuscript to the church we love. Perhaps what I have done here is to get a conversation going that needs to get going!

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Fr Paul

Reversing the Decline

Reversing the Decline

A Three Pronged Approach to Revitalization in the Church

Here is an outline of my current project. I have been invited to give the keynote address at the Diocesan Convention in Montana and then tour the Diocese go give power point presentations on the following material. The Bishop of Montana, Frank Brookhart has encouraged me to write this up. Given my experience in smaller congregations in the Episcopal Church during these past 41 years, I thought it made sense to share a conceptual framework for revitalization in the local congregation. Here is an outline of the work I am doing. I am more than half way through the project, which will be a cross between a book and a manual for church leadership. 

There are lots of book out on church growth out there. What I hope to do in all this is to participate in the conversation I believe the church needs to have as we consider the challenges facing us. 

But, what I believe is this; we must begin to think about reversing the decline we are in. Frankly, I believe we have been all too passive in accepting decline as if it were inevitable. I do not think this is necessarily so. There is also a great burst of energy "out there" within the Episcopal Church in particular and within the Progressive and Emerging Church in general for a new optimism. 

To reverse the decline we are currently experiencing, I believe we need to take stock of and strategize on how we might mobilize the local congregation around three general areas of community life.

I Community Ministry: 

Organizing the church's life around the needs of real human beings for justice and healing.

One on One conversations with communities leaders. How to organize and conduct those conversations.

Research and Demographics. The critical importance of doing your homework.

Identifying Issues: The act of identifying the issue(s) the congregation will organize its life around.

Networking: Identifying allies and those who will challenge the congregation's values.

Action Plan: Identifying what the congregation will do about any particular action.

Evaluation and making Community Ministry a continuing loop of a congregation's lead mission.

II. A Membership Drive. 

This is often called a Stewardship Drive in the Episcopal Church but I am using a word here "membership" as the "marketing" side of Stewardship. In the same way that NPR and PBS run membership drives, so too the church needs to "market" itself to the world and community it finds itself in.

Thus it builds a five step Membership Development Program as follows

1. Visibility. Every congregation needs to increase its visibility.

2. Greeting. Greeting skills need to be sharpened.

3. Orientation. Congregations need to help orient newcomers to the life of the church

4. Incorporation. The membership team needs to figure out when and how to "pop" the question of formal membership.

5. Apostolic Call. The job is not done when you have a pledge card. Only when each and every member of the congregation has the opportunity to participate in the church's ministry does our work have any sense of completeness.

Ongoing then the Membership Team will continue to "manage" the membership roster on a regular basis; no less than once a month.

III. Storytelling.

The third part of each presentation will be about the importance of sharing our faith through story. We will consider the importance of small groups; from Adult forums, group spiritual direction, reading groups all the way to altar guilds and choirs and how each group provides and opportunity to tell the story of Jesus and his love for us. The spirituality of a congregation becomes part of the ultimate appeal of a church.

The essence of mission and revitalization involves this and much more. But this conceptual framework provides a beginning.

Here then is the general outline of what I hope to present to the Diocese of Montana and within my new book. Please do let me know what you think.

Fr Paul

Reversing the Decline

The Progressive Church in Comeback Mode

The Decline

For years we've been in decline. The mainstream churches are a sorry lot. For the entire span of my professional ministry which now spans over 40 years, the numbers are not encouraging for those of the "standard brands" churches.

In the meantime the Evangelical Right Wing seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. The "Progressive Church" as I like to call ourselves, are mystified by the phenomenon. The "Conservatives" renounce science, liberals, and the LGBT community and at times sounds like a bastion of bigotry and judgmentalism. The more exclusive they become, the more people seem to be attracted to the far right. Amazing! Conversely, the more inclusive we become, the fewer folk seem to be attracted to us.

The Right Wing has command of the airwaves and make outrageous statements regularly that make those of us in the mainstream recoil in incredulity. How can intelligent people buy into such a vision of America? It is a puzzle.

In the meantime we close churches. When I was first ordained, my diocese hired somebody to study how many congregations we should plan on closing. The study came back with a number of 65 out of 188 congregations which teetered on the brink of viability and sustainability. 

To me, it seemed almost as if we were committed to our own decline. We seemed to be planning on it.

Hitting Bottom

This I instinctively renounce. In fact, I have served in smaller congregations most of my life but while I served them, they all experienced modest growth. I feel like I've been swimming against the current all my professional life.

New Member Ministry

Years ago I stumbled across a model for New Member Ministry which I have used in four different congregations. Because of the effort leadership teams and I put into place, we did see modest gains in each congregation. In very brief and succinct terms a New Member Ministry model consists of a five step process which is managed by a congregation. Those steps are as follows; 

     Visibility: What can we do to raise the visibility of our congregation? Web sites, blogs, Every Door Direct Mailings, creative use of newspapers and so on...all of this will raise the visibility of the church.

     Greet: Sharpen the skills of your congregation in greeting newcomers. Make sure you get the names addresses, emails, and phone numbers of those visitors who seem to have some interest in the congregation and contact them as soon as possible; the same day as the visit if at all possible. 

     Orientation: Establish a Membership Committee whose responsibility it is to follow up on each new family and individual and figure out together what the best and most appropriate follow up would be.

     Incorporation: At some point within six months of the first visit, someone should probably "pop the question"; "do you want to be a member?".

     Apostolic Call: Your work is not done until you commission everyone in the church; new and long standing member alike for mission and ministry in the world.

Remember that the church exists to organize its life around the needs of the people in the world.

A Membership Drive!

Last summer it occurred to me that perhaps we should have a Membership Drive! Much in the same manner of public radio and TV, I wondered if the Progressive Church could actually hold a membership drive. We developed a model for such a drive in my most recent congregation (St. Gabriel's, Douglassville, PA), and we did in fact enjoy significant growth. At the end of a six month drive, we netted 27 new families and individuals and also saw significant growth in pledging.

For years, we've been calling this effort our annual "Stewardship Drive". I submit to you, when we use the word "stewardship", a certain instinctive resistance raises the hair on our necks, because we know the subject of money is the inevitable bottom line.

But when we use the word "membership", we understand that it includes more than giving. We explained it this way. 

Membership is comprised of three main dimensions: Work, Pray and Give.

     Work: To do the work of God requires us to organize our lives around the needs of people; young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight, and so forth. The work of God is to provide a healing touch to those who are sick. It is to seek justice for those who are oppressed. It is to provide hope for those who are near the edge of despair. 

     Pray: The prayer of the Church is to gather week by week and share in the sacred meal of Jesus with his friends. It is to practice the presence of God in daily prayer and meditation and share with friend and stranger alike the Good News of God in Christ.

     Give: To make provision for God's Church we are invited to give in proportion to what we have received from God. Some give 10% in response to the biblical mandate to tithe. Some give 5% and call it a modern tithe. Some give more. Some give less. In any case, we give in proportion to what God gives us. 

Summary

The church is in decline. But it needn't be that way. There is no reason why we in the Progressive Church cannot reverse the decline and commend the faith that is in us. It will take imagination, courage and just plain hard work. But we need to stop the hemorrhaging. We have too many jewels in the inner cities of our world and within the near suburban ring. These precious church buildings need to be gathering places of those with human needs.

The human needs have not gone away. Justice is still far, far away. The poor are very much at our doorsteps. The time is short. Let's get our mojo back. Reverse the decline! Grow! Hold a Membership Drive!

Note:

This summer I plan to write up a fuller elaboration of this idea. I shared it with the clergy of the Diocese of Montana in April of this year. I have been invited back to share the idea further by touring the Diocese and sharing this model with vestries there. But for now, thought I'd share this much.

God save the Church!

Fr. Paul

A Welcoming Heart!

(Note: We did an Every Door Direct Mailing last week and the response was, as you might say, underwhelming! Still we did have a few visitors on Sunday, and I articulated this welcome. If we are to be the People of God we'll need to be a People of the Warm Welcome. In such a wise we welcome God and God's people into our lives. That's not a bad way to live!)

A Warm Welcome!

Welcome to St. Gabriel’s Church. This week we sent out a direct mailer to every household in Douglassville and several surrounding mail routes. We have opened our doors to give folks a chance to discover a little about  the church. So then whether this is your first visit to a worship service here or whether you’ve been coming here all your life, welcome!

You will notice that we are a church of ritual. We sing Hymns. We have a Book of Common Prayer and we follow a set formula for worship. The shape of our liturgy has its origins in the early church’s custom of remembering the night before Jesus died. This death was for the forgiveness of our sins and as a gift that leads to eternal life. He took bread and wine, thanked God as any family would at Grace, and especially as a Jewish family would at Passover in the Liturgy of the Haggadah, literally “telling the story of our deliverance from slavery”. At one time or another we have all been slaves. At one time or another many have held slaves. Either way, God seeks to deliver us from slavery.

We read a set of scriptures every week from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Epistles, and the Gospel to put us back in touch with with God’s Story. These readings are intended to be explained by the preacher.

So then, you are subjected to a sermon. In it, the priest/preacher is charged with the responsibility of building a bridge between what happened in ancient times to what is happening today in our shared life stories. Various clergy do that with varying skill.

Today for instance, we have a Gospel reading in which the Disciples are making their way through Galilee in that dry and rocky land underneath the heat of an oppressive noonday sun in that inhospitable place. And Jesus tells them yet again, for a second time that he, the Son of Man, will be betrayed into human hands, he will be killed, and then on the third day, he will rise again. He said this plainly.

But the scripture says they did not understand him. The first time Jesus talked about this, Peter rebuked Jesus, you may remember, but Jesus went right back at Peter and said “Get behind me, Satan. You think like people think. It is time for you my followers to put on the mind of God, and think like God thinks.”

There were hurt feelings, of course. But on they went. He healed people of physical and mental disorders. He did do some very extraordinary things. Miracles seemed commonplace with him. He had a way of teaching they found compelling, and most of all he had a way of loving people, ALL people, even sinners, even the unwashed, outcast and rejects of the day. Rich or poor, he loved them. 

So then they had time to kill and a fight broke out among them as to who was the greatest. I remember playing “King of the Mountain” when I was a boy. I was actually pretty good at the game. I had a low center of gravity even then, so I was able to hold my ground.

So the Disciples of Jesus were playing “King of the Mountain” too. Having been upbraided by Jesus, they probably shrugged their shoulders and began to wonder, half joking, who was going to be the greatest among them when this “Jesus Kingdom” finally came.

So Jesus asked them; “So what were you arguing about”? Of course he knew, he could read their body language, and he may have had good hearing too. And besides all that, he was Jesus, so he knew anyway.

I do hope you know that the secrets of your hearts are indeed open to God. And he loves you very much, even with all those secrets being disclosed to the heart of God.

Well they were embarrassed about admitting that they were playing “King of the Mountain”; just a silly child’s game.

So he sat down: the posture of the teacher in the ancient near eastern world.  Whoever wants to be first, he said must be last and moreover must be the servant of all. Jesus would later reinforce this idea by washing their feet on the night before he died for them. Then he took a child. There are always children wandering about in the Middle East even today. They are desperately poor then as now. They were trying to peddle thing then as they do now. Post cards, water, cheap trinkets. They are often dirty from the constant kicking of dust. Water is way too expensive for the poor to use in such an extravagance as frequent washings.

So he took one of these children and set him or her in their midst. And then taking the child into his arms, he told them whoever welcomes such a child welcomes Jesus and moreover whoever welcomes Jesus welcomes the One who sent Jesus.

Suddenly, Jesus had taken an ancient child’s game and turned it upside down. This is not about becoming “King of the Mountain”. This life is about becoming a servant to humankind.

Now for those of you who are new to St Gabriel’s, I suspect that even you know that we have organized our life around the needs of Senior Citizens. We have played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Keystone Villa. And then we incurred significant debt by building the Parish Life Center. We house the Good Shepherd Learning Center, and  we provide for the needs of younger families in the community and tend to their children in a safe, clean, and educational environment. The Boy Scouts meet here. There are seven recovery groups that meet in the building. We feed the poor at the Community Center in Birdsboro, and we make lots of soup for the food pantry housed up at St. Paul’s.

Now you know as well as I do that we cannot rest on our laurels. That’s why we’ve invited you to gather with us here at the church today, at St. Gabriel’s church. There are so many human needs for the followers of Jesus to tend to. That’s why we are here. We are here as Jesus said, to be child-like servants one of another.

When St. Gabriel came to Mary yea all those many years ago, he told her; “Mary, I have news for you. You are going to have a baby. And not just any baby.” She was hardly a girl herself and her betrothed Joseph was going to have a hard time with this story.

But Gabriel had a message for her as well as for the rest of us. God cares about the people. All God’s people. And God was sending Jesus into the world to show how much God cares; how much God loves all these people.

So, then week after week after week, we re-enact in our liturgical worship that supper Jesus had with his friends. We break bread together. We remember Jesus not just as we would a historic figure. We invoke Jesus into the present as Jesus told us to do. This is how we remember him. This is my Body. This is my Blood. Jesus becomes present to us in this Liturgical offering.

So welcome to St. Gabriel’s Church. Whether this is your first Sunday with us or whether you are a cradle Episcopalian, this is your church anytime you need one. You are welcome at this table, all of you always. When Jesus fed the multitudes on the hillsides of Galilee, he didn’t check anybody’s membership cards, he didn’t check on bank accounts, race, ethnicity, age, theological orthodoxy, gender or even orientation.

To Jesus if we were human beings we were children of God. And as the Son of Man he welcomed us to God. And so on this day I welcome you to God as well. Draw near to God, as today’s Epistle lesson says, and God will draw near to you.

May you be filled with all the fullness of God this day. 

Fr. Paul

A Membership Drive?

You Are Cordially Invited!

Unheard of! Impossible! In the Episcopal Church!!!

This may be so. We have been losing members for so long, I don't know if we could even entertain the very idea. I've never heard of any Bishop, Priest or lay person even mention such a thing. The Evangelicals do it. The Right Wing Fundamentalists do it. Good heavens, even NPR and PBS do it.

But the church? Our church? A membership drive? Unthinkable!

Until now, at least at St. Gabriel's in Douglassville PA. We actually have a very healthy congregation with a fabulous Sunday School and Youth ministry program. But even we have enough stresses and strains in the human and financial resources available to us, that we could certainly use a shot in the proverbial arm.

So, we are doing an EDDM; an Every Door Direct Mailer. We are inviting over 6,000 folks to church on September 23rd for Sunday School/Youth Ministry Registration. At fist, folks were a bit excited by the idea, but now as we come closer to the the time, our anxiety levels are rising significantly.

What if 6000 people come to the door? Unlikely...

But what if 50-75 come to see what we're up to?

After all, we've been in the news. We now no longer keep folks at arm's length because of orientation, gender, class, race or ethnicity.

We've come up with this curious notion that we are all one in Christ; Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, just as the Scripture says.

We believe that we are a "House of Prayer for ALL People" just as Scripture says. (By the way, read the rest of Isaiah 56 and note how God treats the foreigner and the eunuch, those whose sexual orientation is "different".)

Most of the world of faith rejects such a notion.

And Science rejects most of the world of faith because it is a demonstrable fact that we are all one blood without regard to all the false categories so many people organize us into.

So, I wonder what would happen if this emerging "Rainbow Church" were to actually "Invite" people to church?

In some ways it is a frightening notion. 

But for me the Episcopal Church is worth saving and worth breathing life into. We've pretty much run out of internal struggles to battle over. It is settled. We are now inclusive of all. Period.

So won't you consider this? 

Just give us a try.

Go to the Episcopal Church nearest you and try it on for size...and all you Episcopalians out there. Here's a thought: For God sake's run a Membership Drive. If you need help, give me a call. I'll show you how.

Bless us one and all,

Fr. Paul