Farther Implications of the ACNA Constitution and Canons

By Robin G. Jordan

The Common Cause Partnership offers no explanation of how the drafters of the provisional canons came up with the minimum of at least 12 churches with an ASA of at least 50 and a collective ASA of 1000 as the requirement for the admission of a new judicatory to the Anglican Church in North America. Matt Kennedy’s explanation of quality control is hardly credible in the light of the fact at least three of the bodies forming the ACNA and at one time at least four have or have had a much lower standard for the admission of a new judicatory (diocese or convocation). These bodies appear to have set lower standards for the quality of the churches from which they were formed than the standards they are requiring for the quality of the churches forming the new judicatories.

Is ASA really an accurate measure of the quality of a church?

As we has seen in my previous article, "A Further Look at the ACNA Canons," ASA can be skewed by a number of factors, for example, the phenomena of the circulation of the saints and rapid population growth. Another phenomena found in new churches is that new churches tend to attract what Steven Sjogren and Robin Lewin classify as "scaffold people.’ This group of people is drawn to new churches:

"Just realize that in Phase 1 (your first couple of years) you will be a scaffolding magnet, attracting disenfranchised people in your town—including many from other churches. As Norm in Cheers would say, "Not to worry!" Good will come of this. Just don’t let them absorb too much of your focus and time.

"These people will leave your church, sooner rather than later. Most of those leaving, according to exit interviews, will report that there is a lack of connection with the pastor. In other words, they most commonly leave because they don’t like you. But don’t let that worry you. Especially in the first few years you will have many people coming and going on your way toward attaining critical mass.

Don’t take it personally. It’s just a part of life." [1]

What then does ASA measure? ASA refers to the average number of people in attendance on a Sunday for an entire year. Attendance normally fluctuates throughout the year with higher attendance during months when children are attending school and lower attendance during the summer when families go on vacation.

ASA, it may be argued, measures the attractiveness of a church—its ability to attract a steady flow of people into the church on Sunday morning. But it is not a reliable measure of a church’s attractiveness. It is equivalent to measuring the number of people that a store attracts in a mall. However, as in the case of such a store not all the people who enter the store are customers. Some will browse around the store and then leave. Some will be one time or occasional customers. Some will be regular or steady customers. ASA simply measures the activity at the store entrance—the people coming in from the mall. This may include those who have entered the wrong store by mistaken or are following a runaway toddler into the store. ASA does not make any distinction. It simply counts heads. To accurately measure the attractiveness of the store one would have to interview each person entering the store and determine why they chose to enter that particular store.

ASA, it might be argued, measures consumer satisfaction. A church’s high ASA represents numerous satisfied customers returning to make more purchases. But are those whom the ASA measuring actually satisfied customers? Is a church a retail outlet? As in the previous example, ASA simply represents a head count of those entering the store. To accurately measure consumer satisfaction one would have to interview each person entering the store.

A more accurate analogy for ASA, it might be argued, is customers entering a store and buying a particular item. A high ASA is equivalent to a large number of customers of entering the store and purchasing this item. Here again, one cannot assume customer satisfaction because a large number of customers are entering the store and buying the item. The item may be on sale at an outrageously low price. The customers may have been given coupons that enable to purchase the item at a ridiculously low price. To accurately measure consumer satisfaction one would have to interview each person purchasing the item and determine why he is purchasing the item, whether he has purchased it before, how often, and whether he was satisfied the previous items of the same kind and brand that he previously purchased from the store.

ASA, it might be argued, measures the effectiveness of the rector or senior pastor of a church. But effective at what—packing the church with warm bodies? How many of these warm bodies have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? How many of them are growing to maturity in Christ? How many are encouraging those around them? How many are telling others about Jesus Christ? How many are reading their Bibles and living their lives according to its principles and truths?

A rector or senior pastor whose church has an ASA of 200 may be convinced that he is doing something right but only a thorough assessment of the church will determine whether the ASA is the result of his leadership or whether other factors account for it. In my experience clergy are only too ready to take the credit for high Sunday attendance and to blame others for low Sunday attendance. Yet they may have little to do with the high Sunday attendance and a lot to do with the low Sunday attendance.

I recall a particular case where the rector of the church sponsoring a new church developed a team of mission-minded lay leaders to work with him in planting and growing the new church. One of the first things the new vicar did was to disband this team, insisting that he did not need its help in leading the church. However, the church continued to benefit from the expertise, ideas, and leadership skills of these leaders. One might say the church experienced growth despite the vicar. If one ranked the factors that contributed to the church’s growth under his leadership for the first five years, his own contributions were low on the list. The lay leadership team that the founding pastor had assembled made a large contribution even though they no longer existed as a team. They were much more mission-minded and church growth-oriented than was the vicar.

An ASA is simply a head count of the number of people in attendance on Sunday morning at the time the head count was taken. Two minutes after the head count a person who was counted might slide out of the pew he was sitting in, walk out to the parking lot, start his car, and drive off. However, he will be included in that Sunday’s head count.

Weekend or Sunday attendance at a church is not something that should be ignored. It can be a trouble light on the dashboard of a church. If it drops suddenly or is consistently low during a season of the year when it would be normally higher, it indicates that something is wrong in the church or in the community, which requires the church’s attention. A declining weekend or Sunday attendance may signal demographic changes. A fairly even weekend or Sunday attendance over a long period of time may indicate that a church has reached a plateau and stopped growing.

However, a high weekend or Sunday attendance is not necessarily a sign of church health. A number of megachurches like Saddleback and Willow Creek have an average weekend attendance of more than 2000 people. In surveying the people who are attending their worship services on weekends, using comprehensive spiritual maturity assessment tools, these megachurches are discovering that a high percentage of the believers in attendance are spiritual immature. They do not pray regularly. They do not encourage others regularly. They do not talk about Jesus with others regularly. They do not read their Bibles regularly. They have not discovered and developed their spiritual gifts, much less are they regularly using their spiritual gifts in a ministry in the church or outside the church.

The rector or senior pastor who assumes that his church is doing well because the average weekend or Sunday attendance is high may be deceiving himself. Spiritual assessment of the church’s attendees may show a different picture—a high level of spiritual immaturity. Average weekend or Sunday attendance is not an accurate measure of the quality of a church. It simply tells statisticians how many people have been warming the pews in a particular church on an average Sunday in a particular year.

Packing our churches on Sunday morning means little if we are not producing fully functional disciples of Jesus Christ—Jesus followers who are also gospel workers and missionaries wherever God has place them. We should not be just satisfied with numerical growth. Our goal should be gospel growth—every attendee moving along the path from inquirer to new believer to spiritual mature Christian.

The owners of a mall store measure its success by the volume of its sales and not by the number of people who enter the store. If we are going to realistically evaluate how well a church is doing we need to be measuring other indicators beside weekend or Sunday attendance. We need to measure a range of attitudinal and behavioral changes in the attendees and not just how often they attend church. If a church is attracting large crowds of attendees but it is not transforming lives, it is not doing well.

ASA may be give more weight than it deserves because of the similarity of weekend or Sunday attendance on the surface to the turnout at a theatrical performance (e.g., play, musical), a movie, the performance of a singer, vocal ensemble, band, or dance troop, a circus act, and other forms of entertainment. If a play draws large crowds for an entire season or a musical for its entire run, it is considered a success. However, the intended purpose of a worship service or gathering is not to entertain. While a play, musical, or movie may turn the hearts of individuals in the audience to God and impact the lives of individuals in the audience it is primarily entertainment.

The main reason that clergy and congregations have been leaving the Episcopal Church is that they found themselves in serious theological dispute with the bishop and other clergy and congregations of the diocese to which they belonged. Behind this conflict is a lack of theological affinity with the diocese and The Episcopal Church.

Kennedy asserts that a cluster of small churches wishing to affiliate with the Anglican Church in North America can attach themselves to a network of larger churches in order to gain admission to the new province as a constituent congregation of a new judicatory. But Kennedy appears to be ignoring the issue of theological affinity. The cluster of small churches may not have theological affinity with the network of larger churches that is being admitted to the new province. The leaders of the network of larger churches may demand that the cluster of small churches compromise their own theology and accept the theology of the larger church network before incorporating them into that network. They may demand that the churches in the small church cluster accept the appointment of pastors who adhere to the theology of the larger church network.

Even if the leaders of the larger church network do not make such demands at the time of the merger of the two groups of churches, the resulting judicatory can expect to experience tension due to the disparate theologies of the two groups of churches comprising the new judicatory. The group of larger churches can be expected to seek to dominate the selection of leaders of the new judicatory and to impose its theological outlook upon the clergy and congregations of the group of small churches over time. The result will be a situation not unlike that in The Episcopal Church with clergy and congregations in serious theological dispute with the leaders of their judicatory.

Coupled with the provisions of Article X, Section 5, of the ACNA provisional constitution and Canon 4 it suggests that drafters of these documents were seeking to exclude from the new province those they regard as undesirables. They were also seeking to ensure that the existing leadership of the Common Cause Partnership has control over the selection of leaders for the new judicatories that might be admitted to the new province and therefore control over who joins them in leading the new province. Kennedy might wish to rationalize such policies as "quality control." However, they resemble too closely what has been happening in The Episcopal Church and of which we can expect to see more in the near future. By limiting the ways that a cluster of small churches or an individual small church may affiliate with the new province to joining one of the existing judicatories or a new judicatory seeking admission to the new province, the ACNA provisional constitution and canons give rise to the same kind of conditions in the new province which in The Episcopal Church led to the formation of the new province. Anglicans found themselves in a denomination in which theological beliefs of the dominant group were essentially different from their own and in which the dominant group at the national, diocesan, and local levels refused to make adequate provision for them to practice their own beliefs and sought to pressure them to acquiesce to the beliefs of the dominant group.

We certainly should not take an attitude of disdain toward congregations that meet in garages. Every church must begin somewhere. A number of successful business ventures have started in garages. So have a number of thriving churches. In the 1980s I was involved in an Episcopal church plant that initially met in a tennis clubhouse, then in an office building, a storefront, and a school gymnasium for several years before it acquired land and constructed a multipurpose building. More recently I was involved a United Methodist church plant that first met in funeral home chapel and then a maritime museum conference room for a number of years. It now occupies its own building and uses the facilities of a nearby day care center. I was involved in an Episcopal church plant that initially met in a living room and then moved to a vacant house owned by the husband of one of its attendees. It is presently meeting in a hotel conference room, having outgrown the house. My more recent church planting involvement has included a Southern Baptist plant that first meet in a living room, expanded to a number of living rooms, and then to a fire station and several living rooms. The church bought a local café and converted it into a church office, nursery and worship center. It now has two services on Sunday morning. The attendees continue to meet in private homes for Bible study, prayer, and fellowship.

The largest church in the area in which I formerly lived began in an office building. It bought a large, newly constructed building of a skating rink that had been unsuccessful as a business venture and converted it into a worship center, offices, a nursery, and classrooms. Faith Anglican Church (AMiA) in Cordova, Tennessee, met in a banquet hall adjoining a restaurant for a number of years. It now has its own building. Christ Anglican Church (AMiA) in Mobile, Alabama rented a number of conference rooms in the local community center for several years. It also now has its own building. I know of churches that meet in school cafeterias, VFW halls, shopping malls, movie theaters and other non-traditional settings.

We should also not expect every congregation to acquire land and to construct a building. I am presently involved in a Southern Baptist church plant that is targeted at students at the local university and young adults and their children in the community. The worship gatherings are held on campus and will be held there for the foreseeable future. Being on campus is a part of the church’s strategy for reaching students at the university. Students do not need to go off campus on Sunday morning in order to attend church. We bring church to them. The worship gatherings are held in the banquet room or theater of the student center within walking distance of the student housing. If we moved off campus, we would not reach as many students as we do. Some churches choose not to acquire land and construct a building because the building might limit their growth. Other churches cannot acquire land for a building because the cost of real estate in their area is too prohibitive.

The high bar for admission of a new judicatory to the province forces churches with disparate theologies to form a new judicatory together. It also compels clergy and congregations to join existing judicatories with which they may have no theological affinity in order to become an affiliate of the new province. It puts clergy and congregations into the position of having to relinquish their theology in order to gain admission to a judicatory and to the new province. Clergy and congregations that do not want to compromise what they believe are given no other recourse than remain outside the new province.

Endnotes:
[1] Steve Sjogrin and Rob Lewin, Community of Kindness, (Ventura, California: Regal Books, 2003) 36-37.