The Small Church's Worst Enemy--Itself

By Robin G. Jordan

The two banners were supposed to attract attention to the church and the time of its Easter Service. But whoever hung them waited until the week before Easter and then hung them in a location where they were hard to see from the street. It defeated the whole purpose of the banners. Unless people driving past the church looked at the church building, which is set back from the street, they did not notice the banners. By the week before Easter most people in the community had made their plans for Easter.

The banners themselves were not a bad idea but the people who took responsibility for hanging them had no idea how to best use them and were not open to hearing advice on their effective use. They did what they did the year before. Needless to say the church had as many Easter visitors as it had the year before—none!

The banners were one of a number of frustrations that I regularly encounter as an attendee of a small Anglican church. I am not new to small churches. But the small churches with which I have been involved have been healthy churches.

The Episcopal parish which I attended as a teenager and where I was confirmed was a small but growing church. It eventually outgrew its old church building and built a new church building and a new parish hall. It would start a church school and a church retirement community and assisted living facility. It would also launch a new Episcopal church.

The new church started as a small storefront church but rapidly grew from a subsidized mission to a self-supporting parish. I was a leader on the launch team of the new church and served as a licensed lay reader at both churches—for 2 years at the first church and for 15 years at the second church.

Since my former parish and I parted company in 2002, I have been involved in the pioneering of a number of thriving new churches. Two of these churches, while they were launched small, have become modest-sized churches. A third church, which was launched large, using the purpose-driven approach, may be on its way to becoming a local mega-church.

What frustrates me, however, does not appear to disturb the longtime attendees of this church. For better or worse it is their way of going about doing things.

Good outreach ideas have been tried but have proven ineffectual because they were not implemented properly. Those implementing the ideas did not understand what they were supposed to accomplish and how long it might take. As one after another idea failed, the congregation adopted a fatalistic attitude and was half-hearted at best in implementing the ideas. Since the congregation expected them to fail, they did. It was a case of self-fulfilling prophesy.

The banners were tried because they were the idea of a longtime attendee. If I had suggested the banners, they would have been nixed right away. I am a relative newcomer. I have been with the church for a little over two years. He, on the other hand, had been with the church since he was a teenager.

If the church has not been closed by Easter of next year, they will be hung up again in the same way a week before Easter. Both the senior warden and I agree that they would be more visible if they were hung closer to the street and it makes more sense if they were hung up several weeks before Easter. However, the two longtime attendees who hang up banners made the decision where and when they should be hung.

Like many small Anglican churches the church has two sets of leaders—the individuals who occupy the official leadership positions of senior warden and junior warden, and the individual who exercise the most influence in the tiny congregation. The latter is the church’s actual leader. This leader is content to let others occupy the positions of senior warden and junior warden as long he has the final say in whatever matters most to him. If the senior warden is not moving quickly on a matter in which he takes an interest, he will take action himself.

How do you identify this leader? Typically he (or she) is the individual who is listened to when a matter comes up for discussion. His opinion counts the most. The other parties involved in the discussion will agree with him or say nothing. If someone offers a dissenting opinion, it will be dismissed out of hand with little discussion of its merits.

If this leader is disparaging of past efforts at outreach, is contemptuous of others who tried to introduce changes in the way things were done at the church and then left when these changes proved unworkable, is unenthusiastic about any suggestion about doing things differently from the way that they are done, and is prone to blaming the community for the present state of the church rather than acknowledging the church’s own contribution to that state, it is unrealistic to expect the occurrence of any significant change in the church that might alter its future. The church is well on the downward curve to closure.

Surprisingly the other members of the congregation may view this leader as indispensible to the church’s survival but in fact he may present one of the church’s biggest obstacles to revitalization.

Note that I say ONE of its biggest obstacles to revitalization. This leader often as not embodies the thinking of other members of the congregation. His attitude represents what may be a general attitude of a significant portion of the congregation. He is expressing what they themselves believe. This is why he is able to exercise influence with them. Those who think differently have either left the congregation or, recognizing that they are outnumbered, say nothing.

A congregation and congregational leaders who are not receptive to change are not the only factors that prevent a church from making the kind of turnaround that it needs to become a healthy church. A congregation may have few if any connections with the community in which its church building is located.

While this factor is not particular to small Anglican churches, it is not an uncommon one. When these churches were launched, they were primarily targeted at disaffected Episcopalians rather than the community in their church building was located. This base was not a large one. In the region of Kentucky in which I live, Anglicans, Episcopalians, and Lutherans together form less than one percent of the population. They are a very tiny population segment.

With each successive exodus from the Episcopal Church disaffected Episcopalians have not migrated to existing Anglican churches. They have formed their own congregations. The new congregations have targeted disaffected Episcopalians like themselves. Except for those Anglican churches that have made the transition to being churches for the community rather than churches for disaffected Episcopalians, most Anglican churches are faced with a shrinking base as members of the base die, are housebound, enter assisted living facilities and nursing homes, move away, or attend a church closer to where they live.

An aging congregation is also a major obstacle to revitalization. Advanced age, poor health, limited mobility and other physical disabilities, and low energy limit what such a congregation can do even if most of its members are open to change.

An attachment to dated worship resources such as the 1928 Prayer Book and the Hymnal 1940 and to a particular style of worship and music, which does not resonate with the younger generations, is an another major obstacle to revitalization.

On Easter Sunday I was reminded how tediously long the 1928 Communion Service can be. It is even more wearisome when the priest conducting the service uses supplemental material from the Anglican Missal as well as all the optional parts of the Prayer Book service.

I found the Prayer Book service long and tiring when I was a teenager. I find it even more so as a senior adult. I can imagine how young people that I know would experience the service. Few of them understand the Jacobean English used in the service.

Add to the service a long sermon that assumes everyone present fully understands the implications of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and which could have ended at three different places, I do not believe that any young people if they had attended the service would have returned on another Sunday

Worship-wise the church is not a good match with the community in which it is located. None of the churches that use what may be described as a liturgical form of worship using ritual, ceremony, and accouterments like vestments and which are located in the community or nearby communities are doing well. This includes Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic churches as well as Anglican ones. The worship of the churches that are flourishing is far less formal and much more free-form.

In the churches that are struggling ecclesial praxis has been placed before missional engagement for much of their existence. They are wedded to patterns of worship that do not resonate with a large segment of the area’s population. This may be attributed in part to denominational loyalty and in part to past leadership. These churches have not had good leadership. They have not learned how to be a church on mission. The emphasis has been on denominational distinctives and not evangelism.

Small churches can be very tenacious. As long as a small church has enough people to pay the bills and attend the church services, it will keep its doors open. But unless the church services are impacting the hearts and minds of those who attend the services and they in turn are impacting the lives of people in the community in which the church is located or the communities in which they live, it is not doing what God created the church to do.

Jesus summed up the purpose of the church when he quoted the prophet Hosea, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” We extend mercy to others when we tell them about Jesus and what he has done for us as well as minister to their needs.

God does not need our praise. What he desires is our obedience. If our gatherings serve only our needs and do not lead us to serve God and others, we may as well stay home and catch a few more hours of sleep, go jogging, head to the golf course, and otherwise indulge in our favorite pastime. There is no difference between what we are doing in church and what we would do if we stayed home.