Does Your Church Fit Your Community?

By Robin G. Jordan

A decade ago I posted a link to the Sydney Anglicans’ article, “Churches that fit their communities.” I have been aware of the importance of a good fit between a church and the community in which it is located since the 1980s.

The example of a bad fit that has stuck in my mind is the church that specializes in classical music in a community whose preferences in music does not run in that direction. They run to country western, bluegrass, and gospel. The point the author who wrote the piece was making was that the purpose of a church is not to promote a particular form of music and to improve the music tastes of the community but to spread the gospel and to make disciples. If a church is to achieve this purpose, it needs to consider the musical preferences of the community in planning its worship gatherings.

Thom Rainer concluded from his research that it was not so much the style of music that was the deciding factor in why the formerly-unchurched decided to attend on a church on a regular basis but the quality of the music. If a church gave a lot of attention to the music of its worship, as evidenced by the quality of that music, it conveyed to unchurched who had begun to attend the church, the impression that the church took the worship of God seriously. While style of music was not unimportant, the quality of the music appeared to matter the most.

If you are a pastor of a small church that has limited music resources and whose members and regular attendees are wedded to a particular style of music, you may be experiencing a sinking feeling right now. On what do I focus, you may be asking yourself—changing the style of music or improving the quality of what my church is doing already? You may have read that a change in the style of music is not a panacea for the ills of the small church. Members of the congregation complain if you trying something new from your hymnal that is one year short of being 80 years old. As for improving the quality of the music that you are presently using, how do I do that, you wonder, considering the church’s limited musical resources—no choir and a superannuated organist who plays every hymn on the gospel music setting of her portable electronic organ.

A common reaction to these findings is to ignore them and to keep doing the music “the way we have always done it.” When I stand on the platform, look out across the near empty room, and listen to a handful of attendees struggling to sing a hymn whose tune is not easy to sing and whose words have no relevance to today’s world at all, I experience a sinking feeling too. Some hymn tunes are eminently singable; others are not. They are difficult even for those who have musical training or a natural aptitude for learning new tunes. Some hymns are timeless; others are not. They describe a world that no longer exists. This is what happens, I think to myself, when a congregation does the music “the way we have always done it.”

The church may have limited musical resources and few voices. But a different selection of hymns and worship songs and an occasional congregational practice could transform the church’s Sunday morning worship experience. Sure, keep the better familiar hymns but then add a few new hymns and worship songs that are easy for a small congregation to learn and sing—simple ones, the kind that almost seem to sing themselves. I have seen and heard the difference that they can make to a church’s worship.

While they may be new to the congregation, they are not really new: they have been around for a while. The congregation will not be singing the latest hit on Christian radio or its equivalent on the Internet. But what congregation will be singing is likely to resonate more with the community. It is also likely to help the congregation make known to visitors that it is serious about worshiping God.

Music, of course, is not the only way a church may not fit with a community in which it is located. It may be mismatched in other ways. It may not reflect the demographics of the surrounding community. This has been a common problem for the new churches that breakaway groups which split off from the Episcopal Church have organized. Their former bishop seized their building and the courts ruled in favor of their former bishop. They have been forced to go in search of a meeting place. This search has led them away from their old community or neighborhood to a new community or neighborhood. They not only do not resemble the new community or neighborhood demographically but also they have no connections with the new community or neighborhood.

Breakaway groups that did not own a building also tend to find themselves in similar circumstances. Due to the availability of a meeting place they locate their new church in a community or neighborhood with which they are poorly matched from a demographic standpoint and with which they have no connection. It is a decision that more often than not guarantees a slow death by attrition. Few such churches are able to make the transition to a church that not only reflects the demographics of the community or neighborhood but also has multiple connections with the community or neighborhood.

This may in part explain the failure rate of church plants in the Anglican Church in North America and the membership losses of dioceses like Fort Worth and San Joquin that were unsuccessful in their ligation to hold onto the property of the churches in the diocese. These membership losses suggest that Anglo-Catholic congregations are dependent upon the ambiance of a particular kind of church building for their success. Without a traditional worship setting they do not thrive. This has implications for churches that are worshiping in non-traditional settings and opt to use the 2019 proposed ACNA Book Common Prayer. The proposed book is designed for use in church buildings of this type, not former factories, schools, and storefronts.

A third way Anglican churches may not fit with the community or neighborhood in which they are located is their style of worship. This is more common than North American Anglicans might like to admit. It is a problem that affects churches of other denominations but not as much as does those of the various Anglican jurisdictions in Canada and the United States. In the nineteenth century the formalistic, ritualistic worship of Anglo-Catholic parishes in the Protestant Episcopal Church may have appealed to a more affluent segment of society. But the United States has changed since the nineteenth century. While a number of charismatic and evangelical pastors who have been influenced by the late Robert Webber may be attracted to Catholic liturgical practices and to ritualism, their belief that a significant portion of the US population also attracted to what they are attracted may be wishful thinking on their part. The research to date does not support this belief. The desperate state of so many Continuing Anglican churches also suggests that this style of worship has a limited appeal.

There may be small population segments to whom this style of worship appeals, for example, liberal Episcopalians, but the existence of these pockets does not justify forcing the worship of an entire jurisdiction into this mold. If the Jackson Purchase in the Commonwealth of Kentucky is representative of other regions of the United States, these pockets are not numerous. Catering to these tiny population segments is not exactly making disciples of all people groups. Rather it is choosing a ministry target group solely on the basis that it shares the preferences of a church.

The slow death by attrition of the small Anglican church in which I am presently involved illustrates the danger of adopting a worship style that does not resonant with a large segment of the community’s population. During the sixteen years of its existence, this church has made a series of decisions that have set it on the path to an early dissolution. First it decided to affiliate with a Continuing Anglican jurisdiction that requires its affiliate churches to use one of the older Prayer Books, the Protestant Episcopal Church’s 1928 Book of Common Prayer. This decision was a pragmatic one. The church was located in the diocese of one of the jurisdiction’s bishops. The bishop’s seat, the church that served as his cathedral, was within a three-hour driving distance of the church’s location. The Anglican Mission in America whose congregations used the 1979 Prayer Book was an unknown quantity to most Episcopalians and former Episcopalians in 2003. The AMiA also was only three years old.

Next the church incorporated in its bylaws a provision requiring the use of the King James Bible. The jurisdiction with which it was affiliated in 2003 and with which would re-affiliate in 2011 does not require the use of the Authorized Version. It permits the use of a number of more recent translations of the Bible and the ordinary of a diocese can authorize the use of additional modern translations. While a number of the region’s Baptist and Church of Christ congregations use the King James Bible, younger people struggle with its language.

The church also adopted The Hymnal 1940. While this hymnal is recognized as one of the better hymnals of its time, it is seriously outdated. By the 1980s Episcopal congregations were using only 60% or less of the hymns in the collection. The Episcopal Church had produced four supplements to The Hymnal 1940, one of which was published with later editions of the hymnal. The Hymnal 1940 was also produced at a time when choirs dominated church music in the Episcopal Church. It was designed more as a choral resource than as a congregational hymnal.

The church purchased a digital hymnal player which is programmed to play hymn tunes from several denominational hymnals. These hymnals include The Hymnal 1982, which the Episcopal Church had adopted as a replacement for The Hymnal 1940 and its supplements. They do not include The Hymnal 1940.

The Hymnal 1940 was produced at the outbreak of World War II. All the German hymn tunes in the collection were renamed. The digital hymnal player uses the original names of the German hymn tunes. The individuals who have been given the task of selecting hymns for church services and operating the digital hymnal player have not been familiar with the original German hymn tune names and therefore have not been able to make full use of the digital hymnal player.

The church also bought an electric organ. Almost thirty years before the church was planted, churches that used an organ as their musical instrument of choice in their church services were experiencing a shortage of competent organists. This shortage had grown worse by 2003 when the church was launched. The organ is played only on the rare occasions when the daughter of one of the church members is in town and then to accompany the service music.

When we launched St.Michael’s in 1985, we heeded the advice of the Rev. Jerry Godwin of the Standing Commission on Church Music and others familiar with the challenges that small churches face in the area of church music and purchased a good quality upright piano. The sound from an upright piano goes outward while the sound from a baby grand goes upward. For a room with poor acoustics an upright piano is the best choice of the two instruments. Competent pianists are much easier to find than competent organists. The piano is also the better instrument for teaching new hymns and service music to congregations as well as accompanying congregational singing. Notes played on the piano are sharper than those played on the organ and are much easier to follow.

Later on we used a combination of piano and guitar. The piano served as the lead instrument. It played the melody of the tune. We discovered that the guitar was not a good instrument for leading congregational singing unless the guitarist was able to sing and had a strong voice. The congregation was not able to follow the chords played on the guitar. What the congregation followed was the guitarist’s singing. The singing provided the melody of the tune. The guitarist’s playing provided the accompaniment to his singing. We occasionally used other instruments in church services.

Interestingly Percy Dearmer as early as 1920 recommended that churches abandon organs and replace them with pianos. He had found that pianos encouraged congregational singing while organs did the opposite. He proposed a moratorium on organs and organ playing in churches.

The church hired an Anglo-Catholic priest as its rector in 2005. This decision also was a pragmatic one. The jurisdiction with which the church was affiliated had not found anyone to pastor the church after its founding pastor left. This priest was retired, lived in a nearby community, and was willing to accept a call to that post on the condition that the church switched its affiliation to the jurisdiction with which he was affiliated. This priest supplemented the services of the 1928 Prayer Book with texts from the Anglican Missal, increasing their length and their tediousness. The services became more formalistic and ritualistic. When I suggested to him that church might attract more people if he shortened the services, he responded that the way he conducted the services was the way the congregation preferred that the services should be conducted. I later learned that the congregation had rejected a number of changes to the service that he proposed, wishing him to stick more closely to the Prayer Book’s order of service.

In any event the resulting style of worship was not a good fit with the community. Most of the unchurched residents of the community who have a church background have a low-church Protestant background or a charismatic Pentecostal background. The high-church Anglo-Catholic style of worship that would characterize the church’s worship during his pastorate holds little appeal for them.

What a number of these decisions had in common, including the worship style that the priest introduced at the church was that they put personal preference first. They did not take reaching and engaging the community into consideration. Each decision has propelled the church farther along the path toward its eventual demise.

This story is not a unique one. It is the story of a number of churches not only in the Continuum but also in the Anglican Church of Canada, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Episcopal Church. Due to the decisions of past and present leaders at the denominational, judicatorial, and local levels they are mismatched with the communities in which they are located. These leaders put personal preferences before the mission of the church. They gave greater priority to ecclesial praxis than to missional engagement.

Former Archbishop Robert Duncan’s charge to the ACNA’s Prayer Book and Liturgy Task Force embodies this attitude. He instructed the task force to make the Prayer Book so attractive that people would want to use it. In that charge he did not identify what people to whom he is referring. This is typical of a number of his sermons, and addresses, and other public statements.  He is master of the glittering generality and  studied ambiguity. He uses vague words and phrases to evoke positive feelings rather than to convey information. He leaves the filling in of details to his audience. I heard him in person at the Solemn Assembly of PEAR-USA in 2012. I suspect that no two people left the room thinking exactly the same thing. I have drawn attention to these characteristics of his public statements in previous articles.

If the final draft of the 2019 Proposed ACNA Prayer Book is anything to go on, Bishop Duncan was not talking about the unchurched residents of the communities in which ACNA churches are located. He was talking about a particular segment of the Anglican Church in North America. It would be attractive enough to this segment, reflecting their own particular preferences in rite and service, that they would support its authorization even though it would not serve the needs of other segments of the ACNA but would put a brake on their fulfillment of the Great Commission. The result would be a fresh crop of churches that did not fit their communities—struggling, dying churches.

This leads us back to the question that forms the title of this article, “Does your church fit your community?” To what extent is your church a good match with the community? Does it reflect the demographics of the community? Or is it targeted at very tiny segment of the community? Are its music, worship, and ministry tailored to the community? Or do they reflect the preferences of the denomination, the judicatory, or the congregation? Does your church connect with the community at multiple points? Or does it have negligible connections with the community? Does the community see your church as a part of the community, even the center of the community? Or is it unaware of your church’s existence? Is it having a high impact on the community? Or is it having no impact at all? What steps might you take to establish a better fit between your church and the community? How are you going to go about it?