On Sunday a small Continuing Anglican congregation will gather in its building for the last time. It will celebrate the Holy Eucharist as a congregation for the last time. Several weeks ago, the congregation voted to disband after meeting for fifteen odd years. It had shrunk to a little more than a handful of people. Its building was deconsecrated last Sunday and will be up for auction in the coming weeks.
What happened?
The congregation was not open to change, the kind of change that it needed to make to be viable in the twenty-first century. It would have liked to have had additional members as long as it did not require it to make changes needed to attract them and as long as the new members did not disrupt the way that it did things.
The congregation had weak leadership at critical points in its life cycle. The lay leadership became divided between an official leader and a de facto leader. The latter called the shots. The latter, however, was not someone who should have been leading a church in this century.
The building in which the congregation worshipped was located in a community which at one point none of its members lived. Consequently, the congregation had negligible connections with the community in which it was located. Its longest-serving pastor lived in a different community from the one in which the building was located—roughly a 30 minute drive from that community.
The congregation was inward-looking and not outward-looking. Early in its life some effort was made at community engagement. The members of the congregation did not understand what they were being asked to do, how it worked, or the length of time that it would take. When it did not produce immediate results, they gave up. They adopted the attitude, “We’ve tried everything, and nothing works!” They were highly resistant to attempting anything else.
The congregation relied on the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, The Hymnal (1940), and a traditional style of worship to attract additional members. People living in the region acquainted with these worship resources, much less attached to them, formed a very tiny, shrinking population segment. The congregation made no attempt expand beyond this base. It bound itself to the use of the King James version of the Bible in its bylaws when it could have used more recent translations of the Bible in its services of public worship under the canons of the jurisdiction with which it was affiliated. Members of the congregation, however, used the more recent translations in the Bible reading and study at home.
Demographically the congregation was a good fit with the community in which its building was located. However, its use of the aforementioned worship resources and its particular style of worship were not a good fit. They were too unfamiliar to the occasional visitor to the congregation’s services of public worship from the community. They were, however, what the congregation preferred, and it placed its preferences before community engagement. The services were long and included lengthy recited portions.
The congregation experienced a number of splits in its life cycle as members vied with each other for leadership of the congregation. It changed jurisdictional affiliation several times and was affected by splits in the jurisdictions with which it was affiliated.
The congregation had a poor understanding of the nature and purpose of a local church. Its idea of the local church was a chaplaincy which served the small number of families that formed the congregation. The priest, when the congregation had a priest, functioned as chaplain to these families, instructing them in the faith, administering the sacraments, and meeting their pastoral needs.
The building was used solely for one purpose--a service of public worship on Sundays. It was open for roughly two hours. For the rest of the week it was unused and closed. It was not offered as a meeting place for community groups.
The congregation was not proactive in welcoming visitors. It had no one at the door to greet them and several minutes might lapse before someone stepped forward to welcome them. Too often congregants waited until the end of the service to greet a visitor. By then the visitor had departed.
The only people in the community that will miss the congregation will be the man who mowed the grounds surrounding the congregation’s building and the pre-natal and maternity clinic which received an annual donation from the congregation.
Why am I posting this postmortem? I am posting it as a warning to other small Anglican congregations. A congregation in decline can make changes at key points in its life cycle, which will give it a new lease on life. This congregation chose not to make those changes. While its members might like to blame circumstances for its demise, it chose to die!
The congregation was not proactive in welcoming visitors. It had no one at the door to greet them and several minutes might lapse before someone stepped forward to welcome them. Too often congregants waited until the end of the service to greet a visitor. By then the visitor had departed.
The only people in the community that will miss the congregation will be the man who mowed the grounds surrounding the congregation’s building and the pre-natal and maternity clinic which received an annual donation from the congregation.
Why am I posting this postmortem? I am posting it as a warning to other small Anglican congregations. A congregation in decline can make changes at key points in its life cycle, which will give it a new lease on life. This congregation chose not to make those changes. While its members might like to blame circumstances for its demise, it chose to die!
A sad story indeed. Curious that you chose a "continuing" 1928BCP congregation to write your obituary, knowing how fond you are of the "continuing" movement. What specific changes would you have recommended to grow the congregation? You mention opening the church facility to non-church organizations but that seems the only recommendation, apart from criticism of the congregation's timing on greeting visitors. Your suggestion of abandoning the Authorized Version of the Bible is theologically unsound - even though I will admit that the "Are You Running With Me, Jesus" translations are far more popular amongst the crowd-pleasing "pastors" which inhabit modern pulpits.
ReplyDeleteThere once was a most excellent German restaurant in our town which started out with success but closed after a relative short, albeit successful, life. The owner was forced to close because her "less than cosmopolitan" clientele demanded that she serve pizza and hamburgers, along with her superior German fare. She chose not to go in that direction and simply went belly up. Problem wasn't the food, or the prices, or the management, or even the establishment's physical plant - it was the very customers themselves
I have never know a congregation that boasted of good preaching to go belly up in my over forty-five years on ministry. The power of the Word can overcome many ecclesiastical difficulties. There was a time when I was not familiar with the 1928 BCP, the Episcopal liturgy, the "antique" 1940 Hymnal, but I thank God that He allowed me to become familiar in due time. But it was the preaching of the Gospel that won my heart and caused me to stay in a congregation of which I was painfully the youngest member - apart from Sunday School children.
No doubt you can cite many other potential obituaries of "dying" continuing churches (and others) but I must call into question the diseases from which you say they suffered as the true causes of their demise.
Charles, we cannot point anyone to Jesus by preaching the gospel to a near empty room. One has two choices. Both involve engagement with the community.
ReplyDeleteThe first option is that the church members and regular attendees can invite family, relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues, fellow students, and other folks from their everyday life to their church services. A local church can through bridge building with the community create public awareness of its existence and to establish itself as a part of the community. This may prompt members of the community to visit the church. A local church can conduct a publicity campaign to draw itself to people’s attention.
The second option is to leave the building and in various ways share the gospel with people in the community—small groups, for instance.
Either option, Charles, requires a congregation that is interested in sharing the good news with others. The church in question did not have such a congregation. For a number of years, it did not have a congregation that lived in the community where the church was located or have any connection with that community.
As it was explained to me, the congregation was interested only in gathering for an hour on Sunday, observing the Lord’s Day with a familiar Prayer Book service, fellowshipping over coffee and baked goods after the service, and then going home. It had negligible interest in the community in which the church building was located. Two or three members shopped at the IGA and the Walmart in the town, but that was the extent of their involvement in the community.
The church had not had a pastor for several years. Their last pastor left after six months. Their previous pastor wanted the congregation to accompany him into the Roman Catholic Church. Some members may have done so. When I became involved in the church, the senior warden and the junior warden were taking turns reading Morning Prayer and a homily or sermon. Once a month a supply priest administered the sacrament of Holy Communion at the church.
At one point I was the licensed lay reader with pastoral charge of the congregation while pursuing ordination in the continuing jurisdiction with which it was affiliated. I was too outward-looking for key people in the congregation and consequently I enjoyed the support of only a part of the congregation. On the recommendation of the pastor who was supervising me, I chose not to request renewal of my license from the bishop and took a less prominent role in the life, ministry, and worship of the church. I did not leave the church for pastoral reasons. During the pandemic lockdown I offered church services for members of the congregation on Zoom.
The congregation would choose a different path from having a pastor of itss own. It chose the path that led to its disbanding. The bishop and the bishop of another jurisdiction that had a church in a nearby community agreed to allow the pastor of that church to administer Holy Communion at the church twice a month. The church would limp along for a while under this arrangement. The supply priest’s sermons were long-winded with little gospel content, and he showed only a superficial interest in community engagement.
ReplyDeleteEventually the lead bishop of his jurisdiction chose not to renew the arrangement. Rather than asking their own jurisdiction to supply them with a priest, the members of the congregation chose to attend his church for Holy Communion twice a month. The senior warden and the junior warden conducted a service of Morning Prayer for the members of the congregation on the remaining Sundays of the month.
Age and ill-health took its toll on the congregation’s members. On several occasions there was no one to read Morning Prayer. The congregation, recognizing that it was no longer viable, voted to disband and sell its building.
In the region in which the church was located, Church of Christ congregations and independent Baptist congregations use the King James Bible. Southern Baptists use the Holman Christian Standard Bible and Methodists the New Revised Standard Version. I am a senior scholar at the local state university, and I have found that except for those who come from a Church of Christ background, the university students there do not understand the Jacobean English of the King James Version. They are not interested in learning it. They are fairly representative of the young people in the region. Foreign exchange students struggle with Jacobean English when they take English literature classes.
In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul emphasizes the use of a language in our church meetings that people who may visit our church meetings understand. Jacobean English does not meet that description.
In Paul’s day the Hebrew Bible had been translated into Aramaic and Greek and these translations were used in synagogue services because most people did not understand Hebrew.
The jurisdiction to which the church belonged permitted the use of more recent translations of the Bible that were conservative in their scholarship. Several members used what I consider Bible paraphrases in their private devotions.
While you may prefer the Authorized Version, conditions on the mission field call for the use of a version of the Bible more easily understood by the people on the mission field.
I am putting together an article, “Tips for Continuing Anglican Church Planters,” which draws upon what I have learned from the literature, from my years of pioneering new churches, and from the demise of the church about which I wrote. While the church was on the downward side of the church growth bell curve, there were several points where the congregation, if it had made a different choice, the church would have halted its decline and returned to the upward side of that bell curve.