In the 1980s I attended a Creative Christian Education
workshop conducted by the late Howard Hanchey, then professor of pastoral theology at Virginia Theological Seminary, and hosted by Christ Episcopal
Church in Covington, Louisiana. During the workshop Dr. Hanchey told the
participants about his plans to write a book on outreach, evangelism, and church
growth. He explained that he first needed to work through his anger at the
Episcopal Church for the state that it had allowed itself to get into before he
would be able to write the book. What frustrated him was the negligible value
that its clergy and congregations placed on outreach, evangelism, and church
growth. Consequently, the denomination was stagnating when it should have been
thriving and growing. This was a few years before the Decade of Evangelism, in
which it became very clear to me that Dr. Hanchey had every reason to be angry.
The bulk of Episcopal clergy showed little enthusiasm for outreach and
evangelism. Indeed, they had a decidedly negative attitude toward evangelism.
This attitude also infected the congregations that they served.
From 1985 to 2003 I was involved in planting and pioneering
two new churches in St. Tammany Parish in the Northshore Deanery of the
Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana. During that time period St. Tammany Parish
which lies about 30 odd miles north of New Orleans was one of the fastest
growing parishes in the State of Louisiana. In Louisiana counties are called
parishes, a vestige of the state’s French colonial heritage.
The first new church, St. Michael’s
Episcopal Church, Mandeville, then known as the Mandeville Mission, was
launched in 1985, initially as a satellite congregation of Christ Episcopal
Church, Covington, the oldest Episcopal church in St. Tammany Parish, one of
two Episcopal churches in the parish at the time, each located at opposite ends
of the parish. It was the church that my family had attended since moving to
St. Tammany Parish in the early 1960s and was the church where I was then a
licensed lay reader, a member of the mission’s steering committee, and the
worship coordinator on its launch team.
The nucleus of the new congregation consisted of a group of parishioners
from the community where the new church would be located and other residents of
that community who had attended a public interest meeting advertised in the
local newspapers.
Before the American Civil War Mandeville had been the
site of an Episcopal church, All Souls, but yellow fever had ravaged the
community, forcing its closure. Christ
Episcopal Church in Covington had absorbed the remnant of its congregation.
The new congregation initially gathered for a Sunday
Eucharist at a tennis club in one of the community’s neighborhoods but was
forced to move to a new location due to complaints from the residents of the
neighborhood. The tennis club’s small parking lot was not able to contain all
the cars and the neighborhood’s residents objected to the attendees’ parking on
the neighborhood’s streets.
As the new congregation grew, it would occupy three
other venues—an office building, a storefront, and an old high school
gymnasium--before occupying its own multipurpose building on property that the
diocese had purchased for the new work. In
less than a year after it formation, it would become a mission of the diocese
with its own vicar.
Among a number of factors that contributed to the mission’s growth,
and which are worth noting, was that the population of St. Tammany Parish and
the community where the mission was located was growing rapidly. New churches
were popping up across the parish seemingly overnight like mushrooms. I conducted demographic studies and windshield
surveys for the dean of the Northshore Deanery, my former rector, and concluded
that the parish could have supported additional Episcopal churches. I
identified potential meeting places for start-ups, only to see the start-ups of
other denominations occupy these venues.
Favorable population growth, however, was not the only
factor that accounted for the success of the mission. It adopted a number of
deliberate outreach strategies designed to reach and engage a broad segment of
unchurched families and individuals in the community, families and individuals
with a wide variety of church backgrounds and no church background at all. It
chose not to focus on Episcopalians who had not settled in a church home as
they formed a very tiny segment of the population and were elusive fish to
catch. They also had expectations that a
congregation worshiping non-traditional settings could not meet such as
replicating the ambiance that longtime Episcopalians associate with the
Episcopal Church. Among these strategies were a popular summer vacation Bible
school, a successful early childhood development program and nursery school, a
popular women’s conference, and home Bible study groups to which individuals
who might not attend a church service could be invited. All four strategies, while they enjoyed the vicar's full support, were lay initiatives.
Church services were simple, unembellished, and relatively
informal compared to other Episcopal churches. Rite II was used on most
occasions. Prayers of the People Form C and Eucharistic Prayer A were the most frequently
used prayers at the Sunday Eucharist. Sermons were succinct and to the point,
focused upon topics affecting the spiritual lives of the congregants.
On
ordinary Sundays the vicar wore a cassock-alb and a seasonal stole. On festivals
like Christmas and Easter and during the Twelve Days of Christmas and the Easter
Season, he donned a festal chasuble; for baptisms he wore a special chasuble
that the children of the mission had made for him with the help of their
parents.
To make the music used in church services appealing to the
mission’s primary ministry target group, an eclectic blend of contemporary
and traditional hymns, worship songs, and service music was employed. This
music was taken from a variety of sources as well as new hymnal, The Hymnal
1982. Among these sources were Songs
for Celebration – Church Hymnal Series IV, the Community of Celebration’s Come
Celebrate, and several Jubilate Hymns, Hope Publishing, GIA, NALR, and
Vineyard music collections. A number of the songs are now found in the
Episcopal Church’ hymnal supplements. One of them, “I, the Lord of Sea and
Sky,” is rated a the fifth most popular hymn in the Church of England.
A concerted effort was made to select hymns, worship songs,
and service music that was accessible to children as well as adults and which
might be familiar to churchgoers from other church backgrounds beside the
Episcopal Church, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant. Pre-service
congregational rehearsals were held to teach new hymns, worship songs, and
service music to the congregation and to practice them. Based on the advice of
the Rev. Jerry Godwin of the Standing Commission on Church Music and others, an upright piano
rather than an electronic organ was purchased to accompany the congregation and
the mission’s small choir. Later on, the piano was supplemented by a small acoustic
guitar ensemble.
St. Michael’s Eucharist celebrations had several distinctive
characteristics. In place of a piano prelude, the congregation might be invited
to join medley of simple worship songs or listen to a soloist, a choral
prelude, or a string or woodwind prelude. In place of sequence hymn, a gospel
acclamation, an alleluia or an alleluia verse, was sung before the reading of
the Gospel, except during Lent. The
Sanctus-Benedictus, the Memorial Acclamation, the Great Amen, and the Fraction
Anthem were sung to simple, easy-to-memorize settings like Richard’s Proulx’s
“Land of Rest Acclamations.” Communion songs with lyrics or refrains or
repetitions which could be sung from memory were sung by the congregation as it
processed to the communion stations. The distribution of the communion elements
concluded with the singing of one or more songs of praise, thanksgiving or
adoration. Only after the song or songs had concluded, did the vicar proceed to
the post-communion prayer.
A concerted effort was also made to integrate the children
into the life, ministry, and worship of the church. The children’s Sunday
school was held before the Sunday Eucharist, and the children joined their
parents for the service. A nursery was provided for infants and toddlers. Older
children and youth were recruited and trained, not just as acolytes, or
servers, but also as lectors, leaders of the intercessions, gift bearers, and
ushers, handing out service bulletins and collecting the people’s offerings.
High school students who sung with the chorus at their school were invited to
join the choir and to perform solos. Those playing with their school band to
perform were invited to perform instrumental pieces. The participation of the
children in other areas of the life and ministry of the church was encouraged.
The mission’s approach to “doing church”” generated a high
level of enthusiasm in the mission’s congregation. Congregants would talk about
the church with friends, relatives, neighbors, coworkers, employees, employers,
clients, customers, and strangers and invite them to its church service,
social gatherings, and the like. Those
to whom they had talked would visit to see for themselves what all the excitement
was about.
St. Michael’s would thrive and grow and become a self-supporting
parish in a surprisingly short period of time. It would grow from two services
on Sunday morning to three services and a weeknight service midweek. Then
disaster struck. The church experienced a serious church split—a division over
whether the church should further indebt itself to construct a new worship
center or reduce its existing indebtedness before embarking on such a project. Church
splits over the future direction of a church are more common than we might like
to admit. They can do considerable harm to a church.. This split cost St.
Michael’s a third of its households and marked the beginning of a seven year
decline that eventually led to it becoming a mission again.
The second new church, the Church of Beloved (Episcopal) was
launched in 2002 or shortly before. I am not sure of the date that the bishop
officially gave his permission for the launch. The group who would form the
nucleus of the start-up had been petitioning him for permission, but he had
initially withheld permission, fearing that the start-up might draw attendees
from St. Michael’s, further weakening it after the church split. The bishop
would change his mind when the Anglican Mission in America informed him of its
plans to launch a new church at the west end of St Tammany Parish.
The bishop, the late Right Rev. Charles Jenkins, when he
first took office, had launched a new church planting initiative in the diocese,
following in the footsteps of his predecessor, the Right Rev. James Brown. This
initiative resulted in a start-up in East Baton Rouge Parish, an area of the
state whose population was also growing rapidly.
Bishop Jenkins had wanted to start a new work at the east
end of St. Tammany Parish but the new rector of the existing church there, Christ
Episcopal Church, Slidell, begged him not to go ahead with this plan because
the new church might not only attract newcomers to the area which was growing
rapidly but also attendees of his own church. He was hoping to reverse the
decline of that church. He, however, had his work cut out because the vestry and
other leadership positions in the church were reportedly dominated by former
members of a Bayou Lacombe Unitarian Universalist church that had closed its
door due to declining attendance. Their attitude was that the church did not
need to advertise its presence in the community. Newcomers to the community who
wanted to attend an Episcopal church would eventually find their way to the
church. They did not see any need to make it easy for newcomers. The church had one small listing in the Yellow
Pages and not even a modest ad like most of the churches in Slidell.
The church was not easy to find. I attended a meeting at the
church and had first-hand experience of how difficult it was to find. It was on
cul-de-sac at the end of a side road, and the only sign was a small one hanging
from a pole in front of the church.
The Church of the Beloved began as a midweek evening
gathering in a private home. This gathering consisted of a meal and a home Eucharist. The
president at the Eucharist was sometimes a priest from Bishop Jenkin’s old deanery
in Baton Rouge and sometimes a Continuing Anglican priest, who later became a
bishop of his jurisdiction. The core group consisted of former and existing
members of St. Michael’s. What united
the group was a common interest in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, prayer, and
healing.
I became involved in the Church of the Beloved largely as an
observer as I was already involved in two other church plants, neither of which
were Episcopal. For a time, the Church of the Beloved would gather on Sunday
afternoons in an empty house owned by the spouse of one of the core group’s
members and eventually, as it grew, moved its gatherings to Sunday mornings in
the conference room of a local hotel. It would start a number of Alpha groups
and was enjoying some success with these groups until Jean Robinson’s election,
confirmation, and consecration as a bishop of the Episcopal Church in 2003. Robinson
was openly gay and at the time was married to his same sex partner. While the
Episcopal Church’ progressive wing hailed the development as a victory for LBTQ
inclusivity in the Episcopal Church, it would prove to be a pyrrhic victory.
Both St. Tammany Parish and East Baton Rouge Parish are fairly
conservative parts of the state of Louisiana. The election, confirmation, and
consecration of Bishop Robinson would seriously damage the Episcopal Church’s
public image In the state. Church attendance dropped across the Diocese of
Louisiana. The new work in East Baton Rouge Parish lost so many people that it
was abandoned. The Church of the Beloved
did not fare much better. It maintained a shadow existence as a preaching
station for a number of years. When I last attended one of its gatherings, it
was meeting on Sunday afternoons in the sanctuary of a local Lutheran church.
It would eventually disband, and a number of the core group’s remaining members
would migrate to the Anglican Church in North America.
According to reports, the Church of the Beloved did not
enjoy the support of the clergy of the deanery in which it was located even
though it enjoyed the support of Bishop Jenkins. The sole involvement of
clergy from the Baton Rouge Deanery in the new work appeared to support these
reports.
It is to the clergy of the deanery that the bishop would
later delegate responsibility for planting new churches in the deanery. It was
not a task to which they appeared to be inclined or for which they appeared to
be well suited, a description which fits a number of clergy in the Episcopal
Church.
Since relocating to the Jackson Purchase, the westernmost
region of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, I have noticed a similar pattern of
church planting in the Purchase to that in the Florida Parishes, the region of Louisiana
of which the North Shore and St. Tammany Parish are a part. The Florida
Parishes are so named because they once were a part of British Florida. The earliest churches were planted in communities that were accessible by water.
They are the pre-America Civil War churches. The churches that were planted in
the years following the Civil War were planted in communities accessible by
railroad. Both regions experienced a period of church planting in the 1950s and
the 1980s. While the Florida Parishes experienced a brief period of church
planting at the beginning of this century, nothing like it occurred in the
Purchase. What did occur was a church closure and a church split and the
formation of two breakaway churches, one of which disbanded 15 years later.
I have not been able to determine the current status of the
oldest Episcopal Church in the Purchase, St. Paul’s in Hickman, on the
Mississippi River. The last time I visited the church a number of years ago, it
had been reduced to one service a month, a Sunday Eucharist over which a priest
from Grace Church in Paducah presided. I
was saddened to see the state of disrepair into which this fine old church had
fallen, its proud spire rising above the surrounding buildings. Only a short
distance from the church was what appeared to be a thriving Roman Catholic
parish.
One thing that I have noticed about Episcopal churches in
the Purchase is that are all located in a community that has a Roman Catholic
church in the community or in a nearby community. Two of them are located in older
subdivisions. One church, Trinity in Fulton, relocated to what was a new
subdivision on the edge of town from its original location at the town's center. That
subdivision appears to be undergoing demographic change that will impact the
church.
The building of the other church, St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, in
Mayfield, closed in 2005, sits at the end of a cul-de-sac in an older
subdivision and must be reached by a labyrinthine maze of roads from a main
artery into Mayfield. While demographic changes have been blamed for the
church’s closure, what may have been a nail in its coffin was the appointment as its
vicar an individual who, while they were ideal from the perspective of the
diocese, considering its priorities at that time, was a poor match with the
community and the region, both of which are deeply conservative.
The location
of the church building also placed the church at a serious disadvantage. It
lacked accessibility and visibility, something planners did not consider in
locating the building where they did, believing the church would attract
families from the subdivision. This apparently was a popular idea in the 1950s,
considering the number of church buildings located in older subdivisions, built
in those years.
A recent visit to a local Episcopal church reminded me how
much a unhealthy negative attitude toward outreach and evangelism continues to
dominate the thinking of Episcopal clergy ad congregations. During that visit a retired woman priest who
on that particular Sunday was supplying the church made light of outreach and
evangelism in her sermon. Based upon the reaction of the congregation to her
sarcastic dismissal of outreach and evangelism, it appeared that the
congregation shared her opinion of these two activities which are increasingly
recognized as essential to the survival of Christianity in the United State in the twenty-first
century and beyond. Churches can no longer expect to thrive and grow through
transfer growth; “the circulation of the saints,” or “church hopping,” churchgoers
living in the community switching churches; demographics growth, churchgoing newcomers
moving to the community and looking for a new church home; or birth growth, the
birth of children to churchgoing parents.
People are dropping out of church for
a variety of reasons, reducing the size of the transfer growth population.
People are moving less frequently than they used to move. The global birth rate
has gone down. It is quite low in the United States and other Western
countries. People are having less children and then later in life if they
choose to have children at all. Countries like Japan are facing a population
crisis and it is not due to overpopulation. Churches can no longer depend upon
former churchgoers returning to church even if they have children as was the case
in the past. Churchgoers are also no
longer choosing a church based upon denominational loyalty. Churches that are experiencing the most growth
are non-denominational and often charismatic.
The attitude of the retired priest was the same attitude
that I had observed in the bulk of Episcopal clergy in the Decade of Evangelism
in the 1990s. Like her, they referred to evangelism as the “E-word.” From a transactional
viewpoint the retired priest and the congregation were engaging in what the
late Eric Berne, a California psychiatrist who pioneered Transactional Analysis (TA)
described as a “gallows’ transaction,” a reference to condemned man telling
jokes at his own expense to the crowd who had come to see him hung as he
ascended the steps of the gallows and the hangman put the rope around his neck.
He may have gotten a laugh from the crowd, but the last laugh was on him when
the hangman kicked away the stool and the noose snapped his neck, or he slowly
strangled to death.
Deriding outreach and evangelism at a time when the
Episcopal Church is in dire straits with aging congregations, declining
attendance, and closing churches, makes no sense. Clergy who encourage and reinforce a negative
attitude toward outreach and evangelism in Episcopal congregations do a great
disservice to both the local church and the denomination. They promulgate and
perpetuate misconceptions of the nature of outreach and evangelism and its
importance and promote denial and passivity at a time when Episcopal
congregations need to face reality and take steps to rectify their own
predicament and to reverse the decline of the Episcopal Church.
Mainline
Protestant churches, evangelical churches, and Roman Catholic churches can no longer
rely upon a steady flow of people who identify with a particular church
tradition and who will gravitate to churches in that tradition. Those days are
behind us. Regrettably too many congregations do not realize that it is a thing
of the past. We are no longer living in the 1950s or the 1980s. It is the third
decade of the twenty-first century. The
world we live in today is different from the world that we lived in even 25
years ago. If they are to not just survive but to thrive and to grow, Episcopal congregations will need to change the way they think and act and become more mission-minded and mission-shaped.
