Sunday, December 20, 2009

A Volley from the Canon, Number 76

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 76

“BE-Attitudes for Church Growth”

1. Be faithful. We are a church, not a social club. We are a people of prayer, with a commitment to service and action on behalf of the least and the weakest. Sure, we make friends at church—but that is not what we come for. We come to worship and serve God, and to learn and to grow in the likeness of Christ.

2. Be focused. We have a mission. Each congregation has a distinct calling from God to minister in its community and in the world at large. We must know and live into that mission, and we must fight the impulses and influences that seek to distract us from that purpose.


3. Be proficient. In our tradition, it is important to offer God our best: our best building materials, decorations, altar ware, and vestments. We must be attentive also to offering to God and our neighbors the best liturgy, proclamation, teaching, outreach ministries, and spiritual formation opportunities we are capable of. We must be our own toughest critics, and our own best coaches.

4. Be visible. We must stop hiding our light under a silver mint julep cup. Publicity is part of the planning for any event. Sometimes, that means spending some money. Sometimes, it just means talking up church programs and events or mentioning what the church means to us among people we contact regularly. If our publicity attracts some folks who are not quite like the rest of us, Halleluiah! Never let anyone say of our church, “Oh, I thought that church had closed,” or, “Ah, you mean that church that’s always locked, “ or, “I never knew that someone like me would be welcome there,” or “What is an Apostople Church, anyway?” or “Hmm, I’ve never heard of that one” (which happens to be a block or two away.) --Yes, I’ve heard all of these comments about some of our congregations!

5. Be accessible. We must do everything we can to make it easy to choose to participate in church: parking, lighting, signage, ramps and ADA equipment, convenient times, publicity, greeting and welcome, plan for inclusion, housekeeping, maintenance, hospitality. We have to eliminate obstacles and impediments to all kinds of people, including less able ones, finding their way to us. If we are not willing to do these things, we need to shut down now and get it over with.


6. Be spiritual and experiential. Why is the Main Line in decline? Because it is doctrinal. Dogma is anathema to many people today, especially younger ones. Those churches that are growing do have doctrine, often one that would be repugnant in many ways to the people they are attracting. But they don’t stress doctrine, they stress experience. It happens that what we believe is important, to us and to others. But we will never have the opportunity to teach doctrine unless we offer spiritual and emotive experience, with hands-on opportunities for ministry, first.

7. Be prayerful. Are the members of the congregation praying for their church and for one another every day? For guidance, for insight, for resources, for opportunities to minister? Are those prayers included in the Prayers of the People in worship? Why would we expect to receive if we do not ask?

In summary, Be Church. Not club, not family, not business, not support group, and for God’s sake, not historical society. We are the living, breathing Body of Christ, his hands and feet in a suffering world. If we live into that, we will be Light.

A Volley from the Canon, Number 75

“Help Us Grow”

People contact me from time to time with this request. “We need help with a plan to attract new members. How can we grow?” This one is difficult, because I hardly know where to begin.

Aren’t we asking the wrong question? First, I don’t get these requests from congregations that are doing well financially or numerically. They come from groups that are in serious danger. At that point, it is too late to implement any program that would not bear fruit for years. In addition, if say we want new members, but we don’t ask for help until we are desperate for cash, doesn’t that mean that what we really want is money, and maybe bodies in pews, not real and active members, who would have their own ideas, hopes, and dreams, not necessarily in sync with ours? God help ‘em, if they volunteer to organize the rummage sale—but not in the way it has been done for decades!

Second, though there are surely some “church growth” plans and programs out there that may promise membership increase, we are foolish if we think that something “off the rack” can fit every congregation’s needs or that any kind of guarantee of success can be expected. There just isn’t a magic bullet for church growth, certainly not one that can be revealed by a Canon in an evening Vestry meeting, especially in this era, and under economic and social conditions we encounter here in West Virginia and in the Episcopal Church.

We want more people to come to our church: what exactly are we hoping they will come to? Is our worship enlightening and uplifting, spiritual and transformative? Is preaching consistently interesting and insightful? Is music moving and memorable? Are there sound, effective formation programs for all ages? Is there a strong, welcoming, inclusive Christian community in regular contact for service and companionship? If not, what good is it to recruit a guest, who would be unlikely to attend a second time?

So wouldn’t a better question be, “Can you help us become a more faithful and effective witness to the Gospel in our community?” The answer to that is an unequivocal “Yes!” When we work hard to be who God is calling us to be as a church, God will send within our sphere of contact those people who are most needful of our church, who will most benefit from and contribute to the life of an Episcopal congregation. We’ll also become more adept and confident in seeking those who are more deeply undercover in our community. We can’t just decide to grow, and have that happen for us. We can, however, adopt attitudes that ultimately (over time!) contribute to church growth.

[I would certainly love it, too, if we could begin to ask such a question early, while there is still a flame to fan and kindling ready at hand.]

Stay tuned for Part II: “Be-Attitudes for Church Growth”

A Volley from the Canon, Number 74

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 74

THE EDIFICE COMPLEX

Pity the Church of England: Established. Historic. Stuck.
Stuck with a lot of things, but significantly, stuck with ancient buildings that, unfortunately, were built to last for the ages. Over the ages, populations have moved, economic realities have shifted, and just about everything has changed—yet there sits the old stone church, beautiful, majestic, unchanged, surrounded by death and decay in the form of its cemetery. The structures no longer meet the needs of the congregations, but they are saddled with their maintenance, sapping their resources and their energies for ministry. Does the church own the building, or does the building own the church?

In many instances, we are even worse off here in the Diocese of West Virginia. We aren’t established; therefore, we get no public funding, and have no status in the eyes of the public. Yet we have the same enslavement to our structures, the same Edifice Complex. In congregation after congregation, we have a building that was built in the 1800’s to serve a rural, nineteenth-century population (pretty much as a family chapel). Nothing has been added since: perhaps the congregation has taken over a house (often formerly a rectory) for dinners and Sunday School, but otherwise, the property remains unchanged. You know them well. Hard, wooden pews jam up against the side walls. Don’t even try to kneel if you are overweight! Heating is iffy, air conditioning—what’s that? There might be no running water, and almost certainly no rest room nearby. Clearly, something happened here 75-150 years ago. Just as visibly, nothing has happened since.

We love these old buildings. They are almost all beautiful, and they are hallowed by the prayers of the generations. At the same time, they are sucking all the resources from their congregations, and what they offer in return is woeful inadequacy for worship or study or gatherings of any kind. They offer little (or negative) attraction to un-churched persons in the community, unless they are history buffs. Some need to be turned over to actual historical societies, and the congregation needs to move elsewhere, accessible to real people now. I’ve heard, in a few places, discussion about whether it would be advisable to build, finally, a new parish hall alongside the old church. I say, Hold on! If we build anything, let’s build a multi-purpose center that supplants the old, dysfunctional church. Let the old building be what it has become—a historic structure, useful for the occasional wedding, small funeral, poetry reading, musical presentation, or historic or community worship service. Let the church, though rooted in history, be connected to now and leaning toward eternity.

We are tied down by many worldly chains. Our Edifice Complex is one of our strongest ones, and in many locales, it is strangling us.

A Volley from the Canon, Number 73

A Volley from the Canon, number 73

The CHRIST-mass

Someone finally asked me this week, “So, are you ready for Christmas?” I was taken aback, though this is such a common greeting this time of year. It just hadn’t occurred to me yet. I shrugged.

“Sure, bring it on.”

“You mean you’ve done all your shopping, and the house is all decorated, and all the baking is done and groceries bought, and cards out, and all that stuff?” she persisted, amazed.

“It’s easy if you don’t do anything.”

My questioner was aghast. But it’s true. I’m no Grinch. I’ve just decided to give up on the futility of over-functioning during December and, I hope, other times as well.

Our former Christmas tree was huge, hard to put together, and frustrating (though quite beautiful, even if fake). So I tossed it. Now, the replacement is still big, but pre-lighted and fold-out, no longer a threat to marriage and family unity. And, according to me, it has become an “Advent Bush.” It can be erected anytime in December without impinging upon the actual Christmas season. I’ll take it down, like everyone else, right after Christmas, and we’ll move on! No “Christmas Vacation” movie excesses here! We plan to ENJOY the holy day.

I can’t eat Christmas cookies, cakes, or candies, and do Linda and the boys need them? (That’s a ‘No.’) So I don’t bake any. We’ll have a nice dinner on Christmas Eve, but it may be in a restaurant. And we’ll have a nice Christmas dinner, but not one it takes days to prepare—we’ll do it that very day, together. I do appreciate the greeting cards we get, but we don’t send any. The money is better spent, I think, on charitable giving, and the sentiment better expressed by greeting people in person, by phone, or even by e-mail.

Everyone I know pretty much has one of everything, so what use is a gift they don’t want? Appropriate gift cards or cash are always welcome, and they always fit. And expressing our love for friends and family is not about “stuff,” anyway, is it?

I’ve spent too many Christmas mornings feeling like I’d been beaten with rubber hoses. I want to be rested and ready, on December 24-25, to welcome the Christ, whether he shows up as “little baby Jesus” in the manger or as full-grown “Judge of the Quick and the Dead.”

Am I ready for Christmas? Sure—bring it on!

An enjoyable and peaceful Christ-mass to all!

Friday, December 11, 2009

A Volley from the Canon, #72

A Volley from the Canon, Number 72

“TNTWWADI”*

“We’ve never done that before” is a reason to TRY something, not a reason NOT to! First, it may work. Second, if it doesn’t, we now have more information than we had before, and we are better prepared to try the next tactic we’ve never tried before, giving it an even better chance of success.

When a congregation takes some risk by putting forth an innovative effort, there’s no real harm done, even if the project yields less than stellar results. Benefits accrue just from the effort, without regard to the expected outcome. But if we want guaranteed results, we know how to get them: do ONLY what we’ve always done before. We WILL decline and die, guaranteed.

*”That’s Not the Way We Always Do It.”

A Volley from the Canon, #71

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 71

A SELECTIVE CONSERVATISM

It seems there is a constant tug of war going on in the church: progressives want to make the church something new as quickly as possible, perhaps unrecognizably so, while traditionalists want to cling to every vestige of what it has been, no matter what. Both, I believe, are sincere in their desire to build up the church. Unfortunately, we waste a whole lot of energy and momentum struggling for either direction. There is futility in both efforts.

When conservatives try to preserve whole systems just as they were, or restore them to some ideal past condition (1928 Prayer Book, anyone?), they leave the baby sitting in murky, cold bathwater. When liberals fight to toss out bathwater, tub, and bathing gel, they often show insufficient regard for the safety of the baby. We ought to recognize that neither side is ever going to get all it wants, for some very good reasons, and negotiate accordingly from the outset.
A better approach would be to work to preserve the best of what is, recover the best of what was, embrace the best of what is in the offing. That takes some discernment, in the form of thought, reasoned discussion, and prayer. It also takes an honest assessment of the evidence drawn from experience.

The way to gather that evidence, it seems to me, may be to add rather than replace. Instead of changing what has been, could we not add what we envision, and see which works better for us? Those traditions that have lost their significance to us have a way of passing on their own.

“In essentials, conformity; in non-essentials, variety; in all things, charity.”