Bandits No More

I had a few moments to spare this evening so I decided to check out the UM News site. I found a link to Annual Conference reports. Curious about what’s happening elsewhere I decided to read a few.

The last line of each was the most depressing. Consider these examples:

“Membership stands at 230,500, down 6,807 from the previous year. Worship attendance stands at 122,691, down 1,115.”

“Membership stands at 283,617, down 7,238 from the previous year. Worship attendance stands at 109,269, down 976 from the previous year.”

“Membership stands at 321,970, down 4,302 from the previous year. Worship attendance stands at 156,865, down 4,536.”

“Membership stands at 95,777, down 3,059 from the previous year. Worship attendance stands at 33,526, down 1,055.”

“ Membership in 2005 stands at 77,291, down 1,758 from 2004. Average worship attendance is 23,086, down 1,320 from 2004.”

You get the idea.

Back when I was working on my last degree I served a church in California, so I thought I’d check the Cal Pac news. Covering southern California and beyond (to Hawaii & Guam), the Cal Pac AC includes many large, growing cities. A prime mission field, one would think. But the focus seemed to be on retirement. 22 clergy retired. 6 were ordained Elder. How can you reach a large, growing population when you retire so many workers relative to the number you take in?

Now it may be the case that these are good retirements for the Conference – along the lines of the preacher who says his church is “only a few funerals away from real growth potential.”

Where’s the urgency? Why are we content to “celebrate” this or that all the time? People are dying in the darkness and, as Keith Green used to say, “the church just can’t fight because it’s asleep in the light.”

It’s time to wake up.

We’re just back from our vacation trip to a family reunion in Illinois. Along the way we stayed at several hotels. Here are some comments on them:

1. The Super 8 in Geneseo, Illinois offered us a nice, spacious room. Travelling as a family of five, that’s good (and rare) to find. Unfortunately, the sofa bed we paid extra money to get turned out to be broken, missing several springs the supports on one corner. We managed to get it to work by piling sofa cushions underneath, but it was less than optimal. On the negative side, the room also had a bit of smoke odor to it, though the front desk had told us it was a non-smoking room. Other non-smoking rooms had an identifying plate on the door – unlike our room. On the positive side, the hotel was quiet, had a friendly staff, and a nice indoor pool for the kids.

2. The Comfort Suites of O’Hare in Schiller Park (a suburb of Chicago) were quite nice. For only a tiny bit more than we’d paid in Geneseo, we got a much nicer suite. The room was very quiet (even with a major airport nearby and the heavy traffic associated with it). Note on price: I got a better price by calling the hotel directly than I did from the website. I was somewhat concerned about the security of our vehicle, but everything went fine. We were looking out the window (to the north) about 6:30 p.m., shortly after arrival, and noticed a convoy of helicopters. They were too far away to read any markings, but we figured the military must be up to something. Only later did we discover that the President had flown into town for his birthday.

3. Next we were at the Bell Tower Inn of Centralia, Illinois. We’d stayed there many times in the past since it serves as the headquarters for our family reunion. I think it was quieter than usual. Another improvement was the price – about $10 less per night than last time. On the down side, my daughter lamented the absence of plain glazed donuts at the breakfast. Sure looks like the best hotel in Centralia to me.

4. Our final hotel was the Super 8 in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. After driving over 300 miles through often torrential rains, it was nice to be able to park right outside our door (the only hotel in our travels this week that was true of) to unload our stuff. We especially appreciated the on-site laundry facilities where we could dry our rain-drenched clothes from the car-top carrier (the canvas model we have didn’t repel much of the rain). The hotel doubled as a RV park, so there were plenty of people around. Unfortunately, one of our neighbors decided to pound on his door at 5 a.m. The breakfast was pretty sparse. One daughter again missed the plain glazed donuts. The other (somewhat easier to please), had a cinnamon roll and a sausage biscuit.

Outreach Magazine features an article on the crisis in the American church. Since their focus is evangelism and church growth, the crisis under consideration is the decline in church attendance across the country and a failure in every state but one (Hawaii) for church attendance to keep up with population growth. Here are their “Seven Startling Facts”

1. Less than 20% of Americans regularly attend church—half of what the pollsters report.

This is old news. The root problem is that people lie – or fudge the facts. Pollsters ask, “Were you in church Sunday,” and since they know the right answer is “Yes,” they give it, even if it’s been a week or two or ten since they were in church. The upside to this bad news is that we have plenty of prospects out there who, though they might be something else by excuse, aren’t actually participating anywhere. Instead if asking, “What church are you a member of?” We need to learn to ask, “What church do you regularly attend?” Even better, since lots of people will see no difference between the questions, is to just invite people with no reference to where they go or don’t go – unless you know them to be active somewhere.

2.  American church attendance is steadily declining.

You know what this means, don’t you? Not only are we failing to keep up with a growing population, but we’re also not even keeping our own. Now it may be the case that in a denomination full of senior citizens, that saints being “promoted to glory” is the problem. I think the even greater problem is that when our churches have children (many small churches don’t) we’re doing a poor job of discipling them and keeping them.

3. Only one state is outpacing its population growth.

That’s where Hawaii comes in. Texas is at only 18% of the population in attendance.

4. Mid-sized churches are shrinking; the smallest and largest churches are growing.

By their reckoning we’re a mid-sized church. We’re growing. But I can feel us fighting our way against the current.

5. Established churches—40 to 190 years old—are, on average, declining.

We’re 150 next year. Established churches have a strong base of “We’ve never done it that way before” that stifles innovation. They also tend to have so many established networks of members that they know fewer non-Christians to invite. Again, we’re fighting upstream.

6. The increase in churches is only 1/4 of what’s needed to keep up with population growth.

We need more new churches. Bishop Huie wants us to plant 10 new churches a year in the bounds of the Texas Conference. (The Chappell Hill community out near NTCC main campus might be a possible site in our mostly rural area.)

7. In 2050, the percentage of the U.S. population attending church will be almost half of what it was in 1990.

I’m not content to let this happen. If it were only about keep an institution going, I wouldn’t mind so much. But Jesus died for these people! The bible tells us Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father apart from me.” On the off chance Jesus actually said that, AND that he knew what he was talking about, we have a pile of work to do.