The subject of revitalizing parish life is not a common topic of conversation in mainline Protestant churches. And in my own tradition, the people who do speak to that challenge are often lonely voices.
Mainline Protestantism found itself locked in a zero-sum battle with Fundamentalism in this country early in the 20th century. And just as Fundamentalists defined themselves in reaction to mainline Protestantism, so mainline Protestants were deeply shaped by a reaction to Fundamentalist Christians. This often meant that anything the one valued, the other avoided or repudiated.
Parish vitality – and in particular planting and growing churches – was one of those endeavors. And, because Fundamentalists were deeply engaged in that work, mainline Protestants often avoided it. One could reasonably argue that we despised it.
And, even today, as mainline Protestants denominations (not so) slowly implode there are those who still resist exploring those questions. Bring it up in any public forum and sooner or later, someone will metaphorically, turn up their nose, sniff, and observe, “So, you don’t care about anything but numbers, do you?” They will raise the specter of a false choice by asking, “What about spiritual formation and care for the poor?” Or they will simply suggest, “This is all up to God.” Some will even make decline a virtue. I once heard a bishop observe, “We aren’t dying. We are molting.”
But the fact of the matter is that growth and the mission of the church are not mutually exclusive endeavors. In communities that are growing, there is no excuse for not growing the church. And growing the church is not an end itself – it is ultimately about the church’s future. Churches that don’t grow die and if we think so little of the charisms that the Holy Spirit has given our respective traditions that this is not a concern for us, then then we should counsel people to go elsewhere, so that they spend their energy in the name of serving Christ, rather than providing hospice care for a dying denomination. To coin a phrase from Jesus’ teaching, “Let the dead bury the dead.”
But I don’t share this attenuated vision of the Spirit’s gift to us, and I believe that there are things that we can do to revitalize parishes. This article presupposes that we are talking about churches in growing communities (a later article will focus on churches in other areas). So, here are some thoughts and I invite your suggestions in the comments section or wherever this article finds conversation partners.
One: Take a long hard look at your grounds and building with the eyes of an outsider. If you can’t do that – find some outsiders to help you.
Does your facility look like a place where visitors would want to stay? Or does it look like the residence of an elderly couple that stopped paying attention to their home years ago?
Yellowed paint. Stained and scratched walls. Broken plumbing. Cluttered spaces. Wheelchairs and walkers that are left sitting open in the narthex. Dust bunnies. Ceilings stained by leaking rooves. Landscaping that hasn’t been touched in years. Lights that are burned out.
Like it or not, the truth is, people are not drawn to old and shabby. Make friends with your dumpster and your recycle center.
Two: Take a long hard look at the demographics of your parish and don’t wait too long to attract a new cohort of members.
Are there still parents and children in your parish? If you do, it is still possible to build a future for your parish. If you don’t, it’s not impossible but it won’t be easy.
Even if you have a children’s program or a youth program, if you don’t have a core constituency that attends those programs regularly, it is difficult to attract younger families and children. From a visitor’s point of view, if you don’t have a core constituency in these programs, you don’t have a program at all and retaining visitors can be a problem.
Three: Take a hard look at the demographics of your leadership, lay and ordained, and begin promoting a younger cohort of leaders.
The revitalization of a parish involves welcoming new people and multiple generations into leadership positions. All too often, we have looked to “the usual suspects”, relying on the same people for energy and vision.
This approach gives parishes a “clubby”, if not unfriendly feel. People place a premium on worshipping in a church where they can be comfortable and contribute. People who don’t look elsewhere; and parishes that don’t can check a calendar to determine how long they will be around.
Four: Build a virtual presence and build a robust communications program, because people don’t “try on churches” by attending them, they visit online; and some of your newest members may only attend online.
Most people no longer visit parishes physically. They “try them out” online, sometimes for weeks. And there are growing opportunities for cultivating online communities that consist of people who cannot attend regularly.
Up-to-date, attractive websites, services that are live-streamed, electronic newsletters, online membership services, and the capacity to send members texts — these are all now necessary tools for building modern communities. Gone are the days when it was enough to have a static webpage and stale messaging was never a good look for church’s that wanted to reach out in mission and ministry to their community.
Two of our favorite tools, by the way, are ChurchSuite and Text in Church:
Five: Build a focused program of formation for every age group and do the work of faith formation all year long.
I don’t know how widespread the trends were at the time or how common those trends are now. But when I became an Episcopalian, I was amazed at how little attention was given to faith formation at every age level. I had been a part of Methodist churches and “Sunday School”, especially generational programs in which the same group of adults stayed together throughout life, were the mainstay of many Methodist churches.
But in the Episcopal church a different set of behaviors prevailed. Where faith formation was available to children or youth, it was often haphazard. Our educational materials were among the weakest on offer, and people who worked with children and adolescents were often forced to look elsewhere for materials to use. Many of our better programs were well suited to younger children but the older they became, the less we had to offer.
Adult education was done in what many parishes described as adult forums and – having taught for years in those settings – I found that they can work. But what I also found was that many churches interrupt the formation work being done there to talk about a variety of other issues. So, in many settings, it was hard to build momentum. In order to revitalize a parish, those settings and the work that can be done in them should be protected.
Then there was the habit of shutting down formation classes for the summer. I have never understood this. The implicit message is that we can “take a vacation from God”, and when visitors discover this is the case, the often go elsewhere. That should not be a big surprise.
Six: Make the liturgy intelligible to people.
One of the great gifts of our tradition is the liturgy. For a larger culture that doesn’t “do” ritual, it is also one of our great challenges. People often do not understand why we do what we do. They struggle with flipping through the Prayerbook and juggling the hymnal, also presents a challenge.
So, in a hundred and one other ways, we alert our congregation to our dependence on the Prayerbook, but we use a bulletin that contains the full service and the music. To help our visitors – and no small number of long-time Episcopalians – it includes a column on the right-hand side with brief notes explaining why we do what we do at each point in the service. This makes most people instantly comfortable with the service, and they have a printed piece that they can take home to study.
Seven: Welcome people – all the time, everytime.
Work with your congregation to welcome people. Identify a cohort of greeters. Get them to communicate with the clergy about the presence of visitors.
Make a visitor’s card available – and be sure to collect it. And get over the resistance to using tools that are more familiar to non-denoms and create a visitors’ center, with some small gift, celebrating the fact that people are new to the parish. TextinChurch is a great tool for following up.
But more than any other thing we can do, the willingness of established members to help with the process of welcoming people is central to this effort.
Eight: Budget for mission. Don’t plan your mission based on the size of your budget.
Anyone who has been around for any length of time knows that far too many of our churches determine how much mission that will embrace, based upon the amount of money that people give. Because many people will only give as much as it takes to be comfortable with their giving, many parishes have very little vision for mission. And when giving trails off – which it does without mission and vision – then retrenchment has often been the only solution at hand. This also means that parishes never “get real” about what it really costs to be the church that they imagine themselves to be.
The reverse is the better approach. I am not suggesting that you be unrealistic. But I am suggesting that you lead with mission, not maintenance. Anyone who has ever been in a leadership position knows that “If it isn’t in the budget, it isn’t important.”
Nine: Staff for growth and mission. Don’t wait for your mission to grow large enough to justify staffing.
All the other efforts I have described cannot be achieved with one priest and a modicum of lay volunteers. Some of the tasks are a job, all on their own – like the communications efforts. Others can’t be achieved with a priest who is trying to provide leadership for the future, field an endless variety of other roles, and preach, teach, and provide pastoral care.
But in your efforts to accomplish this task, you be reminded (by people who only imagined) how much your predecessor did (minus the personal price that it cost them – which they didn’t see). You will be told (even by bishops) that this is a time for retrenchment. And – all the while – you will be able to hear the sounds made as a long list of things that ought to be done, go undone.
This is why lay leadership is also needed that will draw on their experience in the secular world to highlight the real world requirements for effective ministry. It will probably never be enough, but start now. The challenges of meeting those needs only grows with time.
Ten: Make stewardship a year-round imperative.
Most of us were taught that stewardship was something that could be accomplished with several weeks of attention, once a year. That was probably never completely true but it certainly isn’t now. Regular reports and basic budget transparency are a year-round undertaking. Work to get people to use mechanisms for donating on a regular basis, whether it’s in weekly, monthly, or an annual, lump-sum. Remind them that, as generous as their gift might have been, 3, 5, or 10 years ago, that inflation has reduced its buying power. Give them a vision-mission picture of the needs. And plan focused, brief reminders throughout the year.
As I said at the outset, these are not the only clues to parish revitalization, and context matters. There will be other issues to take into consideration. A capacity for vision, innovation, and flexibility is vital to the wellbeing of any church. Arguably, that has always been true for God’s people. Above all, every effort we make, whether it appears on this list or not, needs to be the object of prayer and discernment. Both are essential, if we are genuinely seeking the help of the Holy Spirit. But, together, we can imagine a new future for Christ’s church in our corner of the Christian tradition.
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