Two thousand nine marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of my ordination as a Congregationalist minister in the apocalyptic year of nineteen eighty-four. It is not something I or anyone else will celebrate, for my tenure in that office was short, brutal, and ugly, holding so few good memories they’re not worth the candle of finding among the miseries--except for the birth of our wonderful daughter, Laura. The congregation I served had “problems,” and told me I would be its last pastor if I didn’t solve them. I had three, perhaps four, years to do it. Naturally, my main task was to “grow the church,” for that would bring in money so it could keep in contented operation as a local auxiliary of the DAR. To abbreviate a long and painful story, I joined the line of unsuccessful pastors, both liberal and conservative, who were not able to grow the church on the terms its traditions laid down--and at the end of the road it faced dissolution.
I was reminded of this by a letter from someone sorrowfully anticipating the dissolution of her own congregation--a more “natural” death than mine died, for hers is not mortally diseased as mine was. I think it’s just exhausted. As a former pastor of a dying church, I feel quite strongly that such congregations should be allowed to die--that they, just like human beings, when they see the signs of impending death, need to take reasonable steps to dissolve in an orderly and peaceful way. None should be assumed to last forever, and it may also be assumed that if God wanted them to keep going, he could easily and quickly supply the necessary resources, just as he could give any of us, if he chose, a greatly extended life span. But as a rule he does not--in fact, he endorses happenings that lead us to death. He expects us, when we are able, to make our preparations, and die well.
I wonder, however, how often this happens. The congregational "denial" phases I have heard of are usually extended and painful. Every other member seems to have an idea for a silly nostrum that will help keep the church going, and will be angry at their fellows for pointing out its obvious flaws. There will be charges and counter-charges about whose fault it is, and discussions, often acrimonious, of what might have been done in the past so this state of affairs would not have been reached.
There are always those who see the setbacks that have led to this point as tests of "faith"--specifically, the faith that this church, if everybody just believes, and pulls together, will survive, because God really wants it to--how, indeed, could he not, since we like it? Clearly we must rise to the occasion! But this is foolish, immature talk, and heeding it will only make the suffering longer and more painful. It's like asking why Mother Teresa had to die, or Fr. Zosima's body decomposed in the ordinary way.
During the crisis a very decent and sincere member of my church gave me C. Peter Wagner’s Your Church Can Grow, and was terribly disappointed in me when I told him, "Dave, this is NOT the answer, since it assumes (1) the pastor can exercise influence and authority that this church has, from its beginnings, religiously denied him on “Congregationalist” grounds, and (2) the pastor is willing to function according to principles I regard as sub-Christian." Here I had been talking about faith all these years, and when I finally needed to exercise some by doing what Wagner taught, I fell flat on my face. It is very demoralizing to a congregation when it becomes known that the pastor does not really want the church to grow. Sigh.
If there is anything I learned in my few years as a pastor, though, it’s profound respect for those who manage to do the job, and that’s a very good thing, since I had very little before I tried to do it myself. If you have a good pastor, thank God for him frequently, and do what you can to help him, so that at the end of twenty-five, or thirty, or forty years of ministry, he’ll have reason to celebrate.
I was reminded of this by a letter from someone sorrowfully anticipating the dissolution of her own congregation--a more “natural” death than mine died, for hers is not mortally diseased as mine was. I think it’s just exhausted. As a former pastor of a dying church, I feel quite strongly that such congregations should be allowed to die--that they, just like human beings, when they see the signs of impending death, need to take reasonable steps to dissolve in an orderly and peaceful way. None should be assumed to last forever, and it may also be assumed that if God wanted them to keep going, he could easily and quickly supply the necessary resources, just as he could give any of us, if he chose, a greatly extended life span. But as a rule he does not--in fact, he endorses happenings that lead us to death. He expects us, when we are able, to make our preparations, and die well.
I wonder, however, how often this happens. The congregational "denial" phases I have heard of are usually extended and painful. Every other member seems to have an idea for a silly nostrum that will help keep the church going, and will be angry at their fellows for pointing out its obvious flaws. There will be charges and counter-charges about whose fault it is, and discussions, often acrimonious, of what might have been done in the past so this state of affairs would not have been reached.
There are always those who see the setbacks that have led to this point as tests of "faith"--specifically, the faith that this church, if everybody just believes, and pulls together, will survive, because God really wants it to--how, indeed, could he not, since we like it? Clearly we must rise to the occasion! But this is foolish, immature talk, and heeding it will only make the suffering longer and more painful. It's like asking why Mother Teresa had to die, or Fr. Zosima's body decomposed in the ordinary way.
During the crisis a very decent and sincere member of my church gave me C. Peter Wagner’s Your Church Can Grow, and was terribly disappointed in me when I told him, "Dave, this is NOT the answer, since it assumes (1) the pastor can exercise influence and authority that this church has, from its beginnings, religiously denied him on “Congregationalist” grounds, and (2) the pastor is willing to function according to principles I regard as sub-Christian." Here I had been talking about faith all these years, and when I finally needed to exercise some by doing what Wagner taught, I fell flat on my face. It is very demoralizing to a congregation when it becomes known that the pastor does not really want the church to grow. Sigh.
If there is anything I learned in my few years as a pastor, though, it’s profound respect for those who manage to do the job, and that’s a very good thing, since I had very little before I tried to do it myself. If you have a good pastor, thank God for him frequently, and do what you can to help him, so that at the end of twenty-five, or thirty, or forty years of ministry, he’ll have reason to celebrate.
I suppose I must admit that Bingo may be the Catholic Answer--and I know of Orthodox churches that do very well on their annual fair. But alas, these, like the methods of the Church Growth Movement, are open to question as sub-Christian ways of maintaining a congregation.
Posted by: smh | October 23, 2009 at 11:36 PM
I am one year into my first full-time pastorate, a small, older (avg age, even with my 2 and 4 yr old children, and a few young people we never see, is 64), dying church. The crisis point is not far in our future but we will see if we can avoid it. I am semi-optimistic. But I try to remind my people that while God calls us to be faithful, he never promises that we will see the results we may want to see.
But the continued decline is hard to watch. Many in the church seem to not realize just where we are and how few years we have left if things continue as they are. Perhaps my pastoral work will not end with this church, perhaps it will. I have not yet decided what I will do next if the church does close. But I pray that whatever the case God finds us faithful.
Posted by: Chris Roberts | October 24, 2009 at 01:05 AM
Dying churches are commonly served by men in their first and last pastorates--and by women--and they can be very fine places. There is no necessary shame in the dying, one is under no obligation to hurry the process along, and from time to time such churches are revived. What helps most in such places is a steady hand on the tiller, which is served by a realistic understanding of the reasons for the church's decline. This is not always immediately apparent or limited to one cause. Sometimes it's just "old age." The congregation quit reproducing long ago, and doing what it would have to do to begin again seems indecent.
Perhaps the most vexed question concerns "evangelism." Dying churches are typically marked by having no interest in this at all (they are spiritually old and have no reproductive vigor), and prefer to make it the pastor's job--"that's what we hired you for." But where this is the case, the church has already failed evangelically because evangelism has much more to do than converting people and bringing them in the door. Successful evangelism is the job of the whole church, even those who do not do the bringing-in, but the dying church has almost always become a club in which the criteria for membership become more restrictive as time passes, and which, while it makes every profession of being "friendly" is, as a matter of fact, only friendly to the narrow caste which comprises its own dwindling membership.
I can remember hearing with consternation some old women who wouldn't cross the aisle to greet a visitor wondering among themselves why anyone wouldn't be interested in attending such a friendly church as theirs--and with such a wonderful history! I wanted to go over and kick their miserable old bums right down into Heritage Hall.
The Church Growth people have some parts of their analysis right: young, vigorous congregations are generally not self-generated, but are artifacts of "people movements" much larger than themselves. These may be excited by anything from the conversion of a nation to the revival of a district to an exodus to the suburbs. In the case of my own pastoral charge it was refusal of a small number of Congregationalists to enter the newly formed United Church of Christ, not for doctrinal reasons, but because the new denomination was too "Presbyterian." (After serving among them for a few years, I came to understand why the majority of U.S. Congregationalist ministers wanted, for their own protection, a good stiff dose of Presbyterianism.) Although a paltry one, this was in fact a people-movement.
But the impetus behind these movements eventually wanes, and with it, the powers of church-formation. "Something else" has to happen to sustain the churches, or they will fall to the natural forces of institutional extinction. I grew up in churches that attempted to stem the tide by institutionalizing "revival." The Holy Spirit was put on a calendar and revivals were held every year. But even this can go on for only so long. The Spirit has his own calendar, and people burn out. Now the same churches are trying less invasive, low-commitment methods of excitement, but it seems to me more of the same. They are trying to be Willow Creek, but Willow Creek, like the frontier revivals, will pass away.
Still, all of this is external observation, description of things that happen as a result of what we do not see: the ongoing judgment of Christ on the churches, in which he weighs them in the balances and does to and for them what he will.
Posted by: smh | October 24, 2009 at 10:19 AM
Chris, after my church failed I tried to take another pastorate for duty's sake. But my heart wasn't in it, and anyone who talked to me on the subject at any length could easily tell. I simply couldn't cope with the unending barrage of manure, whether from above or below. But make no mistake, the pastorate is the highest of callings, and a man who can find and hold a place in it is a glorious creature indeed.
Posted by: smh | October 24, 2009 at 10:43 AM
Only being familiar with our local UCC church, also on life support - is it a correct observation that Congregationalist penchant for supporting other lifestyles, mysticism and the like are, well, terminally cancerous?
Posted by: Bull | October 24, 2009 at 04:29 PM
Bull: The growths you mention are not, properly speaking, signs of disease, but attach to corpses after death. Liberal theology was the disease that killed denominations like the UCC, but after they are dead it takes a while for opportunistic organisms to move the process of decay to its end.
Posted by: smh | October 24, 2009 at 08:04 PM
Brother Steve,
First, I deem you a brother in pastoral ministry. If ordination does not bestow an indelible charism, the experience of vocational pastoral ministry certainly marks a man forever, and "forever" is not the wrong word here.
Second, I have "entered" pastoral ministry twice in my life. The first time was immediately after graduation from seminary, and that stint lasted about ten years. During that decade, attempts to do the job, as well as observation of others making the same attempt, convinced me that success seemed to require one or the other of two things: all the virtues of Jesus Christ, or all the wiles of the Devil. I didn't have the former, and I hoped to avoid the latter. I departed vocational pastoral ministry for 15 years.
When I attempted that ministry again, just five years ago, there were differences. The ministry I undertook was not vocational (and still is not), though it is as near to full-time as a five-family parish requires. Everyone knows that my daily bread comes via other routes. Whether this makes me a better pastor or a worse one God knows; but, the pastoral work today is wonderfully free from a variety of threats and temptations I remember from the first stint. Perhaps Paul did tent-making for reasons not usually considered.
And, then, there's that business of "growing the church." I think all of us in our parish long for this, strive for this, and pray constantly for this. If everyone who had joined our parish had remained, we'd have doubled in size. But, job transfers have carried off as many families as have settled in.
For all that, I've never been happier, and our smallness brings with it a number of blessings for all of us that makes me wonder if they could be had in a parish of more "normal" size (whatever that is!).
Posted by: Fr. Bill | October 25, 2009 at 05:53 AM
The sub-Christian ways promoted by C. Peter Wagner are perpetuated today by his protege Gary McIntosh. Here is a flawed gem from his Church Growth Answer Book:
"Relate to today's generation, not to those of the past. Consider what the unchurched must wonder when we sing of raising our Ebonezers (sic)!" (p. 63).
The heart of the CGM is forgetting the past to the degree of biblical ignorance. First of all, if Gary simply read through 1 Samuel he would know how to spell "Ebenezer," but most importantly, he would know it is a biblical term. Apparently, if a word is too difficult to understand at first glance, it must be excised from the church and perhaps our Bibles as well.
This mentality is evident in churches which think themselves to be fundamental or conservatively evangelical. One pastor of one such church, which is changing its music, said "Why are we singing about Scrooge?" Of course, this was in reference to the verse in "Come Thou Fount" which Gary McIntosh also referenced. Does that pastor also read 1 Samuel 4:1 & 7:12 and wonder why Samuel is talking about Scrooge?
Christianity could use an Ebenezer right about now. Not, as in Scrooge, but as in "a stone of help." But, alas, we don't think we need the Lord's help alone for we have devised our own methods which we think work a lot better - in the short run.
Posted by: BLT | October 25, 2009 at 10:27 AM
I think what we see in your present ministry, Fr. Bill, may be in significant ways the norm of the immediate future--for orthodox congregations.
They will sit lightly to church property, the pastors will not be in absolute dependence upon the congregation for their livelihoods (unless they remain unmarried and are willing to live in the honorable estate of poverty), so they will have the freedom to preach and teach Christian doctrine and ethics without worrying about whom they will offend. (For many people, to have their sins excused by ignoring them or concentrating on the sins of others is worth paying for. The dependence of the churches on them is often significant.)
Much less time will be spent taking care of church possessions. The more familial church will be better able to call its members to account and exercise proper discipline--you will not be able to divorce your spouse and just show up smiling next Sunday to be communed. The greater leaders of the churches, and the leadership structure itself, will also be freed from a great deal of property-work, and so to a more fundamentally pastoral function.
These are correctives to what I see as very large problems in our own day, of which the "megachurch" is perhaps the apotheosis. And it is interesting that when I think about the churches that are most outstanding for doing things right, the two that flit most often across my field of vision are the Catholic Church and the Plymouth Brethren, which are normally viewed as on opposite ends of the ecclesiastical spectrum.
Posted by: smh | October 25, 2009 at 12:16 PM
I have a question that I would like to have some biblical guidance on if possible.
My best friend is a member of a very small congregation that just lost their Pastor. The Church has only existed for two years and unfortunately none of the business of the Church is in order. For example, there was never a non-profit incorporation, no by-laws, and the Pastor's widow wants to take over.
The members would like for the Church to continue, for the church to get its business in order, and to make the Associate Pastor the interim pastor.[ I suggested that they encourage the associate pastor to participate in clergy in-training programs and continuing education programs to stregthen his ministry to the church because then they might be able to get more members]. However, each of the members received an e-mail correspondene on today canceling the Bible Study and saying that the Pastor's widow was calling an emergency meeting on tomorrow night,[without prior notice], that she would be bringing a Moderator, and that any member who could not attend would have no future input in any business and would be unable to express any opinions.
The congregation went ahead with the Bible Study that was led by the Associate Pastor and all of the members who can attend will be there on tomorrow night.
The congregation has no desire to be litigious. However, I told my friend that they should ask what items would be on the agenda, who the Moderator would be, what were the things that needed moderating, and I also told my friend that they should tape the meeting so that there would be no misunderstandings. I told her this because the e-mail to the congregation had a very harsh tone and they were also told that they had better be respectful.
The members are saddened beause all they want is for the church to continue.
What is the biblical guidance? Please help.
Posted by: EBarnes | November 04, 2009 at 11:02 PM
Ed,
I seriously doubt anyone is going to provide advice in this situation in this forum. Someone somewhere warned against meddling in quarrels not their own, likening it to pulling a dog's ears. Maybe someone will prove me wrong, but we'll see.
You may reach me at rhooop-list at yahoo.com. I don't know if I have any useful advice. Again, we'll have to see. Depending on your locale, I might be able to put you in touch with someone on the ground nearby.
Posted by: Fr. Bill | November 06, 2009 at 11:19 PM