Where did our members go?

By Stuart Schadt

 Every month, almost, I run across an article or book that sights the decline in church membership among mainline protestant churches. Because I am Episcopal and read Episcopal related news the information usually focuses on the Episcopal Church and reports a significant decline between 1965 and the present. Among the reasons given are versions of:

The Church chasing culture

The Church abandoned scripture

Abandoning the beauty of Elizabethan English

Failure to regularly recite the Ten Commandments

The take over of the church by a northeastern liberal progressive element

            Commitment to social justice rather than faith causes

 Actually the list goes on. And I have no doubt that the author of each piece is writing of their own alienation from the church and the alienation of people they know. And I don't doubt that there is some truth in their interpretation. So I want to just share some of my observations about the lost members.

 I have been a priest for almost thirty years and I have been an Episcopalian for almost 55 years. I went to seminary in 1976 at the ‘wise’ age of 22. My three years of education at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria Virginia were simultaneously the most difficult, challenging and growing years of my life. In seminary I learned to think to depths I had never thought before and I was challenged to write and preach until my ideas were clear and distilled. I left seminary in 1980 at the age of 24.

 My seminary education had thoroughly prepared me to discuss, teach and proclaim the doctrines that had been the critical principles of the protestant reformation in Europe. For the past four hundred years these doctrines and principles had given birth to and shaped what are known as the mainline protestant churches of America. However I soon learned that only a very small percentage of people cared about debating the nuances and differences between single and double predestination, nor even the differences between transubstantiation and consubstantiation and they were not at all concerned about neither the inclusion nor omission of the filioque clause in the creed. The era of post reformation theology had been replaced by a new set of questions and challenges. The mainline churches were ill prepared for the new set of questions and challenges. And we were totally unprepared for the changes in our country.

 1. Did we condemn and reject our own members?

 On our way to a meeting with the city’s architectural review board to debut our great design for a new church our architect warned us, “Their first reaction will be negative, we will point out some of the design features, they will start to name what they like, and then, if we will embrace one or two of their suggestions, no matter how small, they will approve it.” Our architect was right and every meeting we had with the architectural review board followed this pattern.

 When we encounter something new our first response is rejection, if we find it too radical we follow rejection with condemnation, and later anger and then sometimes much later, acceptance.

Is it possible that the church of the 1960’s encountering the radical changes of that time drove away their own children and families from the church? And is it possible that the “elders” of each successive generation are not doing much better at welcoming the questions and challenges and culture of the new generation into the church.

 By the mid-sixties many of the women of the World War two generation had free time on their hands. They were empty nesters or their children were in junior high and high school. These women had run this country, working in every sector of the work force, from 1940 to 1946 while their fathers, husbands and future husbands fought in WWII. Following the war they went home and began raising families. As they found time to do more in the church and the community, the church welcomed them to the sacristy, the choir and the kitchen but not to the vestry table, the diocesan convention, the lectern or the altar. And in many places people said, “How dare they ask?” In the diocese of Texas where I grew up, while the men met in diocesan council, the Episcopal Church Women were welcome to attend their own meeting in the other room. I wonder what your or my parish said about the first women who dared to come to church in pants? I wonder where she went. Maybe she went on to be the CEO of her own business, to busy to come to church. Maybe some of our members found more meaningful places to use their gifts in the operating room, boardroom or the courtroom.

 In the mid and late sixties our young adults were coming home from college with longer hair and fear of being drafted into an ever more violent and disliked war. The church said, “How dare you?” and we sang “Onward Christian Soldiers marching as to war….” I don’t think the church was there for those young adults. On the other hand I don’t think we did any better job of meeting the needs of our young adults who did go to war and returned home. My older brother Bill was active as an acolyte and in the church scout troop. After he completed his six-year enlistment in the air force he never again found his place in the church or any other community. He was 37 when he died. These are the boomers and the ones who stayed with the church or who came back to the church forgiving us are the people who are our current leadership generation in the church. However many of them did not stay and many did not come back

 By the late sixties some version of hard, soft or in-between rock and roll had replaced the big band as the sound of American music. We invited the folk singer and the acoustic guitar in as an occasional guest in the sixties and seventies but we condemned and rejected the bass guitar and drum set that have been the heart of most contemporary popular American music since then. We have continued to favor the organ, which is basically an instrument designed to imitate the orchestra sound. Perhaps those whose hearts and souls are stirred by contemporary music have had them stirred elsewhere while we sang the old familiar hymns. 

 In the late sixties and early seventies the divorce laws in America began to accept that some people just shouldn’t be married. Often, someone had committed adultery or was abusive or in some other way had violated their vows to love and care for the other person. The church though made no distinction, we met these people who were wounded by the end of their marriage with excommunication and when we had the sense not to excommunicate them we often marginalized them. As we later began a process to allow remarriage of a divorced person in the church by permission of the Bishop it seemed that we doubted their fitness for marriage in the church.  We would speak often about how casually people took their marriage vows and how easily they divorced, but the truth is I have not ever known anyone who took their decision to divorce lightly, nor have I known anyone who did not to some degree mourn the death of their marriage. I wonder how many felt judged and condemned and just went somewhere else to continue there lives.

 By the early seventies our high school boys had longer hair, the girls were wearing shorter skirts or jeans. I wasn’t very active in the church then but I do know that even up through the eighties at the church I currently serve, acolytes who showed up in jeans and did not wear black leather shoes were told they could not serve. Those youths would currently be our thirty somethings. I wonder what they are wearing and where they are wearing it.

 We weren’t bad people doing this; it was just our mis-understanding of what the church was about. We thought the church was about setting and upholding standards for our members and our community. We thought we were doing something good by preserving our cultural norms.  But in 1976 with adoption of the new lectionary we began reading far more scripture in church. In fact in a three-year period we read almost the entirety of the four gospels. By 1982 we had read through them twice. We never heard Jesus talking about what people wore or how long their hair was. And we heard how Jesus valued Mary who stayed for the teaching while Martha was in the kitchen, and how at his crucifixion only the women dare to stay close by and at his resurrection he sends Mary Magdalene to tell the apostles and oh by the way if you read the gospel you find out she is not a prostitute like the church always told you she was. We learned how it was really the Samaritan who was the faithful follower of the teachings of Jesus.  In our third reading through the gospels we begin to seek and implement a new vision of church life. Our new vision was inspired by Jesus telling us, “In so much as you have done it unto one of the least of these you have done it unto me.” Our new mission was to seek and serve Christ in all persons.

 2. Did our members get tired of us never being fully true to our word?

 I have known clergy who took significant risk to confront the bastions of segregation that existed in rural Texas up into the seventies. Many of us were proud that the church finally got on board with the Civil Rights movement and took a stand for the equality of all people, but not all of us. The faithfulness of the clergy, who took bold stands to ‘respect the dignity of every human being,’ was often rewarded with limited career opportunities. And when the dust settled we could not help but notice that many towns still had a white Episcopal Church and a black Episcopal Church. The places that successfully combined these two congregations were few and far between.

 When I was in seminary there was a tradition that seminarians would go preach at a distant parish on Theological Education Sunday. In 1978 I volunteered to go to Statesville, North Carolina. As I prepared my sermon I told a conservative classmate who was from Georgia that I was going to go there and preach the Gospel of Martin Luther King Jr. and brotherly love. He warned me I better be careful. I really was only kidding but I was even more surprised to see that this was a placed that had successfully united the black and white congregation into one church. It did happen in some places.  But for the most part we were as slow to change our ways as any other part of the community and just as likely to be uncomfortable at the idea of a biracial couple.

In 1976 the General convention approved the ordination of Women. But at the same time Presiding Bishop John Allin was going around the country openly questioning whether this had been the right thing to do. Women clergy tell me that they regularly had people say to them, “I like you as a priest but in general I don’t approve of women’s ordination.” In fact it was not until the 25^th anniversary of the ordination of women in 2001 that we really openly and boldly said women are at the altar to stay. I wonder how many Episcopal altars have never been blessed, even once, by the Eucharist celebrated by a women priest. Not to mention the dioceses that refuse to welcome any women. We said yes with our words but not fully with our hearts and spirit. I can only thank God for the women who faithfully and patiently served through these years. And I wonder how many women may have given up on us because they felt they only had an improved position in the church but not full inclusion in the church. 

 I have friends who are a gay couple raising a child. They would like to raise their child in the church but it is not enough for them that New Hampshire has a gay bishop and that some Episcopal Churches are gay friendly. It is not enough because they know the church at its heart still says, “We doubt the validity of your love for one another.” We have always had Gay clergy in the church. They stayed politely closeted as confirmed bachelors and sometimes unfortunately as married men. My wife remembers fondly a confirmed bachelor priest who they knew. Circa. 1990 Bishop Rightor on behalf of the Bishop of Newark ordained an openly Gay man to the priest hood. This was followed by four other such ordinations and probably many more. But once we consecrated Gene Robinson as Bishop it became clear that there were many in the church that did not welcome our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. As we discussed this in my parish, members began to tell us that the gay people in their lives were their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers. When we tell our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters that we are not yet ready for their full inclusion in the life of the church I wonder how welcome they and their extended family feel. I wonder if they stay.

 Maybe some of our members get tired of us respecting the dignity of every human being but not really.

 3. Who likes conflict?

 I have had people tell me that when they were growing up they were glad when their parents finally got a divorce because it meant the fighting stopped. People have told me they quit their job because there was too much conflict in that work place. People find that life is too short to spend arguing and angry. Unfortunately from the early 70’s through the early 90’s the Episcopal Church seemed to deal with everything through conflict. We found ourselves in conflict over the Prayerbook, over women’s ordination, over the departure of the old rector, the arrival of the new rector and just about everything else in the church. Conflict became our default mode for dealing with change.

Some of us said, “It’s good to have a healthy exchange of views,” but others said, “Where, oh where, is the peace of God,” and they went other places to look for it. I currently try to practice a ministry with open and honest discussion of the issues in the church and the world and we work very hard to do it in love and respect for each other realizing that faithful Christians can see things very differently and still be true to our faith. We need to learn that Jesus calls us to love one another, not to shout louder than the other person.

 4. We ordained clergy who led people out of the church.

 After all these decades of sending members away we then ordained clergy who would lead them away. In the post reformation, post world war two Episcopal Church in America we sent many people to seminary who grew up in other traditions. They were people who in some way had fallen in love with the Episcopal Church. They gave the church a broadness of perspectives but they were also deeply committed to the church. Their time in seminary not only deepened their love of the church, it gave that love foundations in history and theology.

 In the late 70’s my seminary class reflected this same type of diversity. People had catholic, Baptist, congregational and evangelical backgrounds. There were some who had spent their youth in Episcopal pews but their formative religious experience had happened in evangelical organization like Campus Crusade or Young Life. *  The evangelical, charismatic, Jesus People spirituality of the 70's was part of what awakened me to God at work in my life. But as I think about these people in my seminary class I don’t remember any of these people expressing a love of the Episcopal Church. They were more likely to be faultfinders. Some of us were transformed by seminary into or back into Episcopalians but others managed to go through unchanged. It was no surprise to me when in 1998 I learned that one of my classmates, serving in a fairly conservative diocese, had lead his congregation out of the Episcopal Church. It was no surprise when I learned one of my classmates had been accepted as a married Roman priest. The other six or so classmates of mine who have lead people out of the church do not surprise me.

 In the early 90’s I was in the fortunate position to be looking for an assistant. Our bishop always wants us to interview the graduating seniors the diocese sponsored for seminary. The Bishop wants placements for all the new deacons. There were two not yet placed when I was doing interviews. I chose to hire neither one. The Bishop wanted feed back and I told him not only could I not see a place for them at Trinity I could not see a place for them in the Episcopal Church. In fact I added, “I would not have sent them to seminary.” I would like to tell you I was a little smoother in my answer but I am afraid I wasn’t. That same Bishop would later be faced with the unpleasant task of inhibiting almost twenty members of his clergy for the abandonment of the communion, a communion I think they never really joined.

 I was at lunch one day in 2007 with about a fifteen clergy. We were discussing the issues raised by the ordination of Gene Robinson. Half of these clergy would in the next few years lead their congregations out of the Episcopal Church. As we came near to the point where all had been said, one of the clergy who remains with the Episcopal Church asked if the others believed she was saved. Quickly one of the clergy, who would later be part of a departing congregation, replied, “if we could spend another thirty minutes in honest conversation I might be able to answer that.” In all the conflicts of the past 30 years I cannot remember hearing one member of the clergy express doubts about the salvation of another member of the clergy. This was not salvation by grace and baptism but some version of ‘born again’ Christianity* that wanted to know the time and place of your acceptance of Jesus as Lord along with the adherence to an agreed narrow definition of the word preached and the sacraments rightly administered.  

In the 1950’s and maybe even the early ‘60’s people were accepted for sponsorship to seminary and priest hood based on the word of their Rector and often a single meeting with their Bishop. By the seventies the ordination in some diocese required as many as 48 interviews or reviews of qualifications. And yet it is this more ‘thorough process’ that seems to have sent people to seminary who lacked a basic commitment and loyalty to the Episcopal Church. The process of the 1990’s got so cumbersome that it was nothing for it to take 3 – 4 years for a candidate to even get to start seminary. Maybe this new thorough yet ineffective process was loosing good people.

 *These are excellent Christian organizations but they are not characterized by any of the defining marks of the Episcopal Church. i.e. liturgical worship, sacraments, holy orders, the Prayerbook.

 * I mean no disrespect to ‘born again’ Christianity. I simply note that to ask, “Have you been saved,” or “When were you saved,” are not questions that have characterize the Episcopal tradition.

 5. And finally we failed to adapt.

 The mainline denominations built major edifices in the 19^th century and the first half of the 20^th century. To our members these were the expression of real church. Our corporate and personal spiritual commitment to these edifices mad us very slow to respond to the changing landscape following WWII. Suburbia began to grow and has kept growing and changing. I think our first thought was “wouldn’t our members continue to travel to the church of their parents and grandparents.” For a while the answer was yes but us cities spread further and the commute grew longer the answer became no.  Many of these people turned to the suburban church and found new faith and excitement in being part of the body of believers that went from store front mission to full fledge parish. But many others found the church of the suburbs to lack the grandeur of “real” church.  I don’t believe we were idolaters, worshiping the structure and not God. I do think in our belief that the church’s mission was to up hold the standards and values of Christian society we thought the suburban start up all to often made an inadequate statement.

 Some other denominations with out such an edifice complex were more adaptable. In my town of Manassas the Assembly of God church is on its fourth location in the past 40 years, always seeking ground to expand. There are numerous non-mainline churches that left Washington, D.C. to follow their members to the Maryland suburbs.  

 We are people of the incarnate word but we are challenged to realize that the spirit of God is incarnate in the body of believers and not in the buildings where we worship.

 

 So where are we now?

 We need to learn lessons from the past but not beat up each other nor our selves over it.  We need to be open to learning the lessons of the past, even those we don’t want to learn. We need to be open to making room in the church for each successive generation aware that they share our traditions but also will want to change those traditions. If we can keep the process of change going through evolution perhaps we can avoid revolutions.  And finally we need to focus on our future. We are guided into the future by our baptismal covenant. Our commitment to:

 ·        God in three persons

·        Continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread and in the prayers.

·        Persevere in resisting evil, repent and return to the Lord.

·        Proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ.

·        Seek and serve Christ in all persons and to love our neighbor as our self.

·        Strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.

 Each Sunday as we gather we hear and embrace in the scriptures the teachings of the apostles and we are joined in fellowship with one another and with God in the Eucharist.

Each time we gather for baptism we renew our covenant with God, the church and each other. And finally though I think it is important to watch numbers and ponder the messages they may hold for us I always try to remember the advise of a wise Christian Education director who was fond of saying, “Jesus told us to feed the sheep not to count them.”