Vestry Retreat Season: Lessons about Church Vitality

It is the season for vestry retreats across the Diocese and I hope the issue of church vitality will be on every Vestry‘s agenda.  Part of my wrap-up work in phase one of our Diocesan Church Growth Program has been to prepare some slides for use in these Vestry Retreats to guide the discussion.

Thanks to Kathy Wills for the great ‘forward together’ stewardship graphic being used at St. Timothy’s this year.

Before your vestry retreat go to the national church website and download the Diocesan and congregation charts about your own membership, average Sunday attendance and pledge unit statistics and take them to your retreat.

If your congregation wants help from the Executive Council of the Diocese of California in planning your own course of action to address the church vitality and growth potential in your congregation please call ANY member of the Executive Council.  We have church growth and revenue growth team members ready and willing to work with any congregation that seeks our help.

So far 30 congregations across the Diocese of California have responded to Bishop Marc’s call to action to develop a church vitality action plan, participate in the Diocesan webinars and programs and get every member of your congregation involved in something that calls them to be the Body of Christ.

Peace be with you!

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Guarding the Vision of the Church’s Future

“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keeps the law, happy is he.” Proverbs 29:18

Where there is no vision, the people perish seems plainly clear. But the second part of the verse about keeping the law could also be translated as guarding the direction of the vision, then the word happy literally means blessed. So, people perish when there is no vision, but those that guard the direction of the vision are blessed.

For the past five months the Bishop and Executive Council, of which I am a member, have been engaged in a process of discernment about the future of the Episcopal Diocese of California.  That discernment is focused on whether the church will grow or die.  I know, to say the church is dying is a shocking and provocative use of words.  But how else can you describe a nearly twenty year trend of steady average decline in membership, average Sunday attendance and pledging of -3.3% per year.

At that -3.3% per year rate of decline the church shrinks by 50% every decade.

In August 2011 when Bishop Marc Andrus came to the Executive Council of the Diocese of California and asked for our help to breathe new vitality into the church and get the congregations growing again, he did not tell us how to do it—he just said we need to do this!

Sitting around that Council table we all understood the existential threat we face.

Fast forward nearly six months after study, prayer and consultations across the Diocese.  The church growth program sought to raise the awareness of the clergy and laity to this problem by naming it, talking often about it, asking questions about why this is happening and challenging the lay leaders across the congregations to take up the challenge of getting the church growing again.

We held four workshops focused on church attendance and membership growth.  We held a workshop on revenue growth challenges.  We went to each of the six deaneries of the Diocese to name the problem and ask each congregation to commit to working on a proactive plan of their own they will beginning to implement in 2012 to set clear and measurable church vitality and growth goals.

Today more than 30 of the 80 congregations in the Diocese have committed to participation in the Bishop’s church vitality challenge by participating in monthly webinars, develop action plans and sharing the results of their efforts with others.

It turns out that “sharing” is harder than it should be.

The traditional church model is built around small parishes.  When we wanted to grow the church we simply built a new church assuming if we did the people would come and for generations they did come.  But much has changed in the world and in the way the world affects our lives.  Today we depend more on technology to communicate in our fast paced, mobile society.  The church is not the common meeting place it once was for communities.

The Good News is we still want Jesus in our lives.  We still want to give our kids a solid faith foundation.  We still want to be in community with others.  We still want to be surrounded by people who accept us as we are, and support us in our times of need, and pray with us and for us.  We still want to serve others.  And we still want the church to make this possible for us and to be there for us.

But as with the rest of the institutions that touch our lives we also expect the church to ‘keep up’ with changing times and walk our journey of faith with us as we pray, learn, worship and serve others.

The Good News in our discernment process is that the problem of church decline is not a failure of faith on the part of the people, it is a failure of the institutions and methods of the church to grow with us, change with us, be in community with us—as we are TODAY—and where we are going TOMORROW.

How do we get the church growing again and breath new vitality into the old bones of the institution? The answers have been right in front of us all the time.  God has been whispering the knowledge of what to do in our hearts for a long time—the words just have not traveled to our ears and head so we can turn them into action.

What do I mean?

The Church is the Living Body of Christ entrusted to the People who Love and Serve the Lord.  It is our responsibility as members of the Body of Christ to do the work God has given us to do.  All we have to do to get the church growing again is get up out of the pews and quit going through the motions. Bishop Marc’s call to each congregation to “get with it, people” is all the permission we need to empower our actions.  Talk to your neighbors and find ways that work for your congregation to throw open the doors and invite the community to join you.  Reach out to those in need and be the Body of Christ for them.

Empowering the People to Act means the Institutions of the Church Must Support Them.  Waiting for direction from the Bishop and Clergy is not the answer for people who already are empowered to do God’s work.  We can’t ‘delegate up’ the job God has given us to do. He expects us to do His work in the vineyard ourselves.  It may be more than coincidence that the steady decline in the church membership, attendance and pledging parallels the growth in the professional staff of the church.  Most congregations still are small enough that they can only afford a priest.  The rest of the work of the congregation gets done when its members roll up their sleeves and get it done.  Part of the decline of church membership and attendance may be a perception that showing up does not make a difference.  Until every person counts and the absence of any member is noticed, the church is just a routine and not a community we feel called to.  That is the challenge for every congregation—make every person count, make them feel indispensible to the Body of Christ because to Christ every person is loved unconditionally.

Investing in Our Community Faith Journey Together.  Increasingly the tedious ways we ‘do church’ turn us off because in the rest of our lives we use technology, build and nurture community, and share information that lives into our values and goals.  The church must get with the technology program if it wants the people to work in the vineyard.

• WE NEED NEW TOOLS FOR WORKING TOGETHER COLLABORATIVELY. I repeat my observation that the single most empowering thing we have learned from the church growth program action planning phase is that the Diocese of California NEEDS a social collaboration system on line that encourages us, empowers us, supports us to break out of our congregational silos and work together across congregations, across deaneries, across ministry programs to do God’s work.   We need more than a wall on FaceBook and Twitter.  We need virtual work spaces to share idea, hold meetings, share information.  We need one common place to go for church information not a thousand sites we must remember.

• NEW WAYS TO DO BIBLE STUDY.  In our church growth program we learned about The Restoration Project, a wonderful small group ministry focused on Bible study.  And we learned about YouVersion, an online program that connects small Bible study groups around the world.  If the Diocese created ONE social network where we could go to access these and scores of other prayer, study and support programs and services think how much easier it would be to BE IN COMMUNITY WITH EACH OTHER.

• NEW WAYS TO DO OUTREACH. We need new ways to design, support and do outreach such as the way sites like Volunteer Marin or kickstart.org to allow people to directly support outreach projects across the Diocese.

You can find more ideas on the church growth program homepage for how technologies that we use in our personal and business lives every day can e adapted to meet the needs of the church to breathe new vitality into our institutions, throw open the doors to new people eager to find their way on their spiritual journey and get people involved in doing God’s work in the vineyard that will change the lives of those they touch and help them find Christ in their hearts where he’s been all along.

You don’t need permission—just do it!

Related articles

• Growing the Church means Seeing Christ in Each Person (churchgrowthprogram.com)
• Notes from Church2Go December 10th Workshop (churchgrowthprogram.com)
• Parable of the Wicked Tenants: What are the Lessons for the Church Growth Program? (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• CHURCH2GO: Connecting the Body of Christ in an Episcopal Social Network (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• Bishop Marc’s Call for Congregational Vitality (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• Introducing our new Church Growth Program (churchgrowthprogram.com)
• Church Decline or Growth: Pick One! (churchgrowthprogram.com)
• Calling All Church Geeks (churchgrowthprogram.com)

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Nielsen Study of Optimism and Opportunity for Women

I have not written much about our 20/20 Vision process lately.

It has been dormant while St. Timothy’s searches for a new rector believing that whoever God calls to be the shepherd of our flock should be an active participant in framing our parish vision for the future.

But that should not stop us from research and examination of useful information when that 20/20 Vision process picks up again hopefully next year.

So here is a good news story to keep your attention focused on our 20/20 prize.

Nielsen is out with a very interesting new study of the attitudes of women.  What makes this study useful for our work in the Church Growth Program is the breakdown of the data from the survey results across ethnic and other demographic lines that make it a good resource for planning mission and ministry programs.

We’re learning from the 2010 Census data about the profound changes in demographics reshaping our country.  Those changes are not just ethnic they are also being reshaped by the changing role of women in the workplace and in our society.  Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group and their attitudes about optimism and opportunity will have major impacts on media, retail and manufacturers now and in the years ahead—and provide lessons about of message of hope and opportunity for an optimistic role for woman in the Episcopal Church.

The Nielsen study offers good news for our mission and ministry work in the vineyard over the next year working congregation by congregation to help each devise a church vitality and growth strategy that works for them.  Its focus on attitudes about optimism and opportunity are very important benchmarks for our church vitality and growth work ahead.

So what are the headlines from this Nielsen study?

• Optimism was highest among African American and Hispanic women, especially how they viewed the opportunities they have had compared with those of their mothers.
• Women of today are not only optimistic for themselves, they expect their daughters to have more opportunity than they do.
• American women are heavy users of technology – even if they aren’t early adopters. Women of all ethnicities use media in similar ways, with one key exception: smartphones. Just 33 percent of Caucasian women have a smartphone in their household, compared to penetration rates in the 60s for women of other ethnicities.

I recommend this Nielsen Report to you:  Women of Tomorrow: U.S. Multicultural Insights.

Related articles

• Church Growth and Vitality in East Contra Costa County (churchgrowthprogram.com)
• DioCal Convention Endorses Bishop Marc’s Call for Church Growth & Vitality (churchgrowthprogram.com)
• The Growth Potential from Social Networking the Church (churchgrowthprogram.com)

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Growing the Church is about Community

Growing the church again after years of slow steady decline in membership, attendance and pledge support is a challenge facing every mainline denomination.  For the Episcopal Church in the United States the decline has been a steady -3.3% per year in the key metrics.  For the Diocese of California, the implications of this are profound.

At that current rate of decline, DioCal will have one-half the pledge units (<5000) in 2022 than it had at the beginning of this new millennium in 2000.  Similar reductions in membership and average Sunday attendance are forecast and the result is that the Episcopal Church faces an existential threat to its relevance let alone it vitality.

The reasons for decline are varied ranging from changing demographics, changes in our religious traditions as secularization pushes faith out of the public square, our schools and many other places.  And there are the self-inflicted wounds of churches who still believe they have a monopoly on people’s religious faith experiences and act like lords rather than worshipping our Lord.  Then there are the seemingly endless conflicts of church politics, religious strife and other bad press that make church—every church— seem less inviting, less safe, less home.

This is a message of renewal not dispair

The church has a big problem, but it also has the Holy Spirit calling us to put aside these burdens and follow our own Great Commission to go out there and make disciples of all the nations—starting with our neighbors. This is not a message we hear very much in the Episcopal Church because we have not had a theological tradition of being evangelists.  Instead our congregations are often silos that shelter us from an outside world we fear rather than unite us with a wider community we should embrace. The fact of church decline is testimony that this strategy is not working.  That we are coming to recognize church decline as the #1 problem facing the church today is the Hold Spirit at work guiding us to fix it.

Over the past several months, the diocese of California has been working in the vineyard trying to assess this problem of church decline right here in the Diocese of California and listening for God to show us what we can do to fix this problem.

This is what we are hearing in the Church Growth Program:

1. Help me discover Jesus in my life and support me on my personal faith journey.
2. Help me give my kids a good faith foundation that will guide their lives.
3. Give me options to pray, worship and serve others on my terms, in my time available.
4. Help me be in community with others who share my faith and welcome me as I am.
5. Spare me from church politics and the hassles that get in the way of my faith journey.

These simple yet powerful messages are the hope of the church.  They symbolize the deep spiritual faith of people who love God and seek Christ but often see church hierarchy and bureaucracy as out of touch and in the way just as Jesus found the Pharisees in his own time.

The lesson is The Good News is still good news and people still want to hear it. The graphic above is a new way to see church the way we are—-in community with each other.  This is a simple —and far from complete representation of two growth opportunities for the Diocese of California waiting for us to discover ways to meet them.  In East Contra Costa and Southern Alameda amazing changes are taking place.  The rapid growth of new communities in the last boom market followed by the rapid halt to that growth in the current recession and slow recovery is transforming the Diocese of California demographically, geographically, and economically.  Yet the Episcopal Church has a fragmented and weak presence in these new centers for Diocesan growth.

How will we respond?

That is the big question and the big answer to our church growth problem.  God has laid before us a canvas rich in multicultural and ethnic diversity.  The current economic hardships see people hungry for a community of faith where they can find hope, renewal, support and love when they need it most.  The question for the church is—are we going to sit in our congregational silos and wait for all these people to find us—or are we going to reach out and invite them to be part of our communities of faith?

Growing the church is about growing community—and being in community.  It is Jesus calling us to live into our own Great Commission as disciples invites others to join us.  To do God’s work we have to put aside some of the old ways of the church that divide us, separate us from our mission in the vineyard and remember that we are sisters and brothers of the body of Christ.

On October 15^th at St. Clare’s Episcopal Church in Pleasanton, the membership growth team workshop will focus on the Dougherty Valley growth opportunities for church growth brainstorming with St. Clare’s, St. Bartholomew’s and St. Timothy’s members about new ways to ‘do church’ and build community to be the Body of Christ in truth as well as in name.  Join us 9am to noon.

Related articles

• Episcopal Realities: Getting Back to Growth (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• CHURCH2GO: Connecting the Body of Christ in an Episcopal Social Network (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• Census 2010 clues for Growing the Church (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• Church Decline or Growth: Pick One! (churchgrowthprogram.com)
• Farmers Market Casual Evangelism (diocalparishgrowth.com)

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Lessons on Church Marketing

Robb Harrell is a Lutheran Pastor in Florida and he writes a very interesting blog called Praying with Evagrius.  A recent post was on the subject of church marketing and getting your message right.  It is a good read and I recommend it to you

http://prayingwithevagrius.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/church-marketing/

I’m now involved in the Diocese of California Church Growth Program and issues to marketing and communications are front and center as a strategy for getting the church growing again by broadening the base and reaching out to the unchurched and underserved.

But what is the church message? 

Father Robb offers some good advice to consider:

“About once a week or so I get a postcard from some local mega church advertising their programs or sermon series. These programs and sermon series are supposedly meant to meet the needs of the consumer. There is one problem with this approach: I don’t think people really know what their own needs are.

Let me say it one more time with clarity: I don’t think most people know what they need. Yet we have an entire church marketing machine that is based on fulfilling consumer needs. The trickle-down effect of this is that smaller mainline churches feel the need to compete with such efforts as a matter of survival. We begin to ask what people want out of church instead of asking what people need from the church.

I was watching Religion and Ethics Newsweekly a couple of weeks ago when they interviewed Eugene Peterson, who is a retired Presbyterian pastor and prolific author. In the course of the interview, Peterson said, “The minute the church and pastors start saying what do people want and then giving it to them, we betray our calling. We’re called to have people follow Jesus. We’re called to have people learn how to forgive their enemies. We’re called to show people that there is a way of life which has meaning beyond their salary or beyond how good they look.”

I was really struck by the statement. The prophet Jeremiah (as translated by Peterson in The Message) says that, “The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out.” How can we structure the church on the basis of what the human heart desires when we know that the human heart is capable of deceit? The truth is that this following of Jesus and forgiving of enemies is hard stuff. Who wants to do hard stuff?

Thomas Merton once said that the world is in need of a revolution, one that only Christianity can provide. Churches need to better discern who they are and what their core message happens to be before entering the fray of engagement with the world and culture around them. So often churches become nothing more than a reflection of the culture around them rather than a threat of revolution.”

Related articles

• The Church, Then and Now (prophetshrek.wordpress.com)
• Eugene Peterson on The Jesus Way (cruciality.wordpress.com)
• Flotsam and jetsam (9/1) (westernthm.wordpress.com)
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• The call of the Laity – empower us in the world we live! (cesarsalad.wordpress.com)
• Church Decline or Growth: Pick One! (churchgrowthprogram.com)
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• “Who the unchurched really are” via Gene Veith (heidelberg26.wordpress.com)
• Episcopal Realities: Getting Back to Growth (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• Census 2010 clues for Growing the Church (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)

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Lessons of Church Decline and Renewal

The Episcopal Church is not the only mainline protestant denomination with declining membership.  It is a disease as common as the common cold. But it is going to take more than clever ads trying to attract disaffected Roman Catholics to get the church growing again.

But so far, the mainline churches have not found a remedy for the disease.  Is the church boring?  It is relevant in the lives of the faithful? These are questions being asked, but we know from greeting newcomers that there still is a yearning to find a way to have Christ in our lives.  We still feel the call of parents of young children seeking to  give them a solid Christian foundation upon which to grow and develop lifetime values.  We still feel the need for solace and renewal in the voice of one who has lost a spouse or child.  We hear the pleas of those who are lonely, sick, troubled, and adrift.  There is a yearning for spiritual healing, renewal, community and hope that can not be found anywhere else.  The job of the church and each of us as part of the Body of Christ is to give it to them! This is the mission of the church today and tomorrow as it has been for a millennium.

Stopping the decline in church membership and attendance is not about abandoning the values of the church or its caring for the faithful.  It is about finding news ways to connect with them, to reach out to them, to be with them in a world of constant change. It is making them feel loved not just welcomed.  It is asking them to help us not just show up and watch.  We become the Body of Christ by being busy doing God’s work not just sitting there each Sunday transferring body heat to the wood pews.

News reports surface regularly of more bad news about the decline in church membership, average Sunday attendance and participation.  The latest from the Southern Baptists with the message to quit denying reality and wake up, people! The story in the Baptist Press by Ed Stetzer is from a guy who knows a thing or two about church growth and church planting.  His prescription is a mixture of doing more of everything the Southern Baptists have done:

1. A need for mission deo to get out there and do God’s work in the vineyard
2. A need for diversity
3. A need for a new generation
4. A need for renewal in church planting.

The article is plaintive and sad because even though Stetzer is talking about growing the church his prescription is more recommendations on trying home remedies that have not yet cured his patient.  You can’t just go through the motions.

“We don’t change until the pain of staying the same grows greater than the pain of change. May the truth break our hearts, drive us to our knees and compel us into the mission.”

In an equally pessimistic blog post by Jay Vorhees, a pastor in a declining United Methodist congregation, he laments that each day he hopes for a kind of Lazarus miracle that will somehow result in the Holy spirit breathing new life into a failed body.  He says he tries to tell his congregation the truth but often they don’t want to hear it.

These two examples are part of the reason churches are ‘in a rut’ today.  We don’t want to come to church to be depressed.  These examples focus on the past not the future.  They see things that are bad not the joy in the church.  They relate to people in the ways of yesterday not the ways of today or the aspirations for a joyful tomorrow.  For them things happening are depressing.

The church is about joy!

Contrast these first two examples with a paper written by a young Presbyterian pastor on social media policies and his own experience when his congregation told him it would not buy him a smart phone.

“When I graduated from a Presbyterian seminary and took my first position as a part-time pastor in a small rural church, I expected my days of heavy social media use would soon end. Before I arrived, the congregation rejected my request for a smart-phone, and when I finally did move into my office I found a large stack of ancient cassette tapes on my desk. Surely my days of frequent networking on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs were over. Surely I would soon experience the loneliness many rural pastors feel, disconnected from their colleagues due to geography and lack of communication. But, to my surprise and joy, I was dead wrong.

Within a few months of beginning my time as pastor at a small rural church, I had found a supportive and very helpful community on Twitter with which I interacted daily. I explored Facebook groups and several online chat platforms with ministry colleagues. My blog became a valuable ministry tool for conversation and collaboration. Even a status update on Facebook could bring comments of support and encouragement (e.g. a book suggestion, a website recommendation, a word of caution or calm, even a prayer). I also found, to my surprise, that my congregation had a Facebook page of its own that I could update and use to connect to those in our community (Facebook, 2010). Furthermore, as I continued my practice of blogging on the church, ministry, and contemporary issues, as well as posting any sermons I preached, I slowly found that members of my congregation enjoyed reading my blog — and especially consulting the sermons they heard on Sunday mornings. Though they would rarely comment on posts online, many members have told me in person that they peruse my website often. In person, then, we discuss my blog posts or the comment of another read posted online.”

Do you feel the difference in tone and the sense of optimism rather than pessimism in the voice of Pastor Adam Copeland.  Maybe he was just young and not yet grounded in the ways of the established church.  Maybe he didn’t realize he was not supposed to adapt the technology and social media customs he acquired in college to his work as a pastor.

But a funny thing happened in a stogy old congregation resistant to change—-Adam connected with the people in the pews in ways they could scarcely have imagined.  He got to know them, and they him.  They bonded and worked together and prayed together—isn’t that what church is supposed to be about?

The technology did not change the church.  It changed the attitudes of the people about the value and meaning and potential of the church for their lives.  And that makes all the difference.

Related articles

• CHURCH2GO: Connecting the Body of Christ in an Episcopal Social Network (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• Episcopal Realities: Getting Back to Growth (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• The Dwindling Church: Can We Stop the Bleeding? (lifebrook.wordpress.com)
• Pastors in jeans and Hawaiian shirts (johnmeunier.wordpress.com)
• Southern Baptists Have Fewest Baptisms Since The 1950s And Are Losing Members (huffingtonpost.com)

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Census 2010 clues for Growing the Church

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A key issue facing the Episcopal Church, the Diocese of California and St. Timothy’s is the long, slow decline in the membership of the mainline Protestant religions. The Episcopal Church of the US has about 2 million members, down 3% or 50,000 members from 2008 to 2009.

Average Sunday Attendance in the Diocese of California has declined since 1988

In January 2000, parishes of the Diocese of California had average Sunday attendance of 10, 994 people and 9,686 pledge units.  By January 2011 average Sunday attendance (ASA) has fallen to 8,169 people and pledge units were down to 7,047.  Despite these declines, total Diocesan pledge income grew from $14.0 million in 2000 to $18.2 million in 2008 before the recession but since has fallen to $16.4 million in 2011.  The growth in the average pledge across the Diocese, just as at St. Timothy’s masked the big problem—the Episcopal Church is not growing!

If these trends of ASA decline of -3.3% per year and average pledge income decline of -2.6% per year continue, by 2020 ASA will fall to 6,096 people (down 45% from 2000), 5,259 pledge units (down 46% from 2000) and total expected pledges of $13.1 million (down 28% from 2008 and 6% lower than 2000 levels).

St. Timothy’s 20/20 Vision Goal is to Buck the Trend and Grow the Church

Our 20/20 Vision goals to be a welcoming parish open to all and to live into the mission work of the church by doubling the parish pledge base and participation by the year 2020 are serious challenges to these long term membership trends. To buck the trend requires that St. Timothy’s and other congregations reach out to the unchurched and underserved, collaborate with the Diocese and work with other congregations to attract the faithful in order to achieving the 20/20 Vision goals.

Growing the Church is one of the biggest challenges awaiting our new Rector.

The 2010 census results have profound implications for the church and powerfully align with the 20/20 Vision goals St. Timothy’s Vestry has set. In 2003 during the 50^th anniversary year, the Vestry affirmed our unbroken chain of faith in the call in 1953 by Bishop Shires to ‘plant a mission congregation down the road in the San Ramon Valley. Rector Hodgkin of St. Paul’s Walnut Creek responded to that call and one month later formed St. Timothy’s mission and a Vicar was named. Surely God’s hand was at work in that speedy response to the call.

What does the 2010 Census mean for church growth?

• Census 2010 tells the story of our growing cultural diversity. Our best opportunities for growth are to welcome our neighbors to worship with us. Both Hispanic and Asian segments of the population are the fastest growing over the past ten years and in California no one racial group will be the majority in our shared future. If the Episcopal Church is to grow it must find ways to welcome and incorporate people of many cultures here at home just as the church does across the Anglican Communion.
• Census 2010 tells us our population is getting older, having fewer kids and Bay Area growth has slowed and not just because of the recession. The 5.4 percent Bay Area growth is the smallest net growth since the 1930’s. Oakland lost 2.2 percent of its population since 2000. Danville is the heart of the fastest growing county in the Bay Area. We should continue to be attractive as a place to live, work and worship especially with continued change in the demographic make-up of our market service area.
• But Contra Costa County grew10.6%–faster than any of the nine Bay Area counties and is now the ninth largest county in California with over 1 million people out of a total Bay Area population of 7.15 million with a 5.4 percent growth since 2000.  San Francisco grew by 3.7 percent.
• Who will serve the new growth in our Dougherty Valley backyard if not us?  Bishop Marc Andrus asked St. Timothy’s to work with St. Clare’s in Dublin Pleasanton and St. Bartholomew’s in Livermore to assess the mission and ministry needs of the Dougherty Valley area all three parishes serve. More than 25,000 homes will be built in the area and between our three churches we can welcome many families seeking a new parish home. Our job is to help them discover us.

St. Timothy’s is well positioned for growth. Our parish is in the “sweet spot” of growth in the nine county Bay Area and we have a solid, thriving parish foundation from which to grow for the future.  But we must have a social networking, communications and marketing strategy as diverse as the communities we have the opportunity to serve.

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Episcopal Realities: Getting Back to Growth

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In March 2011 I wrote about the long decline in average Sunday attendance and membership in the mainline protestant religions.  It isn’t a new problem or one we face alone.  The Episcopal Church has been in a long slow decline since at least 1988 and so has the Diocese of California.

Our Declining Membership Challenge. At the beginning of the new millennium in 2000 the Diocese of California saw average Sunday attendance of 10,994 but by the beginning of 2011 it had dropped to 8,169 (-26%).  The problem was masked because despite the decline in pledge units from 9686 beginning 2000 to 7047 beginning 2011 pledge giving grew from $14.0 million in 2000 to $16.4 million in 2011 an increase of 17% as the average pledge grew from $1,442 to $2,332.  But if you project that declining attendance and falling pledge units forward and consider the changing demographics of a population growing older the numbers tell a very different story for the Episcopal Diocese of California.

Forecasting Today’s Decline Rate Forward to 2022.  By 2022 average Sunday attendance is forecast to decline to 5712 at its average -3.3% rate each year.  Pledge units will decline from 7210 in 2010 to 4928 in 2022.  And pledge income is forecast to fall to $12.4 million for the diocese in 2022 down from $16.9 million in 2010 even though the average pledge will grow to $2, 525 in 2022 from $2,316 in 2010.

Growing the Church from the Congregations Up

As a member of the Executive Council of the Diocese of California the realities we face are that we must find ways to grow average Sunday attendance, pledge units and average pledge size year over year not just to do the mission and ministry work of the church, but to afford the work we are doing today. The only way to arrest this decline is to help the congregations grow filling their pews with new faces, new pledge units, and new hands and hearts out doing the work of the church.

When the congregations thrive and grow, the entire church will grow again. No organization can successfully raise money, recruit priests or launch new programs when it is seen as being in decline or where the forecast is as sobering as losing 50% of your members and 25% of your income when you depend upon those members to sustain the work of the church.  We are not an aging church. We are a church struggling to be relevant in the lives of the faithful bombarded with competing demands on their time, talent and treasure.

We are not here just to offer service, we’re here to offer salvation, to offer a faith foundation for kids, a network of caring support for those in need.  We offer renewal and spiritual healing.  We pray for you and we will be there for you in time of need.  You are family and we love you just the way you are.

This is the message Jesus preached more than 2000 years ago and it is still true today.  Our mission and challenge is to open our doors and our hearts wide enough to let the light of Christ shine on our whole community beckoning them home.

Yet in our Diocese a growing number of our 80 congregations are struggling financially.  The smallest and weakest can no longer afford the cost of a single priest or struggle with the growing costs of deferred maintenance on buildings the congregation can no longer afford.  We need to find ways to hold up and sustain faith communities at whatever stage of their life journey.  That may mean freeing them from the chains of aging structures.  It may mean matching them with larger congregations willing to be partners in Christ with them and help them.  It means reaching out to the faithful and those seeking Christ in their lives and helping them find a place where they can be at home, at peace at one with Christ.

The answer for us is NOT to keep raising the Diocesan assessment which taxes the growing parishes by requiring them to pay 20% of their income over $62,000 per year to the diocese to make up the gap in income from the decline.  Doing so eats the seed corn of the church by diminishing the capacity of thriving congregations at a time when the church badly needs them to grow even faster.

The answer to is to broaden our pledge base by reaching out and attracting new members, making them feel welcome and at home on Sunday mornings and incorporating them meaningfully in the mission and ministry work of the church.  You can call it evangelism.  You can call it marketing.  You can call it anything you want as long as we find creative ways to break the cycle of decline and get back to growth.

This is not a problem Bishop Marc created nor can he solve it for us.  This decline has been going on since at least 1988 and the ravages of the recession are forcing us to face it.  It is not a problem that any single parish can solve alone.  The parishes need the common infrastructure and support system the Diocese can offer to help them build program and membership across the congregations, but each congregation must focus on growth as a key goal not just for themselves but for the whole church.

But by naming, framing, working together as a community of faith to address the issues we face honestly and prayerfully we can develop new ways to bring the Good News to people who love God and seek Christ in their lives—and in so doing get the church growing again.

How we do that is the question on the Diocesan table, at the deanery meetings and for every Vestry in every congregation.   Bishop Marc and the Diocesan staff can’t do this on their own.  It is going to take the joined hands of a thousand souls in the pews to make this work and with God’s help, it will.

There is much to be thankful for in our Diocese

• New Clergy with Fresh Ideas across the Diocese. Over the past five year we have a large group of new rectors and clergy in the diocese bringing fresh ideas and new thinking to these issues, the challenge for the Bishop is to energize them and get them focused on enriching and enlivening each congregation they serve to create the conditions for growth.

• Better Communications and Collaboration. The Diocese is focusing on new technology and new strategies to provide the infrastructure, support system the congregations need to become more efficient at communications, at stewardship, as community-building and ministering to the needs of the faithful.

• Building Lay Leadership. We need to build he lay leadership across the Diocese and the deanery action plan is the start of a new strategy for leadership development and involvement of the congregations in the collaborative work of the church.

• New Ways to Leverage our Outreach Ministry. Episcopal Charities Action Networks is a new approach to encourage collaboration across parishes on shared outreach and social service needs.  We’ve learned a lot in this first round but the architecture for parish collaboration is a work in progress that will only get better as more are involved.

The challenge for our shared future is to grow both in numbers and capacity but in our love for God and the work of the church.

Related articles

• Signposts of St. Timothy’s Future (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• Turning Our Stewardship Fears into Easter’s Sunrise (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• Our New Rector and our Unbroken Chain of Faith (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• Religion: Church’s Shame (time.com)
• TEC Episcopal Selection Process in Washington Diocese (kiwianglo.wordpress.com)

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Signposts of St. Timothy’s Future

St. Timothy via Wikipedia

Two years ago as part of the formative stages of our 20/20 Vision long term strategic planning process, I offered our working group a concept of using scenario analysis as a way of engaging and involving the congregation in a transparent process of thinking out loud about our parish future.

Scenarios are a powerful tool for strategic planning.  They are NOT predictions or forecasts.  Rather they are stories that describe plausible alternative futures that are used to ‘rehearse’ alternative strategies for what God is calling St. Timothy’s to be for that future.  Like role-play they give us permission to think outside the box, to imagine alternative possibilities and in so doing create a shared language among the congregation participants to identify options, evaluate them objectively and choose the strategies for mission and ministry that best live into our values by listening for God’s call to us as we go about this adult version of Godly Play.

Scenarios of St. Timothy’s Future

Below are summaries of the four scenarios presented in that 20/20 Vision exercise.  For each scenario I have tried to identify a series of signposts or events over the last two years that offer clues about which scenario pathway we might be traveling:

Doubling Down 

• Parish focus is growing membership and the revenue base to double membership by 2020 and make the parish a hub for community activity.
  
• Active evangelism and marketing outreach to both the unchurched and underserved in the service area brings more people to first try out and then join the church.
  
• With a focus on youth ministry, music and young family services the parish is a constant buzz of activity.
  
• Strong outreach and pastoral care programs and staff based on targeted services to population segments from seniors to singles supported by a large intergenerational volunteer corps and growing use of seminarians and deacons assigned by the Bishop to support shared Diocesan programs.
  
• Capital program focus is on new parish hall/education space with gym and kid-attracting programs.  The Youth floor in Grace House becomes an adult programs space and new kitchen, dining and meeting space expands campus use and pledges soar.

Doubling Down Signposts

• Steve Mason starts a new evangelism ministry organizing a table at the Danville Saturday market to introduce people to St. Timothy’s in a non-threatening, welcoming way.
• Bishop Marc initiates a Dougherty Valley mission strategy inviting St. Timothy’s, St. Clare’s-Pleasanton, and St. Bartholomew’s-Livermore to work with the Diocese to reach out to the unchurched and underserved in the fast growing, ethnically diverse Dougherty Valley.
• Episcopal Charities Action Networks are formed in each Deanery.  St. Timothy’s actively participates in Contra Costa Deanery process along with other parishes.  We discover to our surprise that many congregations are supporting the same outreach ministry needs yet little collaboration or cooperation is going on between us.

Transformation Mission

• Financial pressures on the Diocese of California worsen.
  
• Average Diocese daily attendance flat for years declines with revenue stagnating.
  
• The mission of the church is weakened by financial problems and half the parishes are not self-sustaining.
  
• To avoid conflicts and restore Diocesan finance a transformation mission strategy emerges from dialogue of clergy and lay leaders.  The bold plan consolidates 79 parishes to 35 in five years.
  
• Using an area ministry strategy, larger parishes absorb small ones, manage transitions, serve multi-site congregation needs and end Diocesan subsidies and cutting costs to balance budgets.
  
• Executive Council uses surplus property sales to create a Diocesan Mission Growth fund for endowment income for shared program ministry costs by parishes.
  
• The transformation mission strategy restores a sustainable Diocesan finance base, builds its endowment and focuses its mission to double average attendance in five years with stronger programs, shared staff and collaboration.

Transformation Mission Signposts

• As pledge income falls the Diocese cuts its budget by $300,000 for 2012 continuing to critically assess mission and ministry programs to identify the highest priority needs.
• Diocesan assessment is reduced to 17% from 20% reflecting the slow economic recovery and its continuing effects on the congregations, but fears of further pledge income erosion results in contingency planning for additional budget cuts and assessment reductions.
• St. Timothy’s pledge income is still falling and it faces a $162,000 deficit for 2011 appealing to congregation members to increase giving to close the gap.
• Bishop Marc launches a new Area Ministry Strategy in East Contra Costa County seeking to leverage the combined strength of three congregations struggling to serve the Brentwood-Antioch area with support from the stronger Contra Costa Deanery parishes in exploring new ways to ‘do church’ through collaborative area ministry.
• St. Timothy’s dispute over Diocesan assessment formula opens collaborative discussions between the Bishop and parish over solving the problem in ways that advance the transformative mission work of the church through the area ministry strategy.

Aging Gracefully 

• Parish focus is serving the needs of current members. While we welcome all newcomers there is no marketing for growth.
  
• Membership size stays about the same but ages over time reflecting service area demographics. Young families are attracted to Noah’s Ark preschool but often do not join the parish or pledge.
  
• Youth programs remain but churn is high as kids out grow the limited programs or get involved in sports or other non church activities.
  
• In 2020 St Timothy’s looks about the same but parish hall/education wing have been replaced with addition to Grace House catering mostly to adult programs.
  
• Pledge levels remain relatively flat but the steady loss of major pledges as members age challenge the parish financially.
  
• Turnover of members increases especially young families but the parish muddles through with flat budget and little growth.

Aging Gracefully Signposts

• Pledge levels at St. Timothy’s fall along with the economy with a loss of several large pledges due to retirements, moving away or lay-offs pledge income falls with a projected $162,000 deficit for 2011.
• Attendance grows modestly especially at the traditional 11am service but the parish continues to attract people ‘trying us out’ a good sign of green shoots of growth.

Following Paul 

• St. Timothy’s takes on a new mission challenge but instead of planting a new church in Dougherty Valley it chooses instead a social outreach ministry targeted on the underserved in the Monument Corridor.
  
• Working with other groups a property is leased and multi-service program is developed to serve client needs.  Parish participation is expansive at first then settles into a smaller but dedicated outreach group.
  
• By 2020 St. Timothy’s is providing more than 50% of the total cost of the mission program as a combination of budgeted outreach, leveraged grants and fundraising projects.
  
• The parish focus shifts from youth ministry to outreach as a result and membership stays about the same but ages along with the demographics.
  
• Youth ministry is built around confirmation and work in the outreach programs with more participation by high school ages.

Following Paul Signposts

• Episcopal Charities Action Networks in Contra Costa Deanery reveals that many congregations are supporting the same outreach ministry needs especially in the Monument Corridor yet little collaboration or cooperation is going on between us.  Participation in the EC action networks process of allocating funding opens stronger communications ties between parishes.
• 20/20 Vision surveys says Outreach is a common bond across parish age groups suggesting that strategies that encourage participation in outreach efforts could be a solid foundation for both ‘soft’ evangelism by attracting the unchurched and under-served to join with us as well as getting existing parish members more actively involved in an outreach program.
• Plant a Mission Church 50^th Anniversary goal is alive and well as evidenced by the collaborate work beginning with the Diocese and other parishes on mission outreach to Dougherty Valley, coordinating outreach efforts for the Monument corridor across parishes, and joining forced for a new area ministry strategy to serve the Brentwood- Antioch area

Signpost Lessons

1. St. Timothy’s current year budget deficit is not because we are in-between Rectors   The parish deficit is caused by the loss of several large pledges due to retirements, moving away, or the lousy economy. From my experience as Rector’s Warden I suspect that as much as 50% of the current deficit is the result of lost or reduced pledging by as few as 10-12 people.  We have always had a concentration problem of being too dependent upon a few large pledges for a big share of the budget.  In a bad economy it often bites us as it is today.
2. The biggest risk a parish faces in the interim period is complacency, but St. Timothy’s isn’t being complacent about its financial situation.  The actions the Vestry and staff have taken to reduce expenses and conserve cash reserves have served us well.  The appeal for increased pledge giving is timely and we will see whether the response makes a difference in closing the gap, but new pledges typically are a fraction of the size of the largest pledges being lost.  It takes 2 to 3 times the number of average sized pledges to fill the gap and grow the pledge base—that is the stewardship reality we face.
3. The relationship between St. Timothy’s and the Bishop is on the mend.  St. Timothy’s decision to reduce its paid share of the Diocesan assessment has been contentious but may well turn out to be a ‘healthy conflict’ for both the parish and the Diocese.  For St. Timothy’s it clarified our priorities to the mission and ministry work of the church in a falling economy.  It said business as usual is no longer acceptable if it compromises the work of the church.  It forced the Diocese to face the realities of its cumulative financial problems—in time to do something about them before it was a crisis.  Doing so also enables the Bishop to confront the issue of subsidies for unsustainable congregations, expenditures for ineffective programs, and the reality that a new strategy for ‘doing church’ was desperately needed to reflect the rapidly changing demographics of the Diocese.   St. Timothy’s act of Diocesan civil disobedience by cutting its assessment payment broke the patterns of complacency and, I believe, will come to be seen as the turning point for the Diocese of California in rejuvenating its mission and ministry work of the church.
4. We are not ‘Aging Gracefully’.  The signposts tell us we are not complacent and unwilling to sit by as the mission and ministry work of the church atrophies.  St. Timothy’s active participation in the work of the Diocese is more than doubled over the past two years.  Calling Kathy Trapani to be Interim Rector and Kurt Levensaler to be Associate Priest is an act of intentional faith in our parish today and for the future.  The parish willingness to get involved with other congregations and reject isolation is a healthy and holy sign.
5. We are part of an unbroken chain of faith calling us to ‘Follow Paul’.  There is something holy and revealing for us at St. Timothy’s that this parish was founded only one month after Bishop Shires sent that letter to Rev Hodgkin at St. Paul’s Walnut Creek asking him to start a mission congregation in the San Ramon Valley.  God’s economy is awe inspiring.  The growth and influence of this congregation over the last 58 years is testimony to God’s call to us.  But planting a mission church is the easiest part of living into God’s call.  We can do in Dougherty Valley as St Paul’s did in Danville and organize home church and outreach mission work and community building, but the pull to do the mission and ministry work of the church goes beyond just that church plant.
6. God has a plan for us and the work of the church to come —our job is to pray and live into His plan.  After years of flat growth the mainline denominations are fragmented.  The Episcopal Church faces our own controversies across the Anglican Communion.  Yet in the pews we still show up each Sunday to pray together and we still seek to know God’s plan for our lives and how we can do the mission and ministry work He is calling us to do.  Events are showing us the needs in changing demographics, our horrible economy and its impacts, and the necessity to transform the way we do the mission and ministry work of the church as a result.  Is this God’s hand at work showing us the way forward?  The signposts for ‘Doubling Down’ and ‘Transformational Mission’ are powerful clues that things are changing in the church and in the world around us.  The needs for mission and ministry have never been greater and our resources are not often used wisely to address them.  Are these signposts messages that God wants us to come to his table for more of that ‘renewal’ He’s been preaching all these years and renew the church for the time ahead.  There is plenty to renew and God sent us Bishop Marc who is turning over the stones to reveal sand beneath our feet.  I think the signposts should encourage us at St. Timothy’s to be bold, to step up and try new things, to select a rector willing to lead us into the great unknown future with faith and purpose.  If God is using these signposts to prepare us for the person He has chosen to be our new Rector, the question is are we ready to receive the Holy Spirit’s message?

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Hispanic Population Growth and the Mission of the Church

Image by no22a via Flickr

The U.S. Hispanic market has grown substantially over the past ten years according to the 2010 Census.  in fact, in California Hispanic population growth made up more than 90% of total state population growth over the decade.

The U.S. Census 2010 reported that U.S. population increased by 27.3 million people, or 9.7% from 2000 to 2010, down from 13.2% growth the previous decade. More than half of the 9.7% population growth was in the Hispanic population which increased from 13% to 16% by 2010. That translates into 50.5 million Hispanics in 2010 compared to 35.3 million from the 2000 census or 55.7% of the total growth in the U.S. population during the decade.

U.S. Hispanic population growth occurred well beyond the traditional states. South Carolina’s Hispanic population grew by 148% increase to 5% of the total state population in 2010 from 2% in 2000. Alabama saw an increase of 145% to 4% from 2% of total population.  Tennessee was third with a 134% increase, with Hispanics now comprising 5% of its total population up from 2%. Kentucky was fourth, with a 122%, or 3% up from 1 percent. Arkansas ranked fifth with 114%, followed by North Carolina with 111% and Maryland and Mississippi with 106%each. South Dakota had a 103% increase in its Hispanic population.

While the total numbers of Hispanics in each of these states is not large, the trend reflects the broadening diversity of the US population. Meanwhile, states such as California and Florida still continued to attract Hispanics, but at a lower rate than other states. California Hispanic population grew 28% during the decade with Hispanics now comprising 38% of the Golden State population up from 32% in 2000.  But 90% of California’s overall 10% population growth over the last decade was Hispanic.

Implications for 20/20 Vision

The work of the church is being influenced and enriched by the increasing ethnic and cultural diversity.  Here in Contra Costa County the fastest growing area of the county over the decade was the East CoCo market around Antioch and Brentwood with a large share of that growth in the Hispanic population.

While the recession has taken a toll in housing growth and population everywhere the East county area has been hit hardest.  This is a key area of focus for the Diocese of California and St. Timothy’s can and should be actively involved. To our East and South the ethnic population make-up is more Asian than Hispanic.  So St. Timothy’s is located in the midst of a great melting pot—and a great symphony of voices.

Our new rector must be open to such diversity and creative in engaging the parish community in the opportunities it brings.  And like it or not, St. Timothy’s will be key to the success of the Diocese of California area ministry strategies for congregational vitality.

Related articles

• 7 Ways the U.S. Population is Changing (usnews.com)
• What Nielson’s The Digital American Family Study Means for our Church Future (discernablefutures.wordpress.com)
• Latinos Growth Greatest in Fastest Growing States | The Americano (jamespatrick1.wordpress.com)
• “How Many Hispanics? Pew Hispanic Center Releases Updated Comparison of 2010 Census Counts and Census Estimates” and related posts (juantornoe.blogs.com)
• How Many Hispanics? Comparing Census Counts and Census Estimates – Pew Hispanic Center (policyabcs.wordpress.com)
• Hispanic population tops 50 million in US – Los Angeles Times (news.google.com)
• Hispanics fastest growing segment of U.S. population (capitolhillblue.com)

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