Here’s an interesting story out of Austin, Texas, about a project to assess and counsel United Methodist churches with fewer than 150 members that are within 2 miles of another UMC congregation.
The Ecclesiastes Project, named I assume for the “there is a time” passages and not the “eat, drink, and by merry” verses, is the only one of its kind in the UMC. Possible outcomes of the process include relocation, merger with a larger congregation, or closing. I’m not sure if revitalization in place is an option on the table or an imagined possibility. The story does not say. The church featured in the story had its – somewhat creepily named – “Celebration of Life” service on May 22. The closing church will be taken over by a larger and growing UMC congregation that needs more space.
After reading the story, I checked out the blog of the Austin District Superintendent Bobbi Kaye Jones. She appears to have a bold vision of the district. Her blog includes a recent talk she gave at a session on leadership.
I imagine many of you feel something like – our church is pretty good as it is, maybe really good. We already have strong activities and meaningful mission. We support our budget, pay our apportionments, raise our children and love our older adults. We can put ‘deep change’ off, we can tinker and tweak and basically redo most of what we did last year….. Ok. You can. Here’s the thing – I know most of our churches ARE pretty good, and some are really good. AND being pretty good and really good is good enough for us but we are not attracting other people.
This is not standard church happy talk.
She offers her pastors some bracing news about their role as well.
Your church has asked you for leadership, but may be more likely to reward you for management. We are more likely to agree on best practices than we are to agree on bold vision. This is a true statement: delivering Satisfaction, comfortableness has to go off the list, for leadership – you can’t measure how you’re doing by number of complaints…or by the number of compliments.
Not keep people happy. We are no longer in that moment. Decisions we make now may determine whether or not our churches are alive even into the next generation. 9 million young adults who were confirmed in mainstream churches across America in the last decade are no longer attending anywhere. We are one generation away.
Not happy news. But truth is not always happy.
The story in the newspaper offered some analysis that suggests the Methodist problem is not so easy to fix.
Other large denominations have closed churches — about 3,000 a year across denominations, [David Roozen , director of the Connecticut-based Hartford Institute] said, even before the recession — or merged some of their smaller churches with bigger ones. What makes the Methodist church project different is that a larger percentage of the country’s United Methodist churches have small congregations, which makes them more vulnerable, he said. Because Methodists are theologically in the middle of the road, it’s difficult to find people who feel strongly about the church’s identity, he said.
“They’re more conservative than most old-line Protestant churches, and they’re not as conservative as most evangelical Protestants,” Roozen said. “Very religious people have very strong commitments to their tradition. Those who are conservative wouldn’t look to the Methodist church, and those who are liberal wouldn’t necessarily look to the Methodist church.”
Austin appears to be trying to prove Roozen wrong. It will be interesting to see if the district does.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
