Middle Spaces So Quiet They Might Be Dead
What's it called when you do it over and over expecting different results? Rocket Surgery? Or insanity?
Continuing in the vein of sad things about Christianity in America, The Great Dechurching is being reviewed in the Washington Post this morning. I couldn’t read it because I’m out of free articles, but I was able to read about the newly released numbers for The Episcopal Church (TEC) in 2022.
Jeff Walton breaks them all down here. From his excellent article:
More than 55 percent of Episcopal parishes now find themselves in a state of long-term decline, dropping 10 percent or more across the past five reporting years, while only 12 percent are growing an equivalent amount across the same period, according to Episcopal Church statistics released today. Information compiled from 2022 parochial reports by the Episcopal Church Office of the General Convention reveals a partial attendance rebound following the conclusion of COVID restrictions as well as a much steeper-than-usual decline in denominational membership. Episcopal membership rolls dropped 88,306 persons from 1,520,388 in 2021 to 1,432,082 in 2022, down six percent, the largest single year loss reported in memory. The denomination has now lost 23 percent of members in the past 10 years, a rate that is accelerating. Attendance increased by 56,306 persons across the same year, up 19 percent. However, this reflects only a third of the number lost in the prior year when attendance dropped by 165,328 persons due to COVID. The denomination shuttered a net 45 parishes in 2022, down from 6,294 to 6,249.
Every year when the stats come out I spend a day feeling sad about all the little parishes around here that are struggling to stay open. Most of them are gorgeous little structures in pleasing relationship to their surroundings, well-considered, full of interesting windows and lovely pews, replete with cunning nooks and crannies, loved over many generations. Yet, in the daily routine of shopping and scrolling, no one in the increasingly poor outlying towns thinks anymore about getting up and going on any day of the week, let alone on a Sunday morning. Why would they? The liturgy is incomprehensible and when there is a sermon, it isn’t usually about Jesus or life everlasting, but is instead about how everyone should try harder to be good, whatever the word “good” means today. The few remaining churchgoers often have to share a pastor with three other congregations. That person—usually an underpaid woman—is worn thin, driving along back roads in the snow trying to forestall the inevitable end. The real tell is that giving went up in 2022:
While there are fewer Episcopalians, those that remain continue to contribute a larger share of finances. The average pledge has actually increased over the past decade. This may be due to older congregants (49.5 percent of Episcopalians are age 65 or older) in a late career or early retirement stage of life, when incomes customarily peak. According to the Episcopal Church’s analysis of the 2022 parochial report data, in 2013 the average pledge was $2,553 while in 2022 the average pledge was $3,658. This is an overall increase even when accounting for inflation during this time period.
It seems like increased giving would be a good sign, but there’s a sort of inversion of attendance and giving that happens when a church is in steep decline. The budget will appear to be healthy in spite of there being only three people and a can of tomato soup attending the divine liturgy. The remaining three give more and more to keep the church afloat until there isn’t anything or anyone left. It’s so bleak, and, one might say, so easily avoided.
All one needs in order to have a healthy church is for the leaders of that church to preach true things to the people in their care, to adhere relentlessly to the scriptures, and to be transformed—themselves—by the living Word over and over. It is the task of actually caring both for the words of God and the souls of their sheep. It’s not rocket surgery. It’s not like the leadership of any given church needs to know how to do calculus or perform some complicated rite. Though, ironically, people charged with the care of a spiritual congregation do need to do some kind of spiritual sum that seems constantly to elude them.
What is so bleak is that no denomination in America seems inclined to view the dumpster fire of the vanities that is TEC and draw obvious and practicable conclusions. Look, they might say to themselves, how badly it’s gone for those people since they rejected the faith once delivered to the saints and replaced all that content with whatever the world likes best today. Instead, they either don’t know what’s happened over the last fifty years, or they do know and don’t care, or worse, in this shiny, wretched clown world motif, they think that by doing the same thing one more time they will get a different result. Andy Stanely seems to be trying this last approach, and I can guarantee, without any shadow of doubt, that it will turn out exactly the same way. Here is Al Mohler writing about this “new,” dumb, way of “growing” the church by pretending to be reasonable but actually compromising everything:
The promise of “the quieter middle space” might appear attractive, given the volatility of cultural discourse on LGBTQ+ issues, and a conference designed to help parents of LGBTQ+ children and ministry leaders work through these issues in clearly Biblical terms would be a welcome development. But the advertising for the Unconditional Conference indicates clearly that this event is designed as a platform for normalizing the LGBTQ+ revolution while claiming that the conference represents “the quieter middle space.” In truth, there is no “middle space” on these issues, and it is no longer plausible to claim that such middle space exists. Scheduled speakers for the event include two men who are married to other men, at least according to current civil law. Biographical background on speakers Justin Lee and Brian Nietzel indicates that both men are in what are now described as “same-sex marriages.” Lee is well known as a platform speaker who argues for the legitimacy of “monogamous same-sex relationships.” Nietzel presents seminars on “restoring LGBTQ+ faith.” Just to be clear: This is not “the quieter middle space.”
Exactly, there is no “quieter middle space.” If Stanley keeps doing that, in a few minutes, he will have a huge empty, cavernous building because no one needs to go to church to get what is available every single day in the world. It doesn’t work. It might grow a crowd for a few minutes, but TEC never even got a crowd. They got some sparkly headlines in the New York Times and then most Episcopalians dug deep and discovered Sunday was actually made for the New York Times and not for the Holy Eucharist neither Rite One nor Rite Two. Al Mohler again:
Andy Stanley, one of the most influential pastors in the United States, has been moving in this direction for years, often by suggestion and assertion but clouded by confusion and the deliberate avoidance of clarity. Back in 2018, he called for the church to be “unhitched” from the Old Testament, arguing that the Old Testament should not be understood as the “go-to source regarding any behavior in the church.” There goes “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22). But, in truth, there goes the entire Old Testament. A few years before that, in a 2012 message Stanley seemed to argue that adultery is a sin but told of two men in a relationship with no suggestion that the same-sex coupling was forbidden by Scripture. When the message became controversial, Stanley did not clarify the situation at all. More recently, in another message Stanley dismissed Biblical texts against homosexual behavior as “clobber” verses and said, “If your theology gets in the way of ministry—like if there’s somebody you can’t minister to because of your theology—you have the wrong theology.”
That’s rich. As if orthodox theology is unable to reach into the darkness of every single human heart no matter what kind of enslaving sin it is committed to. As if God is too small to heal and forgive. Apparently he is, though, and has been confused all these millennia, always directing people towards the entire counsel of his own Word. What a blessing to have Andy Stanley come along and correct us all.
The only bright side is that when mega-church buildings empty out, it won’t be that sad. They can be plowed under and made into parks because they are pretty ugly anyway.
So anyway, have a nice day!
There seems to be an unbreakable conviction that, even though progressive Christianity inevitably leads to decline and ecclesiastical death, *this time* it will work. It is counterintuitive to say that what the wider culture likes will end up shrinking the church, but that is exactly what happens over time.
The plummeting attendance in TEC is not demotivational at all; it is highly motivational.
I'm glad I clicked on your "clown world motif" link, for there was treated to the delightfully absurd notion that drag queens are the pinnacle of authenticity. Kinda made my day.