Last week I received my packet for our spring presbytery meeting, all fifty-two pages of it. It contained its usual budget reports , committee reports, promotions for retreats and conferences, and so on. But buried in the report was something that should alarm us.
The statistical report on pages 24-25 shows that in one year we lost 1.86 percent of our active membership. From 1995 to 2010, our presbytery has lost 8.8 percent. From 2005 to 2010 we lost 1.72 percent. That means that in one year, we lost more members than we did in the preceding five.
Nor is that the worst of it. The largest and fastest growing church in our presbytery is Columbia First. Last year, Columbia First made up 31 percent of our total membership. Now, after gaining just 63 members, it is one third of the presbytery, 33 percent. If we take Columbia First out of the statistics and look at the rest of presbytery, then we lost 4 percent of our church members in a single year.
The concern for growth is addressed in this report--but rather obliquely, and in a curious manner. The longest response comes in the reactions to last meeting's report on the revitalization of small, declining churches. The Ad Hoc Committee referred to the State of the Church, which referred to Church Extension, which referred to Outreach North America, which confidently asserts the availability of resources--resources which were there to begin with, and were never utilized. So the dance goes on, each committee referring to another committee, each one making tentative suggestions, careful not to step on the work of other committee, confessing their own inadequacy to actually do anything, going round and round in a maypole pattern of shifting responsibility. But in truth we know the problem with small declining churches. Most of them are in decline because they are old, stuck in demographically and economically impoverished areas, lacking people and resources. Even if we poured millions into them though, there would still be little to show for it, because the faith, the vision and the enthusiasm is not there. Expecting these churches to suddenly bring forth new people is like expecting your grandmother to bear children. I mean this with no disrespect to those churches or their members, who valiantly labor to keep them running. They are giving their best. But old age comes to churches as well as to people, and no church lasts forever except the church universal.
Hope lies on the horizon though--It always does. New, lively missions have started in Columbia and Rock Hill. A few of our churches have grown . Nevertheless, most of our churches are not. Twenty lost members last year and seventeen remained the same-- only ten gained a single member.
What's wrong? I profess my own ignorance My own attempts to help grow the Kingdom of God through pastoring churches and presbytery work achieved little success. I am no better at practically growing an ARP church than anyone else. My own pastoral leadership has not been able to inspire growth in the churches I have pastored in this presbytery.
But I am out of the pastorate now, for the first time in thirty-seven years, which has allowed Joy and I to visit other churches and see what it happening elsewhere. To my surprise, I have discovered that other churches are not shrinking--not at all. Churches not unlike our own are thriving, adding new members and swimming with enthusiasm. They traditional and contemporary, conservative to moderate, old and young, but they all have one thing in common--they want to build the kingdom of God on earth more than anything. Their people do not come out of duty but in expectation. They actually expect God to show up when they do.
Here's what they have that many of our churches do not--a passion for God and a passion for others.
Some of our own churches have it, too. But too many of our churches appeal to a guilt-based sense of duty. People show up, because they do not want to see the church fail, or because they were raised to believe they ought to. Then they wonder why no one outside of their churches have no desire to come. Guilt may get people to stay, but it will not grow the Kingdom.
ARPs do have passion though--lots of it. We are passionate about doctrinal correctness, about church politics in small places, about secular political causes, and about resistance to modernity. But as far as our passion for God, passion for worship, passion for loving each other, or passion for the lost, we are often deficient. I am tired of talking to my friends who have left the denomination, burned and disappointed, feeling attacked and threatened, or neglected and abandoned, believing the church they loved did not love them back. I am also tired of hearing ex ARPs talking about the renewal they have experienced in someone else's church. For once, I would like to hear someone say "when I was in trouble, my friends in the denomination stood by me. When I needed Jesus, those people showed me Jesus." I hear those sentiments rarely, if at all.
I have no idea about any program or method that will reverse our decline. The only thing I know is that if a glorious future awaits this denomination, then we will not find it in committees and consultants, but on our knees, seeking God, and listening for His voice. We are doctrinally deep, but we are spiritually superficial. We keep our doctrine unspoiled by keeping it frozen--the problem is, we never thaw it out. We all need to pray and pray with all our hearts that God will revive us, or else the decline of our presbytery and our denomination will continue until we fade into history.
Otherwise, to paraphrase Matthew 7, we will hear:
"Many will come in the last day and say 'Lord, did we not preach in your name? Did we not defend Reformed theology? Did we not resist Scriptural error? Did we not ban the ordination of gays and women? Did we not build fine churches and institutions? Did we not attend Bible conferences, and did we not give to World Missions and Outreach North America? Did we not give to local causes and did we not vote for the right political causes? Did we not defend the good and condemn evil?'
"And the Lord will say 'True--but I never knew you, and you never knew me.'"
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