The Church Isn't Dying, It's Just That The Bubble Has Finally Burst

I was talking to a family member about what "the end of Christendom" means and came up with an analogy I thought would be good to share.

After the burst of the housing bubble and the great recession, I think the whole "bubble" idea is pretty familiar to folks. You have something - like home prices - that has a normal, reasonable level but then gets super-inflated way beyond that point by other stuff. So when the "other stuff" gets removed, the bubble bursts and things drop back to where they would have been all along. What makes this tough is that the "inflating" process can go on for a long time and people get used to it, expecting it to go on, but the "burst" is sudden and wreaks havoc on things.

Similarly, the Christian church has been inflated - arguably for about 17 centuries - because the culture has "pumped people into it" in various ways. But now we are experiencing the burst of that bubble and while it's pretty traumatic and sudden (by historical standards) it's not really the case that the church is "dying" any more than the housing market died. Rather, it's simply returning to something more in line with what it would have been *without the cultural subsidy to inflate it.*

House Churches and the ELCA?

There's been some house church activity in my ELCA denomination over the years and now there's a one-day conference coming up to explore this direction October 23-24! If you've followed this blog much, you know that's a topic near and dear to my heart. I've got 55 posts with that tag... so far, and pretty much started this blog in April 2007 in order to advance this conversation. I'll be there. Care to join me?

How Salvation Sounds in Lutheran Ears

The way that Lutherans tend to think of salvation is really nicely represented by the following passage from Ezekiel. Note how the activity of God has priority and primacy throughout, and obedience emerges at the initiative of the Spirit who has already been given. Even the awareness and regret over one's sinfulness shows up as an after-effect, rather than a prerequisite for the arrival of the Spirit and the gift of a new heart. (Gotta love the irony here: only a new heart is capable of regret over sin it seems.)

Ezekiel 36:24-31 NIV

24 “‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. 28 Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. 29 I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you. 30 I will increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, so that you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine. 31 Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices.

Membership Decline in the ELCA

Yes, numbers don't tell the whole story.  Yes, "membership" is not the best or only indicator of congregational vitality, much less faithfulness.  Yes, for some people this is old, old news.  Yet I continue to find people are generally unaware of the decline we are experiencing in my tribe, and those that have a sense of it don't readily have a sense of scale to go with it.  So, let me provide the visual that has haunted and energized me since I first began to attend to it about 10 years ago.

Primary data from Loren Mead, Transforming Congregations for the Future,
with more recent statistics added.

As a percentage of the US population (which has continued to grow year after year) this shows a trend of decline, unbroken for half a century.

However people may parse the causes and debate the responses, it's been clear to me since the get-go that a response is needed.  And given the "inertia" stored in a system with such a long-term shape to it's life (spanning at least two generations) I've always expected that the response will need to be very, very significant if it is to "turn things around" in any meaningful sense.

My own response has been to explore the possibilities for Christian missional community outside the core conventions of congregational life: pastors, property, programs and presentational (large group) worship.  This led me initially to folks in the house church movement, and more recently to those who are focusing on making disciples per se.  

They have a nifty saying: if you plant a church, you may or may not get disciples.  But if you make disciples, the Church will arise.

So, I am now moving my top ministry priority into directly discipling and equipping leaders.  Not just "church leaders" in the typical sense.  Leaders who will directly disciple and train others.  I am learning how to do this from the folks at 3dm, as I have found their material and approach to be excellent, and their theology to be wonderfully lean and hugely resonant with Lutheranism.

Adult Baptisms per 100 People in Worship

In connection with my previous post on helping congregations learn from each other about doing evangelism, my friend Ron Amundson was struck by the chart below that is included in the background section of the discussion site.  So I thought I might lift it up here as well.

The chart shows the number of adult baptisms per year per 100 people in worship in a (non-representative) sample of 27 of the 107 ELCA congregations in the Saint Paul Area Synod.  (Since most of them are less than one per year on this measure, the data was actually produced by averaging worship and baptism statistics for the six-year period of 2000 through 2005.  This kind of data is publicly available, by the way, on the ELCA website. Once you find the congregation you are interested in, look for the "Full Trend Report" link for a wealth of information.)

A couple of things to note:

• Some congregations appear to have no effective evangelism (by this measure) with no adult baptisms over the six-years represented in the data.
  
• Among congregations that do report adult baptisms over the last six years, there can be a ten-fold difference in effectiveness.
  
• There is no evidence here that larger congregations are more effective than smaller ones (by this measure.)  The data suggests that the reverse is likely to be true.

So.  More food for thought.

Learning to Evangelize... Maybe

This post is a bit of inside baseball/local interest mostly for my fellow Lutherans in the Saint Paul Area Synod. It's about a resolution I wrote for our upcoming Synod Assembly about evangelism.

In a nutshell, it's about discovering which congregations are being more effective among us and drawing out stories from them that the rest of us can learn from.

"Actually, I'm a Resolution."

To get this Resolution to the Synod Assembly, I brought it first to my Conference Assembly where it passed - but just barely, which was a surprise to me.

Next it was reviewed by the Synod's Reference and Counsel Committee which also had reservations and is recommending that the Synod Assembly not vote on it but rather have a discussion of evangelism at tables at the Assembly.

Well, there are 17 days left before the assembly and I'd still like to see this thing passed so I set up a little website where people can read and discuss it. It's public so anyone who wants to can join in. You can find it here at Learning to Evangelize.

We now return to our regular programming.

Twin Cities House Church Coalition

David Brown

I recently met David Brown, a UMC Pastor who has launched "A coalition of house churches across the Twin Cities living in the way of Jesus" called STORM Faith Community.  At some point I'd like to post a little profile/interview with him here but for now I suggest you visit his website if you are interested in House Church groups in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul Area.

I would add though, that this is one of only a couple of cases I know of where a mainline denomination is actually investing in a home-based faith community as a missional strategy.  (If you know of others please let me know!)  The proof of that pudding is that STORM only gathers for large group worship monthly.  That may sound familiar if you've been reading my blog from the beginning since that pattern was part of my very first musings:

I began to wonder… what would it do for the life of the people if they met weekly in small groups, and then monthly, perhaps even quarterly for a rip-roarin’ pull-out-the-stops large group, corporate worship celebration? I thought about the possibilities for spiritual growth and evangelism. I thought about the time and the money it would release. I thought about the amazing celebrations we could do if we had a month or more to prepare for each one. I thought about the enormous decrease in the facilities needed. Then I realized, there is a name for the kind of congregational life where the small group is the main thing instead of an extra thing.

It’s called the house church.

Blessings, Dave.  May your house increase!