Thursday, July 05, 2012

State of the Church

I am so grateful for the St. Paul's congregation in many aspects of our life together. We are far from perfect and we have our worries but there is plenty of vitality. I love that we are what I call a four generation congregation, with everyone from infants to nonegenarians (people in their 90's.) We actually have an active Sunday School and youth groups and strong leadership from people in their thirties. Our recent membership Sunday with newcomers from three of those generations was very hopeful.

This said, we are part of a denomination in serious decline, and the recent report called The State of the Church was rather bleak. http://www.gc41.ca/sites/default/files/info04-16_state-of-the-church.pdf I always wonder how much of this sort of information to share with folk. Does it make any sense to ignore our denominational circumstances? We need to celebrate the good news which we pray is Christ's Good News in our congregation, but our we naive to pretend that our United Church reality is changing. Our members return from visits to congregations from their past with tales of woe about is happening.

One of the real shockers in the report is the aging of United Church clergy. Read this:

Mission and ministry take many forms in the United Church, but those who serve as ministry personnel offer key leadership in congregations and other ministries. At present, the United Church is served by approximately 1,970 ordered ministry personnel in paid accountable positions. There are some troubling trends in the demographics of our ministers. Of the 1,970 ordered ministry personnel serving in pastoral charges as of April 2011, 6 (0.3 percent) were under the age of 30, 383 (22 percent) were under the age of 50, and 1,376 (78 percent) were 50 years of age or older.12 The average age was 56.

Our son Isaac was amongst that tiny group of under-thirties in ministry until two weeks ago, and lo-and-behold, I am above average as a 57-year-old! Hmm. This isn't the sort of "average" I aspire to.

It seems to me that our goal should be to pay attention to the grim realities of the broader church but build on our sense of God's active presence in our midst. Christ isn't done with us yet! Of course, I strongly believe that congregations must be "soft around the edges, solid at the core" and that strong centre is the living Christ. We can pray for new beginnings rather than succumb to "beginning of the end" thinking.

Now if we could figure out how to reverse the aging process for us old-timers...

What are your thoughts about this?

6 comments:

IanD said...

Seems like we've touched on this before, and I don't think that there are any easy answers for the United Church.

What I don't understand is how many of the 'non-traditional- denominations are flourishing. What's being offered that you can't get here?

That said, it's great to see our neck of the woods doing so well. Friends of ours (with two young daughters) were so impressed by the youth service last month they've decided to join St. Paul's too. Woot!

Keep 'em coming!

David Mundy said...

Yes, this will be a recurring discussion in the days ahead.

I think your comment on your friends response to the service they attended speaks to the challenge of many UCC congregations. Rather than being multi-generational they are uni-generational -- the elderly.

There are actually a fair number of vibrant UC congregations with families and kids. But they are in the minority.

Lots of the evangelical congregations to which you make reference are start-ups, so they can target younger families and don't have to address the needs of middle agers and elders. It will be interesting to see how or if they age well.

The key is to invest resources of all kinds in youth, to build commitment amongst volunteers, and to not let tradition become an impediment to vitality.

sjd said...

So David since you are hardly more than the average age of a United church minister, you must be good for another 20 years or so??

Or does this mean that 1/2 of the current ministers will be retiring in the not too distant future?

Where will the next generation of ministers come from?
You can't just fill the vaccume with warm bodies, or is that part of the current problem?
Not all churches benefit from the quality of leadership we have.
(Good work big guy)

Lack of quality leadership can kill a church pretty fast.

David Mundy said...

Twenty years? Gulp? Actually,you raise a really important point sjd. The UC is suddenly aware that there will be a wave of retirements in the next few years which has probably already begun.

They are now being quite intentional about recruiting young 'uns and not-so-young 'uns for ministry, but as you note, you can't just throw people into leadership.

We need the combination of experience and enthusiasm, wisdom and risk-taking, not to mention a deep Christian commitment.

Let's hope that God isn't done with us yet.

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