Companions,
We've all heard the news. The United Methodist Church in the US is in decline. Indeed, participation in religion in North America is in decline, with the fastest growing contingent being the non-affiliated.
The recent Pew Report on Millennials and Religion in the US supports that view. Younger people (ages 18-29) do engage some spiritual practices on their own or with affinity groups, though at significantly lower rates than religiously affiliated persons do, and a lower percentage of this age cohort does this with "organized religion" than any previous age cohort in living history (back 70+ years or so, based on Pew's report). Fully 23% profess no affiliation.
Perhaps under-reported in this report is that of those Millennials who are affiliated, about the same percentage (37%) describe themselves as "strong members of their faith" as the two cohorts that preceded them. So the news isn't ALL bad, right?
But that's the point. These are just facts. It takes some sort of interpretation to translate these findings into meanings, and those meanings into judgments, and those judgments into some sort of response.
So the question before those of us who are religiously affiliated, and particularly for those of us whose affiliation is through the United Methodist Church, is what do these facts mean for us?
In other words, what do we make of this? And then how do we respond?
What I think I'm hearing as the almost predictable responses are:
1) The sky is falling! We need to go back to doing revivals, or charismatic prayer, or more seeker-sensitive worship, or better marketing, or planting churches again, and fast, else we'll lose them all!
2) The sky is falling! Our numbers in the UMC are only going to continue to decline if we don't get these younger, non-affiliated people connected with us right now!
3) The sky is falling! Unless we can claim we're continually getting MORE, we're utterly failing!
Well, as I noted in yesterday's entry, Response 1 would represent an inaccurate reading of history. There was no golden age when we were converting non-affiliated people to affiliation in the past century at any rate higher than 4%-- much less to discipleship to Jesus Christ. Revivals have their place. Praying in the Spirit can be a good thing. Planting new churches has merits in many places. But none of those has changed the 4% "real conversion rate."
Response 2 is pretty much what the proposal to try to make the average age of members of the UMC younger by a decade in 10 years amounts to. There are four unethical ways I can think of to do that. We could a) remove, b) refuse to receive or c) "terminate" older members. Good thing, I suppose, that we have a procedural process that makes a) difficult, principles of inclusion that should prevent us from doing b), and both law and morality making c) punishable by prison or worse. We could also just fudge the data-- either by "adding" lots of younger "members" (by whatever means we want to count them) or by just flat out pretending (i.e., lying about the actual ages and numbers of our constituents). I think we all know of cases where congregations were doing that. Some might still be-- either to avoid paying more apportionment dollars (so in this case actually reducing their rolls or refusing to add new members, including refusing to work at confirmation with youth!), or adding or not removing members from the professing role to look better to the DS/Bishop even if that means paying more apportionment dollars. It's unethical, but it does happen. And it probably will again.
Trouble is, I can think of few reasonable mathematical ways, given what appears to be a pretty fixed 4% "conversion" from non-affiliated to affiliated rate across ALL religions (not just Christians!) in the US over the past century combined with an escalating trend of non-affiliation among the "rising age-cohorts" (ages 18-29 in a given decade) over time. Over the past three cohorts it's gone up at an increasing rate... from 12% in the 1980s to 16% in the 1990s (an increase of 33%) to 23% in the 2000s (a decade on decade increase of ~50% and a 2-decade increase of close to 100%!). If the "conversion rate" is a steady 4% but non-affiliation rate is rising geometrically, then we'll catch up in...
Oh.
Maybe we need fuzzier math?
As for Response 3, I wonder if that's the assumption that needs the most substantial rethinking. That rethinking requires us first to admit how pervasive and deep that perspective is for us. We may have to admit our "gut level reflexes" are "tuned" or "primed" or even "addicted" by the idea that "more" must always be our first concern.
Dan Dick addressed this issue of our denomination's fixation on "More" in his blog, United Methodeviations a while back. It's well worth the read.
We seem to be really stuck on this idea that "more is better" and maybe even "more is the highest good."
But is more always better?
No. More is more. Better is better.
And not all more is better.
More cancer cells are not better, that is unless "you" are cancer, and then it's better only until you've managed to kill your host. Then you die, too.
More weight is not generally better, except for things like Sumo Wrestling and perhaps weightlifting, but then only if you're also committed to a) a short lifespan and b) a lot of hard, hard training. Blessings on those who are. I'm not.
More worship space isn't always better, especially if that space gets heated and cooled nearly every day while it's actually used for its intended purpose only one or two days per week for a few hours at a time.
So more isn't always better. Or even desirable!
Yet somehow when we look at the Pew Report on Millennials and UM membership/worship stats and other similar reports showing declines in participation in organized religion in the US, the immediate leap is...
We need, really need, and now absolutely desperately need more, and especially more younger people to sign on with us. And to some of them we seem to say, "If we were like X, would you come?"
I wouldn't.
I'm not a Millennial. I'm GenX. But if I weren't connected with the UMC already (and don't get me wrong, I'm very glad I am!), I'd likely never join a congregation or religious group that seemed to "need me" so much that they'd pander to "my interests" just to get me to come. This would sound to me like more like an group that's desperate to get "more people like me" than one that knows what it's doing and is serious about wanting to connect me with God and be part of transforming me so I can join God's mission in the world with them.
If all I'm there to do is make your group "more," then I'm not going to be there.
But if your group shows me you can make me better, not just part of your more... If you can show me you will put me through my paces and keep me primed so I'm like those athletes the apostle Paul describes and a lot of us are watching on the Olympics right now-- different story. Count me in.
It's the practice that makes perfect. Last time I read it, Matthew does record that Jesus calls us to perfection. None of us gets there without practice. We don't practice if our focus is on more-- we just grab people to fill up our never sated appetite for more and more and more. But if our focus is always, always on better, we DO practice.
Sometimes that leads to more.
ALWAYS it leads to better!
So I look at the Pew numbers, and I hope against hope that at least some of us don't pick any of three response above, and maybe especially not the third.
And I say: Forget "more." Think "better!"
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
8 comments:
TBE-
Your reflections make me think of Marx's famous quote (Groucho, that is):
"I wouldn't want to be a part of a club that would have me as a member."
Good points about wanting to be "better" (kingdom) rather than "more" (compromise).
Thanks...
TBE, good blog. I think that in the history of the Methodism in the United States, the denomination had become accustomed to expanding as the population went across the country and growing through sheer population explosion and being in places where there were previously no clergy. This westward expansion mind set has become institutionalized and is now past it's use. Methodism as a denomination ceased to be in Canada quite a while ago. It's having problems in the UK and the USA. Perhaps it's time to realize that the shrinking size is what it is, and GenX and Millenials will be curious to experience a congregation through non worship activities and then perhaps worship. My experience with Millenial kids is found on the OSL cyber chapter.
@chuck -
The Church is the only club where the primary membership requirements is admitting you don't meet any of the other membership requirements...
Br Taylor: I think I agree. I've been pondering this in being the salt of the earth. It doesn't take much salt to give eggs flavor, just a pinch. Seen through Wesley's lens of "the more excellent way" (late Wesley, when he wasn't having a bad day) I think your reflection fits within our historic, but not contemporary, ethos.
Pax
Br. Scot
Scot,
Describing "The More Excellent Way" as "the older Wesley not having a bad day" is spot on.
What Wesley points out there, for those who haven't read the sermon (and everyone here should read it if you haven't!) is that "ordinary" Christians in the Church of England and the other churches-- those who are attending worship regularly, seeking generally to be moral and to care for their neighbors, obey the laws and customs of their culture, and have received justifying grace-- are ALSO Christians.
What they are, I think Wesley and Paul might say, though, is "infants in Christ."
As infants in Christ, they are not rejected. But neither have they "grown up into the full stature of Him who is All in All."
We can "reproduce" lots of "babes in Christ." But if we keep them in that state-- if we keep infantilizing the call of Christ-- they do not go on to holiness, they do not mature, they do not experience "the more excellent way."
There's the problem. The systems we have in place are designed perhaps as inseminators and safe, warm, incubators. Maybe they are designed as nursing stations as well.
But we're not weaning very many of these "babes in Christ."
We're not teaching them and expecting them to grow.
We're not getting them beyond childhood, much less adolescence.
And adulthood often resembles something more like dotage than vital maturity.
We can probably keep making babies. But if we're not getting many more folks intentionally from the nursery to the mission field-- and challenging them to develop all the tools they need to thrive there-- we're not making them better.
And we're certainly not "making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world."
There is a more excellent way.
And it depends more on Better than on More.
Peace,
Taylor
Br. Taylor:
I think we are on exactly the same page.
My question is: what do we focus on in our current context? In Wesley's context the CoE was the state church and England was a confessional state. One had to sign onto the AoR to be allowed any position in society. Most people were either nominally members of the CoE or dissenters; there were very few atheists or non-Christians. Late Wesley (when he was in a good mood) saw these people as, by in large, legitimate Christians but, as you said, infants. His project was what I call "third order monasticism for protestant dummies" (I'll have to send you my paper on this sometime).
Making the jump to our context, most people are nominally (or culturally) Christians--even if unaffiliated. The average "pew warmer" would fit into Wesley's concept of an infant.
The huge hang-up for me, coming from a Mennonite background, was the notion of degrees of faith, degrees of salvation and degrees of holiness. I had to get over the belief that "Either you are saved or you aren't!" And come to realize that justification is a binary concept but sanctification isn't. This sounds like an intro to Wesley course, but it has taken me years to really appropriate it into my thinking. I think that this logic is really deep in the mainstream American Christian ethos.
So, should the UMC be about bringing as many infants into the world as possible, only to leave them as infants in the nursery or should the UMC be about taking infants and helping them grow up and grow on to perfection/telos/maturity? Or, is there a way we can do both? I don't have an answer to this, it really isn't for me to decide. Or historical purpose was to get those nominal pew-warming Anglicans growing up and going on to holiness.
Discerning what our current mission is, rather than simply trying to relive our glory-days, seems to me to be what this whole conversation is about.
Maybe the question could be framed, for marketing purposes, as "Church Growth and/or Disciple Growth?" The emerging concepts seem to be about disciple growth.
Either position can claim "trickle down/up" priority. If we make mature disciples, then they will attract and grow infant disciples. And, if we create enough infants and get them into our pews, then we can nurture them into growing.
It seems to me that the original model was (primarily) the first and the current model is (primarily) the second. That is a descriptive, not proscriptive statement though. Contexts change and continual discernment is vital.
That was a really long way of saying that I agree and pondering where we should focus.
God's Peace
Br. Scot
Br Scot,
I think the question isn't so much where should we focus (where we is more or less generically "The People of The United Methodist Church") but rather who and what among us best focuses or can best focus on each.
Billy Abraham is right-- the UMC is a "church" and not a sect or a movement, and we have to start with the reality. That also means "The United Methodist Way" is right when it says that, indeed, the UMC is, at this point, pretty much in the place of the CoE in the 18th century.
What I note is that in general, congregations since the sixth century (at least) have been more "nurseries" or "child-care centers" for most participants than anything else. That's what they're set up for-- giving them very basic food, helping them recognize and name some colors and the alphabet, get along with others, and maybe even learn to read a bit. So that's what they deliver. Trouble is, even the nursery and child-care business, as our congregations currently operate it, isn't going all that well.
Well, not here.
In Africa, yes. In the Philippines, yes. But there we also operate "lifelong discipleship universities" that not only teach people how to live the way of Jesus, but then expect them ALL to go out and do it if they're going to maintain status in the university. In Angola and Zimbabwe, the name for these universities is "class meetings."
Wonder where they got that?
They haven't forsaken the babies or the reproducing parents. The difference is those parents are being challenged to live as adults, and those babies are being given every expectation that they WILL grow up.
And that comes not only from the congregation (though it's there, too), but primarily from the class meetings.
You come into Methodism over there knowing its about growing up.
Over here it seems like you come into Methodism feeling like it's more likely about just getting old.
The difference is the network.
The culture of the class meetings-- that are all about growing up-- don't let the congregations settle for just being in the nursery and childcare business. Those congregations have enough people who have been "infected" with "the more excellent way" that they're looking at those babies as candidates for growth!
And the congregations don't let the class meetings settle for saying nurseries and childcare don't matter, too.
The two specialize in different things.
And the two need each other.
They need each other to specialize in different things.
And they need each other to do fulfill the complete experience of what church is called to be.
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
Discipleship-- the more excellent way-- can't happen well when the basic environment is a nursery or a child-care center.
But congregations basically are that.
Br. Taylor:
Again, I agree with all you've said. My question about focus is about the allocation of resources and a sense of identity. Do we, as a church, want to identify ourselves as primarily a group focused on striving for perfection. Or do we, as a church, want to strive primarily on "saving souls." Maybe that decision was made when we adopted "making disciples" as part of our motto.
I think your proposal is to continue being a church in the sense of being a nursery and also to create something like the class/band structure (what I call the ascetic structures) to draw people along the more excellent way. I've identified several of these ascetic structures in the UMC: OSL, the walk to emmaus, disciple bible studies, just to name a few.
Am I correctly understanding what you are saying?
If so, I think we are in complete agreement.
Br. Scot
Yes, exactly on the same page.
Perhaps even more than you may know.
I've used those very examples of "paracongregational disciple-formation/missional deployment" groups... among others, in presentations I've been making around the connection, including at emergingumc2, for about two years now.
I'd add campus ministries to that list as well-- a good number of them are or have within them such accountable communities that keep people connected to local congregations (viz General Rule 3) and ALSO concretely help them "grow up"
Camps-- they're the groups most typically identified as 'making disciples" by congregations. I'd say they're more like seed-planters and very-short-term nurseries/kindergartens. What really helps people grow UP-- if that's going to happen-- are the relationships that form around those events, either among those who "go on" to become camp staff in some way or those who create their own social networks with each other as a result of meeting at camp. But I'd say many of these-- since they go largely unrecognized and are accountable to no one beyond the ad hoc group that forms them-- are less capable of generating continuing maturity than sort of becoming "lean-tos" along the path for those who, by other means, actually move on to maturity.
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