In a special article in the Hamilton Spectator called Test of Faith, Dr. Reginald Bibby, a sociologist at the University of Lethbridge, who has studied the religious culture of North America, speaks of a “handwriting on the wall”. The mainline groups — Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans and the United Church — will says Bibby, “with a few individual exceptions, continue to shrink, and with their related declines in resources, will see most of their physical outlets sold off”, he said.
David Seljak, an associate professor and chair of the religious studies Department at St. Jeromes’ College in Waterloo goes a step further and maintains that this is not a local problem.“There is no place where the mainline Protestant churches are not in a steady state of decline,” he says. “It’s something that is happening across Canada and it has been happening for some time.”
But Why? How is it that churches come to that state in their development? There are some common denominators. In every case, the congregations had a long and varied history. In every case, the congregations had grown throughout their history to a point that warranted building edifices on a grand scale. If you have 1000 people attending worship, you need a place that can house that many people. But in every case, for whatever reason, the number of worshippers could not be sustained. Rather than grow, the congregations levelled off and then began to decline to a point where the support base – the people who donated the money – could no longer sustain facilities that needed to be maintained, and in some cases updated to meet accessibility and other building code issues.
The article that I referred to does not give satisfactory answers. It refers to demographic issues, such as people moving out of the city centre into the suburbs. It refers to sociological changes from the original members of the church to the millennial generation that has different needs, and according to Seljak “is spiritual but not religious.”
While some of these points may be valid, they don’t tell the whole picture, and neither will the ideas that I would add. And the first would be a shift in theology. The so-called “mainline” Protestant churches have shifted to a liberal theology that focuses on the rational, and downplays or denies the supernatural events of the Bible. The United Church of Canada was formed in 1925 as the result of a union between Methodist, Congregational, and some Presbyterian congregations. Some of these denominations have a long history of a very evangelical past, which somehow disappeared in the smelting pot that became the United Church. And other mainline churches that did not join the union have also shifted to a more liberal theology. It is an unmistakable fact that evangelical churches have a far lower rate of “closures” although there have been some.
A second reason that I would suggest, is a failure to read the “handwriting on the wall” sooner. The churches that declined did not do so overnight. Attendance did not plummet from 1000 to 100 or 50 from one year to the next. In most cases the decline was gradual. Sometimes the wrong questions were asked too late, or not asked at all. Churches that have proudly stated that they were “not concerned with numbers”, and who tried to explain away their lack of growth, either theologically or otherwise, are now basing their decision to close on numbers. “We no longer have the resources that we need”.
A third reason, is that at some point, the main thing stopped being the main thing. Churches that focus on the main point of Christianity, which is following the Great Commandment to love one another and the Great Commission to make disciples (in other words spread the Gospel) are less likely to need to shut their doors as churches that are occupied mainly with lessor things. I remember being in the board meeting of a church years ago, where more time was spent discussing the financial health of the organ fund than the need of souls. They had some segregated funds invested for the purpose of financing the maintenance of the pipe organ. When the General Operating Fund began to dry up or go into the red, they would “borrow” from the organ fund. At issue in one particular Board meeting was the contentious question of how much should be borrowed, when it would be repaid, and “what interest rate will we charge ourselves!” On the agenda of the same meeting was a proposal for an outreach ministry which was never discussed because the above item took so much time. I went home crying (and I cried after many board meetings while I was in active ministry) followed by sleepless nights. The main thing stopped being the main thing.
Dr. Vance Havner first articulated a cycle known as the “Four M Cycle” Man – Movement – Machine – Monument. Someone’s idea grows bigger than the man (or woman) and becomes a movement that catches fire and spreads, as fires tend to do. Inevitably, a mechanism or structure – a machine if you will – is necessary in order to keep the movement and the vision of the founder alive. But sadly, soon the machine becomes an end in itself. Oiling and maintaining the machine becomes more important than the work which the machine was created to do. It becomes a monument – or worse, a mausoleum to house ideas and practices that are dead.
Havner’s image applies to both secular and religious institutions. In the case of the Christian Church, the God-Man Jesus began a movement that grew past His human lifespan and was carried on by his followers – the apostles, martyrs, church fathers, and their successors. By the third century at the latest, the movement became a machine – a hierarchy of an institution which was very powerful. The humans who had that power became so intoxicated by it that they worked hard at maintaining the machine. Taken as a whole, Christianity did not freeze into a monument. Why? Because in all ages, there have been people who bought into the original vision of Jesus: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it” (Matt. 16:18) and “go into the world and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). The secret to prevent becoming a monument is to get back to the original vision. Reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldyrich Zwingli and others had that vision and created movements within the movement to keep going forward. But sadly, even within those movements there have been machines and monuments that have evolved over time.
Individual churches today, are always in danger of succumbing to that deadly cycle that ends in a monument. The signs are not hard to overlook, but sometimes they are overlooked:
- when the way something is done becomes more important than what is being done – in the end less and less gets done.
- when ministries within the church become perpetuated without understanding what they mean – we do things simply because this is what we have always done and we have always done it a certain way.
- when pining for the past glory days is more intense than the hope of the future.
- sacred cows such as styles of music, particular buildings, traditions and practices that were invented by humans, and many more.
The key to avoid the trap of the 4 M’s? Stay in the movement phase, or return to it. What that means practically for the modern church was articulated in a blog by an Anglican, whose name I can’t find, but I like these ideas: