On Sailing Sinking Ships, pt. III

Previously on On Sailing Sinking Ships:

Part I. The median age of Catholics and Mainline Protestants (including the Episcopal Church) is much older than that of the US population generally. That's not great.

Part II. The common thread holding together the few US Christian traditions that are nearly as young, or younger, than the median age of the US generally, is that they all have really, really involved members. This is likely due to church cultures that have high expectations of members. Trying to get closer to the median age of the US population generally is a good thing, so I propose we should try expecting more from our members.

So now we come to part III.

As we conclude this three-part post, hopefully you'll agree with me it's has been a lot like the original Star Wars trilogy: written by someone with a good idea, but not always the best execution; the second one was the best; and the whole point of the Ewoks in the third one is to increase merchandise revenue.

Or maybe it's better to say that the last one has the most action, but is still something of a letdown compared to the second. Because of Ewoks.

Anyway, in the first installment I said I would come back and address the legitimate objections to an appeal for unduly weighting quantitative factors as measures of congregational/denomination health. I plan to do that here.

Up front I'll clarify that I unequivocally do not believe that vitality can be measured with only quantitative metrics. Looking only at ASA (average Sunday attendance to the uninitiated), giving, or even baptisms and professions of faith can in no way give a true picture of church health.

If you're wondering why, I do think that a fairly simply, straightforward answer will suffice: if these were the only measures needed for vitality, then Joel Osteen has an incredibly healthy church, as does the NBA for that matter. My point is that I can think of plenty of ways to get a bunch of people to gather zealously together that need not resemble the Beloved Community anticipating the Kingdom of God that Christ calls the Church to be. And just slapping on some "church" brand, or making the Bible the source of your slogans, or using some version of "Jesus" for your mascot in no way, shape, or form guarantees that you're a healthy part of the Body of Christ.

But I'll tell you now: If you were hoping I've give a lot of circumstances where I think vitality can be measured without recourse to quantitative (and here I really mean primarily people counting) measures, then you're not in for a satisfying read. Although here's to hoping I can convince you otherwise.

Maybe I can at least convince you that I'm coming from a relatively sound theological standpoint. I believe that God created human beings to love God above all else and to love the rest of creation because of that love of God; that through the mystery of Original Sin all human beings are in and of themselves unable to properly love God or creation, and that by sharing in the life, death, and resurrection of the Jesus Christ we can be brought back into those right relationships. I cannot rule out the possibility of many ways of sharing in Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection of that go well beyond the institutions and conscious self-identification of the visible Church. At the same time, I stand firm in my belief that all human beings need salvation and that the content of this salvation is growing in the love and likeness of the human individual Jesus Christ, the incarnate Second Person of the Trinity. This means that the Christian hope include relationship with the individual Jesus Christ — not mere intellectual assent to some set of facts about Jesus, not acceptance of some abstract "Christ power," not even simple subordination to a far-off heavenly King and Lord — but a real relationship with the concrete, particular, human Jesus of Nazareth whom God has also greatly exalted and given all power and authority in heaven and on earth as the firstborn of the new creation, the vanguard of resurrected, glorified humanity.

Because of this belief, I take the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) very seriously. A significant responsibility and privilege as a Christ follower is desiring that others can also have a real relationship with him so they too can live into the purpose for which God has created us. This means constantly striving to invite those who do not know Jesus Christ into this transformative relationship with him.

So do I think that this theological position lead me believe that we should almost always use numerical growth of previously unchurched people as an (but not the) essential metric for church vitality?

Absolutely. Why? Because there are people outside of our churches (and probably quite a few in them as well) who have not experienced the transformation of a relationship with Jesus Christ. Churches are healthy when they exist as a community actively helping deepen people's relationships with Christ. Churches are truly healthy when they know that this includes welcoming people into this relationship.

With this theological background in place, I think I can answer what I see as the principle critique of this emphasis on quantitative measures of vitality that I raised in the first part of this post.

“But Chris, isn’t it possible to grow in ways other than numbers?”

My answer depends on what's motivating this question.

If you're asking whether measuring congregation vitality is about more than measuring numbers, than my answer is an unequivocal "yes!" Numerical growth may be pretty close to a necessary part of evaluating church health, but it unequivocally cannot be a sufficient measure. I'll reiterate that you can gather large numbers of people around plenty of messages other than the proclamation of the Gospel, and looking at numbers alone can't determine why people are flocking to or engaging with a community. You can only get at why people are participating by combing quantitative measures with qualitative ones.

A side-note here: I've implied several times that health should be related to growth. I do stand by that claim, but what exactly I mean by growth needs to be nuanced. I don't just mean absolute numerical increase; rather, I mean a numerical increase relative to your local demographic trends. In some cases, losing members could even be considered growth, at least if you're in a community that is decreasing in size at a swifter rate than your congregation is (as could be the case in many rural areas). Conversely, posting quantitative gains could still be considered a kind of decline if you're gaining new members at a rate slower than the growth in your larger community.

It's also possible that the question here is whether we can move away from the traditional means of numerical analysis traditionally used in the Episcopal Church: ASA and congregational giving. This would be a concern I share. In my first post I alluded to one quantitative measure that would likely be much more helpful: adult baptisms and professions of faith. Beyond that, more helpful numerical measures of congregational health would be median giving considered as a percentage of incomes and AREA (Average Regular Event Attendance).

However, if what's being suggested is that we can judge congregation health with no regard whatsoever for quantitative growth, I'll admit I'm extremely skeptical. This is the suggestion implied in statements like "We haven't grown in numbers, but we have grown in faith" or "vitality isn't something that can be measured with numbers; its something you know when you experience it." I towed this line for a long time, but then I started attending a lot more congregations as a visitor. I know that this is subjective, but my experience has been that there is a strong inverse relationship between how much a congregation insists that vitality is a matter of "feeling" instead of "objective measures" and how vital that congregation actually feels. Furthermore, I would put this question to such communities: how is it that you, as a healthy Christian community, are forming disciples of Christ who are not actively and vigorously seeking to invite others to experience the transformative love of Christ?

Thanks for reading the third part of my first blog post.

I know I didn't thoroughly walk through my responses to every objection to my approach, so I really hope this can be the beginning of a conversation. Make sure to leave your comments about how any of this three-part post strikes you. Let's keep the dialogue going.

I'm not sure what I'll be talking about next, but hopefully I've piqued your interest Stay tuned for what I hope will be my weekly musings.