LookingTo2070

So we have two questions, in a general and a specific to our congregation form: can we have effective congregations without full-time clergy on staff, and is our future viable as a congregation in the 150-200 AWA niche? I have a confident "Yes" to offer on both counts. I also think our future at Newark Central is MORE than just being a congregation with two worship services and 200 or so a Sunday in attendance. This is where the practical and the theological can constructively intersect. I read the following link two years ago and thought "he understands our situation very, very well!" Both for Newark Central and Ohio Disciples more generally. This brother in Christ is speaking to the challenges being faced right now in the United Methodist Church, but his "Chapter One" (which is not as long as a standard book chapter at all) has great relevance to our current circumstances at Newark Central: https://peopleneedjesus.net/2016/09/20...

The Pastoral/Relational size and style of church, with 50 to 150 AWA, is for the Disciples of Christ our sweet spot for congregations. That's probably been historically 85% of our total, maybe more like 75% in recent years as congregations have slipped below 50 a Sunday. Full disclosure: that's what I'm used to. I grew up in and in six congregations have known pretty much only that niche. I didn't and haven't attended a larger church, except for a seven year period where I was out of parish pulpit ministry, but did a great deal of supply preaching -- when I wasn't otherwise engaged, I was part of a United Methodist Church that was up around 300 AWA, technically moving into the Program/Managerial category, but I could feel the many forces in the congregation tugging everything back down to a more pastor-centered, relational emphasis church . . . and it has dropped back down a couple of times closer to 250 since. The "In-Between Church" struggle is not...

A common concern among clergy and church leaders right now, as in 2018-2019 and heading for 2020, is what Thom Rainer has identified as a very general phenomenon and that pastors see every Sunday when they step onto the platform or into a pulpit. People don't come to church as often. This is very different than people leaving a church. That's not what he and we are needing to talk about. The reality of work scheduling changes, personal options, a medical science, means that people are simply gone more often without leaving the rolls. Look at it this way: if you have 100 AWA, and then your four Sunday a month attenders start to average themselves three of four Sundays instead, your AWA will drop to 75, but your membership will stay the same. Your officers may be at the same numbers, but their presence in worship, and at meetings, will be more sporadic. And as your Stewardship chair might have already told you, good solid giving caring people tend, often without meaning to,...

So, to sum up the question of congregational size and what that means for almost everything else about a church, what has come to be the standard understanding in modern American church life goes like this: you start with what's called "Average Worship Attendance" or as I'll be calling it, AWA, which is the average of your Sunday services across the year. Membership has long been mistrusted as a useful guide, because speaking from my own experience, I've served congregations with an AWA of 110 that had 1100 members "on the rolls," and a congregation with more like 90 AWA with over 500 in official membership. Newark Central has about 250 official members, another 300 in the "limbo" file, and at least 25 regular attenders who for a variety of reasons choose not to formally join. But we have a reported average attendance of 152 -- which like most churches, includes Christmas Eve and Easter. If you take them out, we'd be more like 143. Our at...

One aspect of where both we as a congregation and the region of which we're a part have a common problem is around the so-called "150-200 barrier." It's a well-known and often discussed challenge for congregations. There's quite a bit of literature on it, and I'll just give you this sample of links: https://thomrainer.com/2014/03/the-200-growth-barrier-in-churches-revisited-9-observations/ http://www.lifeandleadership.com/ministry-resources/church-leader-foundations-church-size-size-transitions.html   -    https://www.uua.org/growth/ga/44009.shtml  [growth chart] http://seniorpastorcentral.com/703/4-changes-senior-pastors-must-make-break-200-barrier/ Carey is often dismissed by readers in smaller churches because he talks both about breaking past 150-200, but also about how he brought a congregation to 3000 a Sunday . . . and for some, that's just so outside of both experience and current vision that it kind of erases mentally what else he...

You can see the Disciples of Christ . . . we're the bottom-most line, but it's cold comfort that the general trend lines are pretty much all the same. And below, we can see that while geography and demographics have insulated the Southern Baptist Convention somewhat, they are moving into much the same territory of general decline and losses since 2013 of actual total numbers.

I'm starting with the bad news, in part because I'd rather save the good news for later, and get the hard stuff in front of us and out of the way to start . . . It does not get better after 2013; the trend lines are, if anything, worse through 2018 data, and either way, you can see the endpoint of all three trend lines hitting the zero axis around 2035. That's the current situation in a nutshell for the general church, and also for the regional church of which we're a part.

Two principles at work: Matthew 28:19–20  (ESV) Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.   In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.   ~ Luke of Prague (Moravian 1493), Marco Antonio de Dominis (1611), Rupertus Meldenius (aka Peter Meiderlin 1627), Richard Baxter (1679), and Alexander Campbell (1834 and after) . . . later, Pope John XXIII (1959) +    +    + The first of our three Wednesday night presentations is the part with lots of numbers. Sorry/Not Sorry! Because . . . Numbers = People, or: People = Souls with a destiny Also, Dollars = Commitment, or: Talk = Cheap Actions > Words