Beware: Community Ministry or Focus Won't Save Your Church.

            I have been to half-a-dozen “denominational-visioning” meetings over the past few years. My own congregation organized one, a few years ago, on church amalgamation. A month or two ago it was a meeting about “innovative” ideas for ministry. This morning it was a gathering to consider what to do with our valuable but decaying Toronto church buildings. We are all property rich but cash poor.          

            And at all these meetings, participants usually talk about doing ministry for and in their local communities as the long-term basis upon which the survival of their congregations depends.

            They are wrong. It is actually the other way around. Only churches that survive—and thrive—can do great ministry in their local communities.

            So first, a caveat. I love how, in the United Church of Canada, I am continually bathed in excitement to do local neighborhood ministry. We do soup kitchens and ESL, host the homeless and offer incubator space for startups; we house schools, provide community space for AA and ratepayer meetings, and we sponsor foodbanks and cafes. We send our members out to lobby for the homeless, protest US immigration policy, attend Gay-Pride parades and make space available for community gardens. And on and on and I love it all. 

The Food Bank at East End United Church,
Toronto

           But meanwhile, many of the churches that these activities are sponsored by are shrinking and dying. Community ministry is a necessary component of any church’s ministry. But—with perhaps the rarest of exceptions—doing community ministry cannot sustain a church.

            Why not? Well, the reasons are myriad, but there are a few key ones. 

           First, churches are much emptier than they used to be because many fewer Canadians go to church. As late as 1965 more than half of Canadians could be found in a church on Sunday morning. Now, less than fifty years later, probably less than ten percent, not more than thirteen, might be found in church. Community churches like mine, “Lawrence Park Community Church,” used to fill with neighborhood people who walked to church. But now, with only one fifth of the Canadians going to church compared to fifty years ago, it is as if four out of five of those local homes people used to come to church from are empty. What's more, the remaining houses have far fewer people in them due to demographic trends such as people having fewer children now compared to fifty years ago.

Can this congregation survive? Do ministry? Change?

            Second, this means that no Toronto neighbourhood has enough people to support a church that draws its membership solely from that neighbourhood, or especially from the even smaller number of people the church ministers to in that neighbourhood. Besides, every neighbourhood also has churches from different denominations—or synagogues or temples or mosques—vying for the same dwindling population of religious adherents. It’s a church-eat-church jungle out there.

            You might wonder, of course, if some newer high-density neighbourhoods are different. With many more people per square kilometer, perhaps neighbourhood churches are possible in such communities. Maybe. But these high-density neighbourhoods, such as Toronto's hip Liberty Village, also tend to be full of younger people whose church attendance is even lower than among older Canadians.

            Third, with increased immigration, the ethnic makeup of many neighbourhoods is also changing. Two of the larger ethnic groups in my church’s neighborhood are Iranians and Chinese. Many are well-to-do. They are wonderful people whose wide range of experiences and cultural capital are a gift to Canada. However, very few of them are Christian. And, if they are, they tend to go to ethnic-enclave churches. There isn’t much opportunity for growth there.

            Fourth, local ministry often and rightly means ministry to marginalized Canadians—the poor, the homeless, the distressed, and recent arrivals trying to fit in. This is as it should be. But these same people should not be mistaken for the people who can financially sustain a church, even in large numbers.

            Fifth, property redevelopment is not a panacea either. At the meeting I went to today, we discussed the possibilities. The idea is that some churches may be able to both improve their worship space and maintain their local ministries by working with developers to transform their old church into new condos or office buildings or schools or retail space.

How about condos in an old church, including
some new worship space for that dying congregation?

            This could be all well and good, except that by the time churches choose for such options, they are already tiny, tired, and full of members thinking of moving out of the GTA to retire in Collingwood or Cobourg. And, a lawyer who works with developers told us, most redevelopment plans take ten years from start to finish. In such cases will anyone be left in the redeveloped church to turn the lights on for the first time?

            So where are we at? I have a few thoughts. 

            A. Churches that survive—whether they are Fundamentalist, or Evangelical, or Mainline—draw their adherents from far beyond their local neighbourhood. These “destination churches” offer people good reasons for travelling some distance in order to attend and belong. And usually, these “good reasons,” are very intentional and well thought out. 

            Not always, of course. Some destination churches draw people from longer distances almost by accident, as it were. Ethnic churches, for example. The Christian Reformed Church—a church made up largely of Dutch immigrants—will attract people from a distance because ethnicity is its strongest glue. A very few churches will have that one-in-a-million preacher that people travel far and wide to hear. Very conservative churches may use theological guilt memes about hell or shunning to continue to draw people from a distance, after they have moved away. But ultimately, if congregations want to stay strong, they are going to have to be very smart and very intentional about drawing people from far away into membership and mission.  

            B. Destination churches do local ministry because they are healthy churches. But they do many other kinds of ministry too. They give to national and international causes. They reach out not only to the marginalized, but also to those who are not. 

            A key ministry healthy churches engage in is the ministry of giving meaning and purpose to people who are looking for it to use in their workplaces, their distant neighbourhoods, and when they sit in front of TVs to watch the news. 

            Does our relentless focus on community engagement distract us from other important ministries? Such as offering people “meaning?” When Jesus saw the crowds that followed him around the lake, he had compassion on them. But what did he do next? The text is clear—he taught them. Only after that did he (according to the story) feed them. Today, people are hungering for meaning, for insight about how to morally apply the levers of power that they have their hands on, for how to make sense of tragedy and loss, for how to raise children or fight the racism (or sexism or LGBTQ hatred) they feel is directed against them.

            To me this is one of the more important truths we need to hang onto. Ministry is not just doing—our ministries need to cover heart and mind and hands. And for all the priority we place on hands “doing” sort of ministry, we should not forget that however we now frame it, the church was founded as a locus of good news that transformed the hopes and dreams of people. We need both Martha and a Mary sides to our ministry and it even appears that Jesus prioritized the Mary-teaching side (though I recognize that this is a favourite area for scholarly debate). Churches must be incredibly intentional about sharing this “gospel.” What churches have on offer must speak to the longings and confusions of our current society in a compelling way that keeps people on the edge of their seats. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, years ago, “If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon, or build a better mousetrap than his neighbour, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”  

            I am not, by the way, here arguing for nothing but traditional sermons. There are other ways to share the gospel, from discussion on Sunday mornings to classes on Wednesday nights. And I am not arguing for an old-fashioned orthodoxy either. Meaning is not singular. It isn’t just one sanctioned teaching and no other that I care about. Meaning is something we make together as congregations on the way, with the insights—scriptural or not—that we all bring to the process. No one would ever mistake me for orthodox when it comes to Christianity’s old creeds! But Jesus' story is the good news deep in my bones that inspires my hands to get to work.

            C. Similarly, worship matters. There are 101 United congregations doing variations of Anglican-light liturgy and music and vestments and litanies and rituals. Fine. We need all that to be a part of our denominational mix. But Anglican light is not the language of a majority of the people of Toronto. Indeed, it may be impenetrable to people who rarely go to church. So, what are you or your congregation doing about that? How will you change the worship in your congregation without falling into worship wars? 

            D. Destination churches invest in getting out the word about their preaching, their worship, and their ministry opportunities for involvement. They experiment with new forms of bringing good news to people far and near. And when, through amalgamation or endowment they end up with a pot of new money, they don’t sit on it, or use it to fix their buildings (a renovated building never brought in a new adherent)—healthy destination churches use these resources to become more relevant, more engaging, more focused on sharing their take on the good news, instead. 

          All healthy churches engage in evangelism. In our mainline setting, this won't be evangelism based on the idea of getting people to choose for heaven (or not). It will be evangelism based on offering good news for people who are looking for meaning, understanding, a supportive community, healing, and all the other things our tradition has to offer. 

            E. As long as we have one or two United Churches in every city neighbourhood, we simply have far too many churches to expect that more than a tiny handful will ultimately survive and thrive. And until they die, in most of these neighbourhoods, these United Churches will be in competition with each other for the same neighbourhood members. They will all struggle with diminished resources at just that time they need more to offer robust reasons for new members to join. 

            So, many, many city churches must now amalgamate before they enter into almost absolutely irreversible death spirals. They must amalgamate while they still have imagination and people energy and financial resources to do D, above.

            We all know that the prognosis for people who have had CPR resuscitation to restart their hearts is never going to be as good as it is for people who haven’t had a health emergency. But the same applies to churches. We must take up healthy amalgamations long before churches need CPR to survive. Our world and neighbourhoods, our transportation systems and culture, our resources and preoccupations are way different now compared to 100 years ago when walking or a tram were the only ways to get to church. 

          Still, in spite of all the societal and city change, we too often expect the worship and architecture and music and locations of the past to still work seamlessly in this new setting. None of it will, however. So among all the other things we ought to do, we must cut back on the number of churches we have. We must amalgamate them to focus our resources—and the best locations—on taking on today's challenges instead of early-twentieth-century challenges. There are many models for healthy amalgamation: multi-campus, multiple-point, satellite locations, shared staff, re-launch, and so on. The trick is that they all work in inverse proportion to how soon two or more congregations get busy with such amalgamations. 

            F. If people are going to attend destination churches rather than a church they can walk to, they must have parking, and lots of it. Because when you attend a church you can’t walk to--a destination church that has figured out it needs to reach beyond its immediate neighbourhood--when you attend such a church you will usually drive. Transit may be an option for some, but people coming in from the further suburbs don’t always have great access to quick transit out there. Too many of our churches have no parking, or little parking, or force their aging adherents to walk ever longer distances to find street parking. This is not sustainable, and such churches will eventually close, no matter how much great neighbourhood ministry they do!

Even churches with access to transit need parking
for those coming from the suburbs.

            This means that one of our best options might be deciding to build a new amalgamated-church building in order to locate somewhere where both parking and transit are available. This relocation might not be to a church. Perhaps a former retail or industrial site? A mall that is closing (most are, for some of the same reasons churches are). 

            There is more to be said. And, I admit, this has taken the form of a Jeremiad—a sermon that is basically a rant. I sound like I know it all. The truth is, in my later ministry, some of this is just starting to dawn on me, and some of these actions are just in the experimental stage. Still, it now seems to me that these are the sort of things we need to talk about, whether my diagnosis is right or wrong. Because doing more local neighbourhood ministry with smaller, older groups of people is not a solution to the troubles we face.