Church stats and a river in Egypt
Why I'm embracing the death of the Episcopal Church
’The Death of the Episcopal Church is Near.’
This is an article from 2021 by political science professor and data analyst Ryan Burge Burge writes a blog called ‘Graphs About Religion’ and this week he revisited the state of the Episcopal Church, after the national church office released its 2023 parochial report statistics.
The statistics for mainline church attendance have been dismal for years - decades, really. The Episcopal Church’s numbers are particularly bad.
Yet we keep trying to mine the numbers for some little bit of hope - some proof that the reality we’re seeing is not real, or at least it’s temporary. The Episcopal Office of Public Affairs, for instance, noted that membership this year did not decline as much as it could have.
It’s understandable that we don’t want to see the obvious: the church is still dying.
What is Burge’s conclusion after analyzing 2023 stats? ‘Yes, attendance increased, but the deeper analysis reveals a mixed reality. The Episcopal Church appears to be lurching towards its decline, and there’s little here to challenge that statistical trajectory’.
I, for one, am relieved to read this.
Of course I’m also sad, scared, and grieving. I’ve loved and served the Episcopal Church for more than half my life now.
But just like when a person is dying, there is a certain peace that comes from acceptance. A certain freedom.
We know the end is near, so now is the time to spend on things that really matter.
Instead, we’re still carrying on like it’s business as usual:
Congregations are having their regular stewardship drives, and doing strategic planning based on having less money, but not on how things may look drastically different in the near future.
Clergy are signing letters of agreement with congregations without detailing how they plan to serve together in the reality of today’s church (including how they will afford to).
Dioceses are having conventions where the main topic of conversation is not the state of deep decline in the church - and where we go next.
We stay in the cycle of seasons and events, and we keep doing the same things over and over, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are not working to keep the institutional church alive in its current state.
This is a state of denial.
I truly think we know how bad it is for the church, but we also don’t know how to make it better. So we keep insisting it’s not that bad, or it’s getting better.
I believe this is the source of most of the stress that congregations and clergy are feeling today: pretending that everything is ok when we know it isn’t.
I’m extremely grateful that one person who does not seem to be in denial is our new Presiding Bishop, Sean Rowe.
In an interview with the Living Church, he said:
So, yes, the church is in decline, in terms of our numbers. Given the hand we’re dealt, given the situation as it is, given the state of Christianity, given the demographics of our various regions — how do we most effectively participate in this mission that we’ve called ourselves to?
I don’t know if it’s about helping us to decline gracefully, as much as it is to rethink the whole enterprise, particularly the way that we do it.”
Re-thinking the whole enterprise means the enterprise itself is no longer doing so well.
I don’t know if the church is going to recover from this decline - but things are bad enough that we should let ourselves live like it is a real possibility.
What if this is our last year as a congregation? A diocese? A church? Or our last 5 years or 10 years?
What would we do differently? What is most precious to us?
Do we have the courage to let go of all that is burdening us, even if it means everything is going to fall apart?
Are we willing to believe in resurrection? Then we have to believe in death.
Then we can have the courage to gather in new ways, share the Good News with new people, challenge ourselves to finally embrace technology, or just sit quietly with our Bibles and our best friends.
One last thing that gives me hope about the death of the Episcopal Church:
You know what we do have a lot of? Money.
According to the Episcopal Church Finance Office, $4.5 billion among parishes and dioceses alone.
It doesn’t feel that way, though. Every congregation and diocese I know of is struggling with its budget. This money is mostly in trusts and endowments.
What if we knew we were dying and accepted that this was the time to pass this abundance on to the next generation? Or invest in expressions of the faith that may or may not work out, but will surely help us find our way?
At the end of one’s life, there is often a sense of reckoning, and prioritizing. What will I do with my last precious days? What is most important to me?
Instead of pushing away the fact of our precipitous decline, instead of pretending everything is fine, we could find the freedom and sense of adventure and hope that comes with discovering what’s next.
I’m excited about that.
Well I don't know if I would "embrace" someone I loved dying. Truth in that is I would be at peace with their passing, as one day I will as well, and because we confess that we are already living the life of resurrection. At the heart of my book, Community as church, church as community as well as Ministry Matters is he paschal mystery, the heart of the Gospel, Jesus' death and resurrection. Throughout history the church has gotten fixated either on the death or the resurrection--pick your era, denomination. The record historically witnesses to this. But you can't have the one without the other. The contemporary Russian priest, preacher and martyr Fr Alexander Men, when speaking after the fall of the USSR, said the church was only just beginning, and at the same time dying away. In my study I gathered many examples of communities, that is, parishes or congregations reinventing themselves, re-rooting in their neighborhoods, repurposing their buildings, reviving their reason for being, rediscovering what it means to be the friends of Jesus in the world. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe also encourages me, since from the Rust Belt, he knows what the death of ways of life look like--and yet the new life continues, just as is the case for us when we start pushin up daisies. Christ is risen. Same for Christ's people.
I see this. I think that we have hit the tipping point of no return in so many churches. We have become too small and old to have any energy for initiatives to expand. We struggle with whose turn it is for coffee hour hosting . Theres a reserve of 6 figures in the outreach fund that goes unspent every year and ideas to actually do outreach if it’s to a large and growing Latino community are stone walled.
The Beloved Community is making a choice. God has the last word . If Gods wills it, the Episcopal Church survives , if not then so be it.