The Future of Church is Post-Denominational
What that means for re-imagining ministry today
‘E-P-I-S-C-O-P-A-L’.
Yet again, I am spelling the name of my church over the phone to someone who needs my occupation. Yet again, I’m confronted by how few people have ever heard of my denomination.
‘Is that a Christian church?’, she asks.
It’s not just my church. All the major denominations are in steep decline:
American Baptist
Lutheran
Presbyterian (PCUSA)
Episcopal
United Church of Christ (UCC)
Methodist (UMC)
Assemblies of God
Southern Baptist Convention
Presbyterian Church of America
, the statistician and political scientist who says this about denominations:
I follow
If these nine denominations would have grown as fast as the population from 1990 through 2022, they would have about 53 million members today. That’s about 16% of the overall population of the country.
Instead, they have a membership of 30.8 million people. That’s a total gap of just over 21 million members that don’t exist today. Those 30.8 million folks are just 9.3% of the total population. So, just these nine denominations are just slightly more than half the size they should be if they continued to grow with America.
It’s well past time to see that we are in the midst of a major transformation.
And it’s not that people are losing their faith, or no longer practice Christianity.
It’s that how they want to practice Christianity is no longer defined by denominational difference.
If we were businesses, we would be forced to see the writing on the wall about the un-sustainability of this. Yet we keep trying to maintain nine different types of small churches in each community. We keep maintaining expensive, administration-heavy national headquarters for each separate denomination.
Denominational church is like malls in America - we are so full of nostalgia about them that we just don’t seem to understand that to the extent that they still exist, they no longer serve the same function they once did.
Shopping still exists. People still buy things - and want to buy things. But they’re not going to malls to do so.
Ryan Burge published another article that was much more optimistic about church in general:
‘Non-Denominationalism Is the Strongest Force in American Religion’.
In other words:
Church still exists. People still pray, worship, and gather - and want to be part of a faith community. But they’re not going to denominational churches to do so.
I disagree with one part of what Burge says, however.
I don’t think what we’re seeing is non-denominational.
I think it’s post-denominational.
I think we are transforming into a broader church that carries the traditions of the denominational past into a future without the same kind of organizational structure and authority.
And I think those of us who are part of denominational Christianity can live into that, instead of resisting it.
What does that mean for those of us who are part of a denominational church?
Well, I guess we could all just shut our doors and move on. Or we could all try to merge together … but that would be a disaster, of course.
At the same time, no one likes being in this anxious, stuck-feeling place - constantly resisting this transformation, or living in denial as denominational structure continues to collapse.
It also seems foolish - and wasteful of our calling to share Good News - to keep functioning in the same ways that are causing our deep decline.
I asked my AI assistant to give me a description of a ‘stuck’ organization:
Excessive Layers of Management
Decision-Making Bottlenecks
High Costs, Low Efficiency
Lack of Innovation and Adaptability
Stagnant Growth
After 30 years serving the denominational church, I think this is a pretty good description of where we are at, at a denominational level.
It’s hard - perhaps impossible - to break out of these kinds of ruts. We want to make changes, but we are not really changing. It’s institutional gridlock.
This is why I’m so interested in systematic change.
It’s not about doing things, so much as observing how things are changing, and re-setting our vision.
It’s about living into a different story.
Which can then give us freedom to change how we respond to the new landscape.
The trick: we’re not in charge. We’re not the ones making the changes. The landscape is not one we’ve cultivated. Instead, we’re the ones adapting.
And if we choose to adapt to a post-denominational world, there’s much more good news for the whole church.
I’ll tell you why on the other side of this break…
Join me for an online workshop:
How to: imagine ministry beyond the 20th century model
$39 - paid Free Range Priest subscribers get 10% off.
This is part of a workshop series - register for 3 and get one free!
** It will ask for your name and email when you register. This is for my personal registration database. Your data will not be shared.
Do denominations still matter?
It was 20 years or so ago, at a clergy conference. I was still a pretty newly-minted Episcopal priest, and the conference speaker was a well-know bishop in the denomination. I was thrilled to be talking with him at the reception after his talk, and he said something about Christian communities being called into deeper relation…