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Michael P Plekon's avatar

Farewell and good riddance to "churchgrowth," Routhage's and Mann's expert assessments. Also to ASA obsession (Average Sunday Attendance) as the only measure of health, growth, decline, whatever. None of this, including the fixation with "programs" ever had anything to do with what the people of God, the body of Christ is. All of it was the theologically and politically "correct" perspective when I was ordained in 1983. A lot has happened and the reasons are many, diverse and complicated so no one should go looking for a one cause for the change. You could look at my Community as church, church as community (Cascade, 2021) for more analysis and reflection but NO recipes for fixing anything. There aren't any. Yet, we have far to go in rediscovering what church and ministry are essentially about. Nevertheless we keep doing them, I am certain this is a path of better understanding our common life in Christ.

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Tom Harris's avatar

Fr. Cathie, as always, I am so thankful for your posts, your insight, and your thoughtful perspectives. In my 25 years of ministry experience, the rock in the road to doing church differently (be it new programs, different programs, or measuring something other than Attendance/Building/Cash for church vitality) is that it is so difficult to find consensus on what on earth Church is, or what spiritual health/vitality is. Have you found any ways to help communities address this this and to dig deeply into who they are called to be today... not just revisit or reignite who they think they were called to be in 1973? :-) I find that we Christian folk struggle to agree on what this whole Christian Life is all about, and tend to focus on our version/purpose/meaning of our faith and make it the most important for everyone else. Some say it's right doctrine/belief in worship and Sunday school classes, others say we should be about fellowship/community with each other, others find meaning in quiet prayer or mystical experiences, and others want to focus on serving. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the different takes on what faith and church "should" be. So, rather than embracing this breadth of Christian experience and honing in on what matters to our community, we instead don't talk about it and simply embrace church growth in lieu of the breadth of spiritual vitality that Jesus models for us. I'd love your thoughts on this and any ways that you have found that help us break through the fixation on program and growth over spiritual health and vitality.

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