The Loose Canon

As Anglicans, we stongly believe in the power of scripture and the importance of reading scripture in our worship. Our worship has a dual emphasis of both Word and Sacrament and a significant amount of sacred scripture is read each time we gather to worship. Having the scripture read so that all hear and understand is then very important to liturgy done well. (Mimi Jones is pictured reading the Epistle at Christ Church Episcopal, Savannah)

I remember being struck by how well the readings in worship were done when I first visited Virginia Theological Seminary. There was a reading from a complicated argument being put forward by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans which I heard so clearly that it was compelling in a way I had not previously encountered. I was struck then by the power of scripture itself to strike a chord before anyone comments on it. The sermon that day was not on the reading from Romans, yet I left the chapel still ruminating on the reading as well as on the Gospel on which the sermon did focus.

Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland (pictured here and below) has been for many years a lay reader at our Cathedral of Holy Trinity in Paris. Recently, the Rt. Rev. Pierre Whelon, Bishop in Charge of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, wrote an essay for Anglicans Online on his interview with her on how she prepares to read in church. She says in part that “reading the Scriptures in church has to be an authentic proclamation of the reader’s faith. Preparation is essential – there are far too many last-minute readings in our churches.”

She points out what a difference it makes for the reader to pray through the text and wrestle with its meaning before proclaiming the text in worship. The full article is well worth reading. It is online here Reading the Bible as a Statement of Faith. The award winning actress does not recommend a dramatic reading, but reading must flow out of the faith of the reader. Yet she does come around to an actor’s understanding. She told Bishop Whelon “I once asked Jimmy Cagney, ‘just what is acting?’ He said at first, ‘I dunno…’ But then he said, ‘All I know is that you have to mean what you say.’”

In Romans 10:14 Paul writes, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” But lay readers should also know that in their public proclamation of God’s Word that a congregation can also hear and so come to believe.

I know that nothing is more formational than encountering the Word of God and so nothing can be more foundational to our liturgies than scripture read well. I commend this essay to all who read scripture in our congregations.

The Rev. Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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What do a water slide or an ice cream social have to do with such weighty topics as liturgy and mission? At the currently fastest growing congregation in the Diocese, amping up the energy at parish events that emphasize fun has connected folks more deeply to one another and so made real the community of love, grace, and forgiveness we all want our church to be.

The congregation of St. Anne’s, Tifton has over the past four years been coming back from a decline. After longtime rector the Rev. Jacoba Hurst retired, St. Anne’s dwindled to a third of its previous size. By 2008, the Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) was down to 98. The next year, the Rev. Lonnie Lacy was called as rector, and in the years since, the attendance and overall energy level of the church have gone up. Some of that has been, of course, the natural bump one expects when a new priest is called after an interim period. This certainly helps explain attendance in 2009 of 124. But the following year the ASA was 141 and last year it was 151. There is sustained growth of more than 50% from 2008 to present.

In considering numeric growth for The Loose Canon articles, I try to find something in growing congregations that might be useful to other churches. Obviously, there are many factors in growth, including the demographics of the area, which are not repeatable outside a given context. At St. Anne’s, however, one principle in effect that should be considered by others is the sense of “play” at work in our Episcopal Church in Tifton. The idea of congregational recreation certainly predates Lacy’s arrival at St. Anne’s. Some point to the hearty fellowship that emerged during the Rev. Arnold Bush’s rectorship in the 70′s and 80′s, which has continued through the years with fellowship events at the homes of several longtime lay leaders such as Roy Rankin.

On becoming rector, Lacy began by looking at the liturgical calendar for opportunities to connect the great feasts of the Church to events that express this other side of the parish’s life-a love of having fun together. At Pentecost, they borrow the name of the “Holy Ghost Weenie Roast” from a Trinity, Statesboro event and place it at the end of Eastertide. Pentecost Sunday is celebrated with high mass at the church. That afternoon a party is held alongside a lake. Some folks fish, play horseshoes, or volleyball, while others grill and share a pot luck feast. There is a bounce house and a large water slide enjoyed by both kids and adults. The Senior Warden might be seen sliding together with the youngest acolyte. This a time when young and old alike have fun together. The congregation celebrates its Rally Sunday on the first Sunday of the school year with a festive Sunday service and fun including serving a whole hog (and a priest has to kiss the hog as shown below with the Rev. David Rose doing the honors).

To the All Saint’s liturgy, they added greater emphasis to their Eve of the Feast celebrations with a carnival and Trunk or Treat. The adults fully take part with the kids and enjoy dressing up, decorating their cars, and giving out candy. Hay rides, carnival games, a bonfire, and a cookout round out the intergenerational fun. For Christmas, the congregation takes part in the Tifton Christmas Parade to have fun while spreading their name in Tift County as a vibrant and happy place. In addition to these, there are numerous other times for sharing food and fun. During the summer, one pot luck designated “Garden Fresh Day” to enjoy food from the gardens of the parish. A homemade ice cream social on the feast day of St. Anne gets deadly serious in its fun with judges rating the best ice cream.

St. Anne’s parishioner Leeann Culbreath says, “It helps that we now have two young rectors and an influx of young families in our parish. But that is not necessary for adding in more play to community life, and it doesn’t have to involve bouncy houses or water slides. Play can be had in activities like art, gardening, cooking, games, dancing, talent shows, or a good-natured competition for a worthy cause.”

Another parishioner puts it, “We know to expect the unexpected at St. Anne’s, and that keeps us coming back.”

The Church Father Tertullian wrote in his Apologetics that others would look at the early Christians and say, “See how they love one another.” So seldom is that said of us today. But structuring times for playing together can make a congregation’s life all the more meaningful, including its life of worship.

Lacy says, “If we didn’t play when and how we do at St. Anne’s, our worship would feel very different. Because we know, love, and enjoy one another outside of worship, the bonds expressed and experienced in worship are made even stronger. We come to God’s altar pre-gifted with a deep love for each other, and we want to invite others into that love.”

This Holy Week just passed shows how play and worship come together. St. Anne’s enjoys a full Holy Week with daily liturgies. These are very solemn worship services. The Easter Vigil already has some unexpected elements, such as lighting a large fire in the nave of the church, which fits a sense of play. St. Anne’s also used resources for the Old Testament readings to make the telling of the stories of the faith more interactive and lively. Then when the congregation processed outside for an outdoor baptism with a child immersed three times in the water of baptism, the smiles of the gathered congregation express the deep joy that comes from bearing one another’s burdens and sharing one another’s joys. This was solemn worship, centered on dying with Christ in baptism and so being raised with him, yet it was also fun, joyful, and grace-filled.

Culbreath says, “Good play is usually at least a little messy. So we get to be real and messy and imperfect together. That is a real gift in a society that pushes the perfect image.”

Lacy added, “The relationships in the people of St. Anne’s cause our worship to be what it is. Because we have laughed together, we’re more able and ready to heal, grow, love and forgive together, too.”

Our churches are to be places of love, grace, and forgiveness, which are more readily found among people who have learned to let their guard down around each other and, in that vulnerability, have found it’s a safe place to be oneself. This is how a water slide can connect to liturgy and mission. How might your congregation consider the work of the people to include playful fun as well as solemn worship?

The Rev. Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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How do we set realistic goals for numeric growth of a congregation? Answering that question led to a new way of looking at the data and a number I hope will be useful in creating expectations that I more than picking a number out of the air.

Using Population with ASA
Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) is one commonly used indicator of the strength of a worshipping community. There are problems with this as it does not take into account the ministry of the people to their community. It also misses the importance of mid-week liturgies. Nonetheless, ASA is useful. But getting Sunday attendance to more than 100 must be more difficult in a county of 25,000 people than in a county of 100,000 people, right? That’s the basis for this new way of looking at the data.

I took the ASA of every congregation in the Diocese and divided it by the population within a five-mile radius of the church. Why a five-mile radius when plenty of people drive further to church? Honestly, because I had access to that statistic for every congregation and it seemed a useful measure. Church with 3,000 within a 5-mile radius, seldom have much larger populations just beyond that boundary and if they do, it is less likely for someone to leave a populated area to head to a less populous place for church. We tend to go farther in directions we are accustomed to traveling, and less far when it is not on one of our usual routes.

So how do we do?
It turns out, that on average, .36% of the population within a five-mile radius is reflected in the ASA of the church. If a Diocese of Georgia congregation in an area with 10,000 people on Sunday is average, the church will have 36 people in church on Sunday. That average reflects a range from 2% to .02%. The church with the highest attendance to population ratio is Christ Church, Frederica (pictured above), where 1 in 50 people who live in a five-mile radius are in church on Sunday. Though to be fair, the congregations of St. Andrew’s (pictured below) and St. Cyprian’s in Darien may have two buildings and two vestries, but they share a priest in southeast convocation dean, the Very Rev. Ted Clarkson, and they share the same sparse population. Their combined Sunday attendance of more than 100 in a town of 5,000 means they top the chart together at 2.3%. I have created a chart with all of the above average congregations noted along with some aggregate data for cities: ASA in Context I have also placed online the data I used. Here is the population in a 5-mile radius of each of our 70 congregations: 5-mile population

What does this mean?
First, please hear me clearly that this statistic was created to help set useful targets for growth based on experience, not to judge the effectiveness of existing ministry. Nor is this meant to suggest limits to the work of the Holy Spirit, but to give more useful comparisons. Churches low on the scale may be quite successful in other ways. For example, the lowest church on the scale happens to be Christ Church, Augusta which has one of the highest ratios of people touched by the ministry of the church each week compared to ASA (see this video for the Christ Church, Augusta story shown together with ministry at the churche in Darien). So take the data as it is intended. Look at your attendance compared to the population. Consider what this means for your church as you set make plans for the future. As I share stories in this space of congregations doing well above average in terms of attendance, look to what your church can learn from these other Episcopal Churches. Then set reasonable goals with a strategy for reaching those goals.

Another approach
Or, you could always toss all the data aside and preach the Gospel and reach out in love to your community. Connect in meaningful ways to those around your church. Offer the life-changing love of God as found in Jesus Christ. Invite folks in to your church and into relationship with God and then integrate those who come into the life of the church, discipling them in the faith. That is always appropriate no matter what the data says.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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A common fact of life across the Diocese of Georgia is that some of our neighbors wonder if we are Christians. They don’t mean any malice by it. They just don’t know. As one who never needs to cross his fingers while reciting the Creeds, my faith in Jesus Christ bears so much more in common with all our Christian sisters and brothers across central and south Georgia than whatever small matters might separate us.

I do know that there is probably not one single person in easy driving range of your church who wants, needs, or even should be an Episcopalian. If there are any would-be Episcopalians out there not already in an Episcopal Church, that number is surely quite small. That said, I am convinced that all across central and south Georgia, there are many folks in easy driving distance of every single church who need the redemption and healing found only in Jesus Christ. And I am further convinced that many of these folks will never be fully connected to our Lord until they find the nourishment of Word and Sacrament in our churches.

I know this in my bones, because I was one of those people who needed to find the Episcopal Church to fully become the Christian I was being called to be. I have a long way to go on the process of becoming more Christ-like, but I have made great strides thanks to that Word and those Sacraments.

A Startling Statistic
In my work in the archives, I found that a number of our Bishops were concerned with the ratio of total population to Episcopalians. It turns out that our current ratio is better than it has been through most of our history.

In 1823, when the Diocese of Georgia was founded, there were approximately 390,000 people living in the state with 131 Episcopal communicants, for a ratio of one in 2,977 of the population being an Episcopalian. By 1840, we had grown to 323 communicants, and that ratio was one in 2,141. A decade later, we had 874 communicants and so had in that first decade with a Bishop of Georgia closed the ratio to one in 1,036.

At the time the state was split into two dioceses in 1907, the state of Georgia’s population was approximately 2.5 million with 8,524 communicants for a ratio of one in 293 people. In 1921, the combined communicants of the Dioceses of Atlanta and Georgia were 11,057 at a time when the population was 2,925,800 for a ratio of one in 246 persons in the state being an Episcopal communicant.

In 1956, Bishop Stuart reported 1,321,498 in population with 13,000 members of churches of the Diocese, for a ratio of one in 102.

In 2010, the population of the 78 counties which represent the boundaries of the Diocese of Georgia, the population was 2,207,156 with 13,420 communicants in good standing for a ratio of one in 164. Now we know communicants (which should refer to those who have worshipped at least 3 times in the previous year) is not the best number, but I use it as it is consistent with the number given by our earlier Bishops.

With a diocesan wide Average Sunday Attendance of 6,323 in ASA in 2010 for that same 2.2 million people, this means while we have more communicants one in 349 people living within the bounds of the Diocese are in worship in an Episcopal Church on Sunday.

A Surpising Opportunity
Most people are said to have about 150 friends and close acquaintances. We’re not talking Facebook friends, but folks you know on sight well enough to speak to and with whom you share some connection. These are your 150 co-workers and friends. Sound high? How many Christmas cards did you send and how many people received each card? That’s before you count everyone.

If 1 in 349 were in church this past Sunday and each of those folks had this many connections (even allowing for many friends being far afield and many including others in the church), our current reach is more than we imagine.

Like Sharing a Restaurant or Book Recommendation
This corner of the Body of Christ can make a huge impact in the lives of those folks who are in easy driving distance of our churches who have yet to experience our worship. If we could be as enthusiastic about the Word and Sacrament we experience in worship as we are about the new restaurant we discovered or the novel we just read, we would have an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of people who really need what we offer.

The Rev. Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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I have a confession to make. As I write this, there are more than 2,200 emails in my diocesan inbox, some needing answers, others needing filing, still others deleting. This is not a ploy for sympathy. It is embarassing. Clearly, my ways of doing this job are not working and I am making some changes. I write this because you may be facing a similar problem and so my dilemma and how I am facing it may prove useful to share.

I struggle every single day to return phone messages and almost never succeed as while I am on one call, new messages stack up. The same happens with emails. Take a meeting and they proliferate. Not junk emails, but actual correspondence from across the Diocese. Most of it needs a brief acknowledgement. Some needs a longer response. Still others need action of some kind.

Driving across the Diocese to a meeting last week, Bishop Benhase and I had a chance to talk this through. I am convinced that my job is doable, but that I am spending more time on what is urgent to others or urgent for me and spend much less time on what is important to others and even less on what is important to me. Day by day, I let myself be overcome by events. Clearly a change is needed if I am to find balance and even make my way to email inbox zero.

The Bishop helped me to see that I need both technical and adaptive changes. He was referencing the work of Ronald Heifitz and Marty Linsky who distinguished between technical solutions and adaptive challenges in leadership (yes, we talk like this while driving georgia backroads). Getting this right matters as one should not try adaptive change, which a technical solution will solve the problem, nor will a technical fix create adaptive change when that is needed. Adaptive change involoves a change of heart and mind and not just a change in the way one goes about a task.

The technical solutions I was already working on. I have turned off the volume on the computer so I don’t hear when emails arrive and so get distracted by what has just arrived. I have created folders to gather emails on a given event or project (which is a large reason why my inbox stays full as I keep them handy while working on a task). I have also created folders for “reply today” and “reply this week” so that if I don’t get to something immediately, I can see what needs doing before I leave for the day or the week.

But those technical fixes don’t in and of themselves make the biggest change needed, which is within me. This is where adaptive change comes and it requires me to assess my values and behaviors and to experiment with ways to do things differently. This is perfect as a Lenten discipline as when I am getting so bogged down by quick replies to each email that comes through without thought to what matters most, I end up looking something like Lucille Ball did when she worked in the candy factory on I Love Lucy and she couldn’t keep up with the conveyor belt. This sort of frenetic activity does not speak well to the faith that is in me.

So this Lent, I am setting priorities and working on changes both technical and adaptive as I seek to work smarter, rather than harder, as your Canon. If I get it right, I will be assisting more congregations with being the Body of Christ in their communities. If I get it wrong, I will be bogged down in a beaurocratic morass and will spend less and less time on that which is important to you or me. So change is needed, and I am working on making those changes both technical and adaptive.

How about you? Where do you need to seek technical solutions and where do you need to make adaptive changes?

The Rev. Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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In county seat town of Douglas, St. Andrew’s Church is experiencing slow, steady growth. As is generally the case, the church’s rector, the Rev. Curtis Mears cites no one factor contributing to their rise from an Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) of 59 in 2009, 69 in 2010, and 81 in 2011. A number of things have led to the two years of growth of 37%, which far outpaces the 3.3% population growth of the area over the five year period in which these years fell.

In the past year, the congregation received conditional approval to use the 1928 Prayer Book for the principal services (allowing that one service a week, which could be a weekday, would remain a Rite I liturgy from the current prayer book). The condition was that this would be reviewed after three years and continued use would be approved if the change had assisted in the growth of the church. Mears notes that he has spent considerable time and effort to present the parish with sermons and Christian Education opportunities to understand the content of and purpose behind the liturgy and lectionary. As one parishioner put it, the Sunday and Special Day services have a “refreshing air of reverence.”

As for the last year, the Vestry and many leaders at St. Andrew’s Church intentionally made a bold and expanded effort to grow our Christian Education Program by moving most classes to Wednesday Night in conjunction with an After School Program and Family Supper. Mears says that “Although this has not directly contributed to ASA, it has brought several to a deeper level of involvement and commitment that is reflected in the ASA.”

Finally, as seems to always be true in sustained church growth, a renewed interest in and level of pastoral care is also helping.

Mears says, “I do believe with all my heart that the traditional approach to the Gospel and Liturgy are the greatest assets we have to fulfill the Great Commission and lead true seekers into a closer relation with our God and Saviour.” In bringing St. Andrews back to earlier levels of attendance and slightly beyond, he is showing that this is possible in a county seat town in south Georgia.

As the remaining Parochial Reports come in, I will be highlighting places where numeric growth is occuring, just as we highlighted ministries making a difference at the convention.

The Rev. Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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Following my recent three columns on the dashboard of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, I received an enewsletter from the Church of the Holy Comforter in Martinez reporting to the congregation the amount of mission being done by those who attend the church. The newsletter listed

“169 hours every week. Wow. This is the total man hours collectively spent each week by the Prayer Shawl Ministry, who create a variety of knitted articles given away to remind people of the love of Jesus. And this is a low estimate as we only heard from 17 knitters; many more men and women are associated with this ministry. Thank you for this act of love and devotion.

Lakeside Mentors: Each week 16 volunteers spend a total of 33 man hours mentoring 33 students.

Golden Harvest Food Bank: So far this month we have given away 504 pounds of food. Each year we give away three tons of food!”

What mission-focused data might you share with your congregation to celebrate how your congregation is serving its community?

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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With the most recent two Loose Canon columns, I have told about the Dashboard initiative within the Methodist Church which started in their North Alabama Conference. Then last week, I pointed out some problems with the downside to watching the numbers week by week. To counter this problem, while using various indicators to keep an eye on the fruit being born by the ministry of your church, I recommend tracking trends over time.

Quarterly and Semi-Annual
In specific, I recommend that you pay no attention to any given week. No church is fully itself on any Sunday and so you shouldn’t get excited about a week of atypically high attendance or offerings, or even two of these in a row. Similarly, you should not concern yourself with one or two low weeks in giving, or attendanc, or whatever else you are tracking. Instead use the trendline option in your spreadseet program (you do keep up with all your key data in Excel or other similar program, right?) to track quarterly and semi-annual trends. These flatten out given Sundays, but still provide an ongoing look at how the ministry is doing in some objective ways. To do this, select trendline, then creating a rolling average across 12 weeks and 26 weeks. When these trends show rising or falling, there is more significance to the data. The trends will still rise with Easter and fall in the summer, but quite gently and the picture they create over time is all the more telling.

Tracking More Trends
Now that you are tracking trends, don’t stop with Average Sunday Attendance and weekly offering, but add the indicators significant to showing the difference your congregation is making. For a church with a feeding program, you can track both meals served and hours of service by volunteers. You can track mid-week participation in all of the church’s activities. The possibilities go on and on and I don’t want to get you so lost in a sea of numbers that you fail to share the love of God with those both in your chuchand those who will likely never darken its doors. Numbers alone will never show vitality. However, numbers do matter as we find that typically when we are faithful, that shows in some ways.

Beyond Means of Quantifying
The ways most significant to a pastor’s heart will never find a box in a spreadsheet, for their is no real way to numerically track lives changed for the better by the Gospel. The hospital visits that went well and led not to the hoped-for physical healing, but did lead to a person at peace with his or her death and a family gathered lovingly around for that time, will completely elude this tracking of trends. But don’t let these gloriously significant moments which delight the heart of God prevent you from keeping watch over the trends of the congregation where you serve as vestry, vicar or rector.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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No congregation is fully itself on any given Sunday. In some ways each week is exceptional. We see this most fully (and somewhat painfully) when visitors come and the organist is out sick and half the choir must have stayed up late watching a football game or when visitors decide to come on Trinity Sunday, when the seminarian the Rector arranged to preach decides to actually explain the divine nature of the Godhead clearly and distinctly, and so, somewhate hertically.

Last week, I shared the experiment in accountability taking place in the United Methodist Church’s North Alabama Conference. There, Bishop Will Willimon has each congregation reported key statistics every week and sharing them on the conference website.

Most clergy already have enough trouble with judging too much of their effectiveness in ministry by how the previous Snday went. The priest is full of self-confidence after a particularly good attendance Sunday where the sermon seemed to reasonate with the gathered flock only to drop the next week after a low attendance on a week when everything seemed to come together, but fewer than usual were there to join in worship. This focus on the church’s numbers on a week by week basis is something to discourage in clergy and we certainly wouldn’t want that particular virus to spread to laity. After all, we are about the work of being the Body of Christ and that is something that slips through the cracks of a system that focuses on numbers as if these are the only measure of faithfulness to the Gospel.

That said, it is not that numbers of any kind are of no help. After all, Jesus taught that we are to bear fruit and we do know that there are indicators of this to which we should be attentive. So we need to find a middle path between the fallen example of the priest who views her or his effectiveness in ministry by last Sunday’s attendance and offerings and the opposite extreme of paying no attention to numbers as if there is no possible way of measuring the fruit of ministry.

This middle path is to track trends over time and to do so using both the metrics of The Episcopal Church’s Parochial Report and some indicators that never appear on any denomination’s annual accounting. I will take this up in next week’s Loose Canon.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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If you were a Methodist Church in North Alabama, those words would have already brought a strong reaction, pro or con. For it is there in the North Alabama Conference that Methodist Bishop and noted preacher Will Willimon Pictured below) has created an accountability experiment of unprecedented scope. Every church in his conference reports on key statistics every week. Then those statistics are reported every week for the whole world to see and ponder.

The dashboard is online here North Alabama UMC Dashboard with its count of membership, attendance, baptisms, professions of faith, people serving, people served, apportionments paid, and a ratio of attendance to membership. Then you see charts of churches with the biggest membership gain, the most baptisms, professions of faith and so on.

This experiment started in 2009. Since then, every congregaton in the conference logs on every Monday to fill in a report which goes live with the latest data. Within the Methodist Church their  General Council on Finance and Administration has created a program VitalSigns which generates dashboards and they are working to get every conference to take that approach.

At the Church Leadership Conference I helped lead this past weekend at Kanuga, keynote speaker Reggie McNeal emphasized that what we count and celebrate matters. In The Episcopal Church it is Parochial Report time and we make the most out of numbers in worship (Average Sunday Attendance), numbers of baptisms, and the income and expenses of the budget. But we never ask how many people served others and how many the congregation served. While we ask about baptisms and adult baptisms, we do not refer to professions of faith. But if we are all about changing lives for the better and going out to love and serve the Lord, then perhaps we should find better metrics than mere the number of noses in the nave or dollars in the plate.

The dashboard model put forward in North Alabama is controversial. Many say that the focus on numbers takes the focus off people and ministry. This article at the UM Portal helps capture sentiment in that denomination: http://www.umportal.org/article.asp?id=7913

I do see problems with this approach, but benefits as well if there are some tweaks made to it. First, I am not advocating this as a diocesan wide program, but do think vestries need to watch the numbers. Over the next two weeks, I will share what I think are the flaws in this system and how a congregation can benefit from the pros of watching numbers while avoiding most or all of the pitfalls.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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While there are many ways to grow a church numerically, and there are no silver bullet approaches that will work everywhere, the same can not be said of decline. There are some no-fail, time-tested methods to make sure your church does not grow. Want to keep your church at its current size or wear it down a bit? There five steps will get you headed the right direction.

Here are my top five ways to chase new folks away as quick as they show up at your doors:

1) Share Parish News
First, be unhappy with you church and then make sure everyone knows it. Pull the excited newcomer aside and fill them in on the backbiting and infighting. Spreading rumors is another tool in the discontented church toolkit. Newcomers are looking for love, joy and hope. They will leave and tell their friends (and even the check out person at the grocery store) to never darken your door if your church tends out to be a hotbed of petty power struggles and pointless infighting. Churches do not grow by division.

2) Think of the Children
You want to have children’s programs. You just don’t have enough children for Sunday School or teens for a youth group. If enough children show up, you might try something again, but the new family with three kids needs to understand there are just not enough kids for you to bother with yet. If that doesn’t chase them off fast enough, you could give them meaningful stares when the kids make noise in church, while offering neither nursery nor children’s church as options.

3) Stay Friendly
Your church is a friendly place. You have people you know at church and you always enjoy spending the little time you have over coffee after the service with these folks. Part of why you love your church is that you are so friendly. Stay that way, talking with each other. Enjoy the coffee and the donuts. It won’t take but two minutes tops before the newcomers wander on.

4) Keep Members Active
All the longtime members have things they like to do, so don’t shake up anything from the Altar Guild and Choir to the core of servers. Don’t make room for new people to serve as readers, Lay Eucharistic Ministers, or vestry members. Take a pass on the ideas new people bring. Keep doing things as you have always done them with the folks who have always taken charge. New folks will take the hint and wander on in hopes of finding a church that welcomes the gifts they bring.

5) Stay Focused
Concentrate on anything but the Gospel. You want folks to catch a the weakest possible strain of the Christian virus to innoculate them against something life-threatening, so don’t challenge them in any way to be transformed. Avoid offering ways someone can deepen and live into their faith. Teaching people to read their Bibles and take on other spiritual disciplines is right out. Folks who get grounded in the Gospel through a local church community will never leave, so don’t let those roots take hold or these new people who have found meaning and purpose through faith in Jesus Christ will invite their friends who aren’t church-broke yet either. This sounds harsh, but if you want to keep you church’s small, family atmosphere, you better stick with religion, or better yet “being Episcopal”. Talk about the church, and steer clear of anything that smacks of being the church.

I might not know any silver-bullet, one-sized fits all approach to growing your church, but I sure know how to help you whittle away at folks until its a size you can control.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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The Christmas rush is over. Soon houses, now filled with the pine scent of Christmas trees and the lights and garlands and wreaths that set this time aside as special, will seem bare. Wintry depression can come to take root if we don’t take care.

The poet W.H. Auden captured the after Christmas feeling very well. Toward the close of his long poem, “For the Time Being,” he wrote, “Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree, Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes—Some have got broken—and carrying them up to the attic. The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt, And the children got ready for school.

“There are enough Leftovers to do, warmed up, for the rest of the week—Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot, Stayed up so late, attempted—quite unsuccessfully—To love all of our relatives, and in general Grossly overestimated our powers.”

Auden’s “For the Time Being” is a Christmas Oratorio written for the bleak mid-Winter, post-Christmas malaise. The excitement of the holiday is past and now we get back to our daily lives made all the more dull by the brief holiday.

For the Time Being was written on the heels of Auden’s conversion to Christianity. The lengthy poem gives Auden’s understanding Christianity, particularly the meaning of Jesus’ birth—the Incarnation. Auden looks to the excitement of the holidays with the realization that God never wanted our Christmas Day, but our everydays, the plain days with no celebration. The poem continues,

“Once again As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed To do more than entertain it as an agreeable Possibility, once again we have sent Him away, Begging though to remain His disobedient servant, The promising child who cannot keep His word for long. The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory, And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now Be very far off.

“Yet again, Christmas has offered us the vision of God with us and we have failed to fully grasp what it means for our daily lives. To those who have seen The Child, however dimly, however incredulously, The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all. For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be Grew up when it opened. Now recollecting that moment We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious; Remembering the stable where for once in our lives Everything became a You and nothing was an It.”

Auden wrote this Oratorio in England in 1941 and 42 and published it in 1944. He, like other Christians of the time, desperately wanted the brief glimpse of the Christ child to sustain the world in a time of war. The world was full of people naming other humans It. That’s how you get well-educated, thoughtful Germans to participate in the horror of the Holocaust. You rename another person as an “It” instead of a “You.” You dehumanize the other person. You certainly don’t try to see Christ in them. That the temptation to demonize the enemy existed on both sides of the conflict did not escape the poet.

He concluded by writing, “In the meantime There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance. The happy morning is over, The night of agony still to come; the time is noon: When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure A silence that is neither for nor against her faith That God’s Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers, God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.”

In lives full of work, keeping bills paid, writing papers or memorizing times tables for school, it would seem impossible to redeem everyday time from insignificance. Yet, that is just what scripture tells us is the Good News of Jesus’ birth. The Good News is not a holiday on which we remember a special birth long ago. The Good News is that all time is redeemable. Nothing has to be insignificant.

God did not send Jesus to redeem merely a stable in Bethlehem, or even all of First Century Palestine. God sent his son into the world to love the world, to live among us and to redeem all time.

Even what Auden refers to as the meantime when he wrote that we are to redeem the time being from insignificance. With Christmas now behind us, do we say that we have seen the vision and failed to do no more than entertain it as an agreeable possibility. Or are we ready for something more?

God became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth in order to pitch his tent in our day-to-day existence. I’ll warn you. It is risky business. It will always be far easier to confine Jesus to holidays and perhaps Sunday mornings. It will always be far more difficult to invite the light of Christ into every area of your life.

Are you ready for the light of Christ to shine in your darkness? What about the parts of you, that you hope no one notices? What about the parts you like to keep tucked under the bed or in the back of the closet, so to speak? Are you ready for the light of Christ to shine there too?

The celebration is over. “Now we must dismantle the tree, putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes.” But the light of Christ was not meant to be tucked back in the attic with the decorations.

The love of God shone through Jesus was meant to take root in your soul and to redeem all the times of your life. And the love of God can still do just that, if you make room in your everyday life for light to shine in your darkness.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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“We all left beaming from ear to ear and felt our spiritual batteries had been well and truly regenerated.” This was the summary of a report from a mystery worshipper from the Ship of Fools website who recently worshipped at St. John’s, Savannah.

I have written here in a previous Loose Canon column (Time for a Hospitality Check Up) both of the value of reading the evaluatons of churches at the site and how asking someone to come worship at your church and give you a report can improve your congregation’s welcome. St. John’s, Savannah, faced the real thing in a guest worshipper reporting for the website, on a weekend with the rector, the Rev. Gavin Dubar, away no less.

While no review is ever perfect, St. John’s comes as close as any church. The review also shows how the congregation hit the perfect balance in not bothering visitors on the way in and leaving the time before the liturgy as reflective, but then following up with a warm welcome to a memorable social time. This together with fine music, a memorable homily, comfortable pews and the beautiful words of the liturgy combined for worship that left the visitor wanting to come back. Certainly there were some concerns with hearing at times with no microphones on the readers or the associate priest, the Rev. Craig O’Brien, who celebrated and preached.

While you can’t arrange for Ship of Fools to send a reviewer to your church, you can benefit from their remarks on other congregations. You can also work with friends from other congregations, or even better those with no church, who might be willing to come unknown to your fellow church goers to experience worship and let you know what they notice. The reports will never be perfect, but honest input from first time visitors is invaluable in improving your welcome.

I like to be sure to emphasize at every point, we do not do this in order to grow the church (though that may well occur). We should work to improve our welcome as hospitality is part of who we are to be as the Body of Christ. “Love of stranger” which is the literal meaning of the Greek word in our New Testament can be lived out in our churches as well as our communities and to improve we need reports on how we are doing.

So congratulations to St. John’s. I am sure they will work on those areas that can be corrected while enjoying the positive feedback overall. Now the challenge remains for the rest of us. The full review is online here: Mystery Worshipper at St, John’s Savannah.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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In my most recent two columns (see below), I have been sharing how you can retrieve demographic data on your community and how I used data on Kingsland to assist in found King of Peace Episcopal Church.

When I was taught about demographics for churches, it was from a church planting perspective. In that end of the work of the church, demographics can help a diocese determine where best to concentrate efforts at starting a new congregation. But demographics are also helpful to existing churches.

Demographics can give us a true picture of the fields that are ripe for the harvest. Then we look at who God has given us and consider how to approach them where they are. Jesus often started with someone’s presenting need in order to bring them into relationship with him. We start by seeing where the strengths of a congregation coincide with a need in our community in order to learn how to serve our neighbors. While in evangelism, we want to share how to fill a need someone might not even know they have, a need for a relationship with God as revealed in Jesus Christ. But this best starts not where we wish someone is, but where they truly are.

From that starting point, we share the Gospel in relational evangelism. That is very different from handing out tracks or beating folks over the head with the Gospel. It means getting to know folks, really know them. Then being available to share the incredible Good News of Jesus Christ with them. But the Good News matters more once we have connected through authentic outreach. The outreach cannot be solely for the purpose of evangelism. This is not bait and switch. Outreach such as after school tutoring or a Scout Troop or Food bank, is done to share God’s love and trust God with the results. But we do know from experience that God ofte uses these means to begin real relationships with people we wouldn’t otherwise know and from that some folks will get connected to Christ (and not just a church).

The demographics give you a way to see your community anew. Then you turn to the congregation and begin to see how the people God has given you can have a positive impact on the community around. While this pattern resulted in a preschool in Kingsland, it could result in Latino ministry, a clothing ministry, and much more. But you don’t start with who your congregation is and what you want to do. You start by getting to know the community and its needs and that is where demographics come in. Then seeing your community more clearly through the lens of demographic data, you are in a better position to look to the gifts of those in your church to start a ministry to better serve those around you.

You don’t have a new ministry for your congregation by finding a need in the community alone. That ministry may be for the church down the street if you don’t already have in place people with the gifts and the vision to start and sustain the new ministry. Where God is leading you in new ministries is found at the intersection of the needs already present and the gifts already at hand.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

Note: The photos above are from King of Peace Episcopal Day School.

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