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As a news editor, I’ve been attending many neighborhood meetings. There are rarely any pastors present. Pity! Had there been pastors at neighborhood civic meetings for the past few decades, the Church might have avoided serious strategic mistakes.

They might have had a better understanding of societal change. They might have seen new opportunities. They might have been able to adjust their mission. They might have been able to influence society.

Instead, the Church abandoned changing neighborhoods in droves.

Church planters and their more dangerous counterparts, re-planters, talk about statistics when measuring congregational viability. But they often are relying on dated statistics and impressions. Statistics show what happened—not what what could happen.

Change happens quickly today. Neighborhoods once took decades to change. Now major population shifts can happen in a few years.

The Church looks for easy places to create mission. Places that feel familiar. Places where they won’t have trouble placing the pastors who were trained to serve neighborhoods the way things were 30 years ago.

The Bible is about finding the harder places.

The Perils of Mission by Demographics

The demographic citers visited our congregation in the 1990s. There was no hope, they concluded. The demographics indicated that our neighborhood was not demographically viable for the type of church they envisioned.

They envisioned a church of the past.

Bishop Roy Almquist’s last words to us in 2000 before totally ignoring our congregation during his second six-year term were “In ten years you will die a natural death.”

He and his staff were unaware that during those ten years that he spent waiting for our demise our congregation continued mission with little hope of ever having much in the way of professional leadership. We didn’t die a natural death. We grew five-fold—attracting a demographic our regional body never envisioned and that their demographic experts missed. Transformation happened without them. In the meantime, they were relying on failure in mission to keep their offices afloat.

The relationship of regional bodies with congregations is problematic.

• Regional bodies want to place existing pastors—many of whom are graying or seeking only part-time calls.
• Congregations seek pastors who can lead into the future as opposed to preserving the past.

We are stuck with one another. The result is often toxic.

Putting the Eggs of the Future in One Fragile Basket

The problems might be eased except for a second factor. Regional bodies don’t trust lay leadership. It is easier for them to place pastors when they guarantee the pastors administrative control — despite the fact that Lutheran constitutions give administrative control to congregation councils.

When lay leaders succeed against administrative projections, the success is seen as “adversarial” to the denomination’s agenda. Lay leaders share stories of how we are asked to step back, even renege on promises made to congregations who elect us to serve. Hide it under a bushel—yes!

Our congregation experienced this to a most horrific degree. The agenda was to allow our congregation to die in a way that our property would become available to the regional body to sell to support their interests. They actually amended their bylaws with wording overriding their founding promises to the congregations, which forbids this. (Creating bylaws in opposition to founding articles is illegal in the corporate world, but churches are immune from corporate law—even though they are corporations.)

Ours is only one story. This approach plays out across the country in several mainline denominations. Success is measured by how easily abandoning churches and mission is accomplished. Ideally, the congregation will fold. No fuss. No muss. Sad.

Dooming the Church with Policy

The management “wisdom” of the 1990s is dooming the Church. The short-sightedness becomes clear in civic meetings, where the focus is not on the past, but on how what is happening will shape the community moving forward.

Our area of Philadelphia is dotted with abandoned churches—many of them Lutheran. Typically, they are vacant for years before developers pick them up for a fraction of their worth at the time the regional bodies claimed them.

Creating living space in the city is profitable to developers. Squeeze the most apartments possible into abandoned church sites.

The suburbs, once filled with what the experts consider desirable church demographics, are no longer as attractive. Young, professionals of the social classes that fled the city in the 1970s and 1980s are returning to the cities. They are interested in creating community. Young people want to be in the cities. Even neighborhoods considered slums are undergoing a rebirth.

Now they are doing it without sacred space.

The land provided for sacred and community use by the earlier residents is gone, squandered. People are sleeping in on Sunday morning and cooking breakfast where our altars stood.

Short-term gain. Long-term loss.

The Church shot itself in the foot. Guns are kept loaded. They don’t know any other way. They don’t have better answers. They don’t trust the wisdom of their members today any more than they did decades ago. They still care more about placing professional leaders in communities that will not challenge them.

But now there are far fewer places to place them.

Yesterday I stumbled across the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s LinkedIn page. They have some job listings. Here they are:

Notice something? Every job listing is about finding money.

I followed the link between every listing that says “See more jobs.”

Here are the additional listings.

Most of these jobs have something to do with fund-raising or asset management.

The Congregational Offering Plate Has Competition

If you don’t believe the Church is a business, think again. Offerings can no longer support the top-heavy structure created in better days.  The Church is looking for talent that brings in money. Where do you think they will find it? Where do you think they will spend it?

The national and regional offices, struggling to survive, are creating development offices that bypass congregations and go directly to individuals. These individuals are most likely your most affluent members. The best potential donors are your congregation’s aging membership in need of estate planning.

Congregational money sent to the regional and national offices fund these development efforts.

Can your congregation compete with well-paid, high-level professionals? Your teachings about stewardship may be feeding into the message of these development offices.

Many of today’s churches are living on endowment funds contributed by members decades ago. Congregations, beware. Others in the Church have eyes on your future funding.

It gets even more complicated. In addition to the regional and national offices, affiliated church agencies also staff development offices. They have some independence but are also funded with congregational contributions. These include charities like relief agencies, seminaries, schools, homes for the aging, local agencies, and camps. Some church-related agencies have shadow for-profit corporations, less affiliated with the Church, that can attract grant giving and work with government programs.

That’s a lot of competition looking for the biggest slice possible from the same pie!

The Last Left Standing

As local, regional and national bodies all struggle, the Church must consider the question: Which entity should be the last standing? As decline continues, should the national church disband first or the regional body? Should they both work to get the resources from their member churches until there are only ten large congregations in each synod. (The larger the congregation the less need for synod assistance.) Should the agencies slowly forgo church affiliation (as many already have) and join the plethora of nonprofits, each with an important mission, that also court congregational members for contributions and estate planning.

This is a problem that the Church does not discuss because everyone’s status in the Church is at stake. A lot of church jobs rely on the success of development offices. In the end, the congregations, the lowest on the Church organizational totem pole (but the foundation of all funding), no longer matter. The Church as a whole looks the other way as regional bodies find ways to close churches in ways that make sure the congregation’s assets go to them. This has been going on for a while. But now, the tactic is to reach your members well in advance of them leaving their estates to the local congregation.

Congregations are funding their own demise. The Church is in the Colosseum — and we’ve been feeding the lions.

Important point: Church-related organizations are not inherently bad for looking for more funding. Everyone needs money. However, as each church-sponsored entity becomes self-focused in building its own funding base, there is less concern of how their success is impacting sponsoring congregations. The success of one agency, or the regional and national bodies means less money is available for the congregations, who are still expected to send funds their way via the offering plate. This is particularly unfair with Church social service agencies, many of whom have positioned themselves to benefit from government funding—a pie that most congregations assume they cannot tap. Objections that efforts in that direction sidetrack the prime objective of Christian community are legitimate. The proof is in what has become of church agencies who took this track 30 or more years ago. Lutheran colleges/universities have little connection with Lutheranism today. Lutheran social services take care to avoid displaying Christian connections. When our congregation rented space to a Lutheran agency for a day school, they turned around the Christian images hanging on our walls.

This post will look at how the role of pastor must change. The basic job description (much of it still important) falls short of the skills that most churches desperately need. Today’s Church serves a different world.

I have some fear that the points I am about to make might be read as unfairly critical of the Church and clergy. That’s not the intention. Clergy are important. So is the Church.

Clergy work in relative isolation and with a sense that they have no competition. They can deflect issues. Decline is the laity’s fault. It’s demographics. It’s cultural. It’s society. Real factors—but factors that can be addressed. Failure to do so has created dire problems.

The world has changed dramatically in the 28 years which constitute the entire life of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. As they worked to establish an identity based on the past, the past disappeared in the rear view mirror. The desktop computer was entering the workplace as church leaders signed the agreements with old-fashioned pens. But Lutherans are not alone. Most mainline denominations have held back to the point of endangering their survival.

Churches, too, sense that they have no competition. They don’t have to change. They are wrong. Churches compete with one another and with every other nonprofit that courts our members and potential members for support. We also compete with the government who levies taxes that impact church giving.

We cannot compete without using the internet.

Changing Expectations

Job descriptions of most professions changed dramatically in the last 20 years as technology became widespread. Clergy job descriptions remain much the same. Integrating technology into ministry has not been a priority.

This becomes increasingly frustrating to laity. We sense that each year of no progress just makes rejoining the world that much harder.

If clergy and laity explored this together, clergy would find that parishioners understand the challenges. We are experienced.

A Look at How the Internet Has Changed One Profession

I’ve worked in graphic design for 35 years and in related fields for a few more. Graphic design involves communicating with words and images. My first employer in 1975 was still using hot type. That’s individual letters cast in metal and positioned in mirror image by hand before being inked and pressed to paper. Picture Ben Franklin setting Poor Richard’s Almanac. Same process, fancier machines.

I was progressive. I learned cold type—type set in a photographic process. I marked up manuscripts and sent them to a typesetter. I pasted the typeset galleys on boards with hot wax. These were then sent to printers who took photos and burned plates that were attached to printing presses. The process required multiple skills. At least ten people were involved in getting the simplest publication printed. Writer, editor, typesetter, proofer, designer, dark room staff, film strippers, press operators, binders and distributors.

All of these tasks would soon be the job description of one person.

Enter the desktop computer.

Again, I was progressive. I learned computers while many old-school graphic designers took early retirement or changed careers.

But things were only starting to change.

Another ten years passed. The desktop computer led to the internet and instant connectivity. Online communication soon outpaced print.

Things continue to change.

Today’s typical “graphic designer” job description demands skills that have nothing to do with yesterday’s job description. We are now expected to know marketing, a half dozen computer coding protocols and sales. Video and animation helpful but not required.

Ditto for most professions. Education, medical professions, law enforcement, business management—you name it, the professionals in these fields adapted technology to their work—or they found new work.

The Pastoral Job Description

This recent study reveals the slow progress church leaders have made in the last 15 years in adopting technology.

Similar changes should have been taking place in the world of Church. Instead, the Church became an escape. Seminaries began attracting second career students who may not have liked the technology changes in their first career choices. Fewer young people considered church careers. The pulpit has greyed faster than the congregations!

Today, the Church needs to reach people that know little about the good old days of Christianity in America. This frustrates lay leaders. We sense that the Church is distancing itself from the world we live in.

For a while congregations could float on endowments. Time is running out.

To expect congregations to invest all their resources in one person with an outdated job description is worse than poor stewardship—it is guaranteeing failure.

Pastors need to embrace technology. They must spend time each week reaching the unchurched online. The 20-minute Sunday sermon is less important. Pastors need to attract and inspire using FaceBook and Twitter. They must create email lists addressing diverse interests. They must write email engagement sequences to introduce the Church to those who will not come to church until they know more about us from online interaction. They must find ways to connect and collaborate with other organizations in the neighborhood. They must explore alternative funding initiatives and expand the geographical borders of their congregation and find they will have to cooperate with other nearby churches. All possible via technology.

The Plight of Most Congregations

Congregations have little choice but to choose from the existing stable of denominational pastors, whether or not they can use modern tools.

Congregations are offered pastors who expect a secretary to do the typing and see a  monthly newsletter as effective communication. They still wait for “seekers” to come to them on Sunday morning.

As statistics decline, denominational leadership sighs and mutters “demographics.” Pulpits are filled, using up resources, while neighborhood congregations are left to die as if this is the natural progression of the Church. It’s not—or at least it wasn’t until the modern era.

Return to a Biblical Mission Plan

It is time to return to a biblical mission plan—meet people where they are.

It will force change that is long overdue. Nobody is picking on anyone. It is just how things have to be.

The next post will illustrate why this must happen at the parish level. Here’s a hint at why:  Local parishes are unwittingly funding their own demise.

The True Church. This phrase is a regular feature of church banter. Recently, I’ve read it in contexts that slough off problems within the Church. But that’s not the True Church that did that horrible thing. I can also recall hearing the term used by Church hierarchy, making claims to their particular brand of Christian doctrine and practice.

Problems with definitions in the Church are nothing new. Throughout Christian history whenever there is any measure of conflict, sides are drawn and both sides make claims to be The True Church. King Henry VIII started his own True Church when he didn’t care for the policies of the existing True Church. But he wasn’t the first—nor the last. You’d have to go back to the earliest days of Christianity to record the first claims of superiority or righteousness.

So, is the True Church the organization defined in the epistles? Is it the entity that currently holds power or can claim to be the biggest and richest? Is it the Church that projects a current popular viewpoint? Is it whatever church leaders—or dissenting members—want it to be?

This article from the New York Times gives pause. It tells the story of how church leaders in 1838 sold slaves to pay debts—not one or two slaves (not that the number makes a difference) but 272. They ignored the mandates of their hierarchy. They satisfied their consciences by demanding conditions—all of which were broken. They had only one reason. The True Church, as I’m sure they considered themselves, couldn’t pay its bills.

America was an attractive place for the religious of all sorts back in our founding days. This story dates to 1838. It fascinates because it weaves two incongruous threads in American history—the importance of religious freedom and the lack of freedom for a substantial part of the founding population. This event occurs 62 years after independence and 23 years before the outbreak of the Civil War.

It is a saga of struggle. Which is more important, founding ideals, biblical ideals, or economic survival? Today’s economically challenged churches face the similar choices.

Every writer knows: Character is revealed in the decisions made by the story’s cast. Apply this maxim to this slice of history. What does it say about the character of our nation and the character of the Church?

What decisions are being made by Church leaders today which might prove as embarrassing as this a few decades from now?

In this week’s Alban Weekly post, The Rev. Lisa G. Fischbeck, asks a question without a subject or verb. “A Place at the Table?”

This is a forward-looking post that reveals an emerging vision — a vision that our little congregation has been living since, oddly enough, we were denied “a place at the table” within our own denomination.

She points to experiences where non-church entities demonstrate their willingness to work with the Church on projects that would benefit all. Collaboration.

Why is this a surprise?

The Church has trouble collaborating even within Church structure. Every congregation, church agency and institution is an island. All come together once a year to report to one another, but otherwise we all have independent leadership, missions and funding needs. We are more likely to find collaborative partners outside of church structure than we are within, where everyone looks out for their own mission interests.

The 21st century is incompatible with historic Church ways. The world around us changes faster than we can keep up. Where once we related only to family and community, we can now connect with people of similar interests all over the world.

We could spend time regretting the loss of a cozy, tightly defined past—or we can join the as yet to be defined future. Maybe we can help define it!

Fischbeck nails it:

We would need to explore how the structures of our own denominations and judicatories help and hinder us for such collaborations. We would need to examine our attitudes, our pride, our theology, about profit and non-profit, about collaborating with those who do not share our faith, about compromise. We would need to have conversations and prayer, discovering, cultivating, and assessing ways for the Church to be a part of such innovative conversations and solutions.

Imagine you are an ordinary good-hearted citizen—the type that self-describes as spiritual but not religious. You care about others. You want to good with your life. You want to be as effective as possible. What would lead you to choose to enlist in a church’s mission? We must be at the table to communicate how we care just as they do.

Secular philanthropy is better positioned to serve. It has a much bigger well to find funding and volunteers. That makes it harder for churches but not impossible.

Rising generations care about effect. They are less inclined to follow tradition for tradition’s sake. A lot of today’s Church dialogue is drowned out by the static of how things were and should be. Reality? That’s another story.

2×2 has experience. The last eight years have been difficult. We were getting along fine. Not without problems, but fine. We had a well-defined mission and action plan. With the lure of property and endowments up for grabs, church leaders sighed “We just don’t see how you can continue.”

They couldn’t see what we lay people were starting to see. Our future would be brighter if we started networking with community.

With doors locked and bank accounts frozen, we started to work with what we had—connections in the community. We expanded by using the internet. We discovered that people are willing to work with churches. We started working with government and local institutions. We found experts in various fields willing to donate time and talent.

Fischbeck’s ideas are our experience. If our little church can do this without any ordained leadership, imagine what churches with more than we have can do with networking (evangelism).

Time to be part of the world.

The Rev. Lisa G. Fischbeck is the founding Vicar of The Church of the Advocate, an Episcopal Mission in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.