From Attraction to Discipleship
Declining membership is not the most significant shift happening in Disciples congregations today. Religious Church membership has seen rises and falls throughout American History. Roger Finke, Ph.D. (Professor of Sociology, Religious Studies, and International Affairs, at Pennsylvania State University) and Rodney Start, Ph.D. (former American Sociologist of Region, University of Washington) completed a comprehensive survey of religious congregational membership in 2005. They offered this startling assessment. "On the eve of the Revolution only about 17 percent of Americans were churched. By the start of the Civil War this proportion had risen dramatically, to 37 percent. The immense dislocations of the war caused a serious decline in adherence in the south which is reflected in the overall decline to 35 percent in the 1870 census. The rate then began to rise once more, and by 1906 slightly more than half of the US population was church. Adherence rates reached 56 percent by 1926. Since then the rate has been rather stable although inclining upwards. By 1980 church adherence was about 62 percent" (Finke, Roger and Stark, Rodney. The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, Rutgers University Press, 2005).
Their historical assessment resembles the findings of Lyman Stone, of the American Enterprise Institute, 2020, "Promise and Peril: The History of American Religiosity and its recent decline." Stone's analysis points to fluctuating congregational membership. However, Stone suggests that even people who were not affiliated with a particular religious community did tend to identify their religious beliefs in some manner. The analysis that he has done shows that within the last fifty years, the percentage of people who claim to have not religious or spiritual beliefs has risen significantly. Church membership is in decline, but it has been Lower in American History. Church attendance is in decline, but it has been lower in American history. What is new is the number of people who do not affirm some belief in faith.
Previous generations could persuade a believing public to belong to a congregation. Today, the church communicates to a largely non-believing audience. The Church growth movement of the 1980s and 1990s relied on attracting people who believed but did not attend. Today, we must consider how we respond to those who simply do not believe. One approach would be to simply leave them alone. Significant damage has been done by centuries of aggressive proselytizing. A case could be made that the church ought continue to provide the ministries of worship, teaching, and fellowship for those who believe and the ministries of compassion, hospitality, and justice for all humanity. Despite the appeal of this gentler approach to Christianity, I believe we have a call from Christ to bear witness for Christ in the world. To live and communicate in such a way that people a drawn to Christ.
Bearing witness in the world takes varying shapes. One approach that worries me is what I would call spiritual coercion. This approach is grounded in the belief that those who have not "accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior" are destined for eternal punishment. I was adherent to this belief as a child, teenager, and young adult. However, I never thought that frightening people with the threat of eternal condemnation was the way to go. It is difficult, if not impossible, to bear witness to God of love while at the same time imagining that God could create methods of eternal torture and punishment. Somewhere along the way while addressing a group of young people, I found myself saying something I stole from someone else (I no longer know who). I said, "I believe there is a hell. I just have a hunch it will be empty."
Another approach I see many Disciples congregations taking is that of the mission approach. This approach defined most if not all of my local congregational pastoral ministry. I believed that if the church devoted itself to making a tangible difference in the world people would see our good works and be drawn to faith in Christ. There is a quotation attributed to St. Francis that he almost certainly did not say that goes, "Preach the Gospel always; use words only when necessary." Toward the end of my service as a local church pastor, I began to sense that we are living in a time when words are necessary. I remain grateful for the mission work the congregation I served and so many congregations I know do in the Region. I believe that our witness is inauthentic without faithful service to the real human needs that surround us. However, I no longer believe that people will instantly recognize acts of compassion, hospitality, and justice as emerging from faith in God.
Another approach I experience is what I would call the incarnation approach. This approach seeks to embody the acceptance and love of Christ especially to those who have felt the Church's exclusion and condemnation. Mission seeks to serve people's needs; incarnation seeks to demonstrate love for the whole person. It has less to do with meeting an objective and more to do with creating a relationship. Incarnational ministry is essential. It demonstrates the love of God in the flesh.
Finally, however, I do believe we need to find ways to talk about our faith in meaningful ways. In the end, people need to know that the love they experience from us is finite because people are finite. However, our finite love is drawn from a deeper and infinite reservoir of love--the Love of God. For centuries, church leaders have taught ways to articulate the faith. In our own tradition, we have Walter Scott's five finger exercise. Other traditions have other ways of doing this. Even the great ecumenical creeds of the church started out as instructions for baptism. Perhaps these standardized and routinized ways of expressing the faith have their place. I'm just orthodox enough to believe that they do. But I sense that propositions--no matter how deeply any person might believe them--are poor substitutes for living, breathing stories of faith.
Sharing our faith stories is difficult. It means learning to share aloud what may be so deeply embedded that we feel it with groans too deep for words. Still, the effort to put our experience of God into words invites others to encounter the deeper love that we ourselves have experienced. It is also a way for us to deepen our own awareness.