“Want fries with that?”

My only living predecessor as rector at St. John’s (they all stay 30 years) has a theory about free-standing altars. He says the unintended consequence when they pulled them out from the walls for a more communal feel is that it turned the priest into the “guy behind the counter.” And from this perspective the priest does indeed appear like a shopkeeper or a liturgical bar tender.

Coinciding with a gradual decline in denominationalism — one that has since become the new reality — this has added to a dangerous model of consumerism in American church life. We’re all familiar with the concept of “church shopping.” People new to town visit a bunch of churches before deciding which one is the most comfortable or which one feeds them or which one meets their needs or where they feel a “connection” with the clergy. I’ve done the same thing — though sticking to a single denomination, you’ll be glad to know.

With the advent of the Model-T Ford, Americans moved away from the parish model where you simply attended the church in your neighborhood and stuck with it in good times and bad. These days, unless you live next door, most people pass a variety of churches on their Sunday morning trek to worship.

Clergy feed into this consumer approach to finding a parish when we joke with Sunday morning visitors about checking out the “competition” when what we really want to scream is “Pick me! Pick us!” And many newcomer programs spend a lot of time and energy on creating attractive packets that help “sell” the congregation to people who wander in looking for a church home.

Parishes should put their best foot forward and seek to communicate who they are — this is the main reason to have an engaging, updated web site and a vibrant presence on social media. And it’s why we need to be intentional about welcoming folks on Sunday mornings. But welcoming people into a community of faith shouldn’t feel like either a fraternity rush party or buying a new car. Nor should it risk “false advertising” as sometimes happens — people are welcomed, excited, pumped up by their new church only to realize there’s a lot less “there there” than they’d been led to believe.

But the consumer mentality transcends our welcoming of newcomers and can infect even the healthiest of parishes. Church programs become menu items for parishioners to select and then judge. We like the idea of having a large group of programs from which to choose — and even passionately advocate for more programs — even if we don’t actually participate in them.

This mentality also impacts stewardship: “I don’t like the direction of the parish (or the clergy) so I’m withholding my pledge. I pay good money and I expect good service.” Financial giving should come from a heart of gratitude to God; it’s not a fee for ecclesiastical service.

The knock on East-facing altars during the Liturgical Renewal Movement of the 1970’s was that they didn’t offer a participatory experience of worship. This was also at a time when the clergy did most of the talking during liturgy while facing “the wall” when celebrating the Eucharist rather than the people. Yet, having served churches with East-facing altars for the first nine years of my ministry, there’s also something unifying and transcendent in all facing the same way — toward God. This is neither the time nor place to renew this debate but it’s hard to look at the priest as the sacramental Pez dispenser when he/she is not standing behind the deli “counter.”

So recognizing there is a pervasive consumer culture in parish life, what can we do about it? Well, we can ignore it and hope it goes away or we can name it as something destructive to our communal faith lives. Why “destructive?” Because it pushes against Jesus’ call to discipleship. When we approach church as consumers we’re being passive, expecting others to do the work of ministry. And isn’t that what we tried to get away from with liturgical renewal? The idea that worship is akin to attending a choral arts society concert?

We don’t consume church, we are church. And that’s the approach that leads to spiritual transformation. If we aren’t engaging with body, mind, and spirit, we’re not fully invested in our faith which makes church just one more activity among myriad choices rather than the place out of which our entire lives flow.

I encourage you to think about ways you’ve unintentionally moved into a consumer mentality in your own parish life. Has it become a barrier to open, authentic, engaged relationship with the divine? What are some ways you might move past this approach to something more fruitful? How might you move past consumerism into a ministry of service to others?

And for the record, yes, I do want fries with that.

Why Does the Church Exist?

This past week (November 6th to be precise) we commemorated William Temple on the calendar of saints. Temple was a second generation Archbishop of Canterbury (his father was also the ABC), theologian, scholar, and advocate for social justice. I could go on but I am confident in your abilities to access Google.

I bring this up because of a quote attributed to him — he said something similar if not in these precise words:

“The Church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

I can think of a lot of people who would disagree quite vehemently with this statement. It’s not that they wouldn’t want to help the poor and downtrodden and needy. And it’s not that they don’t think it’s important to share the Gospel with those beyond the walls of the church. But, frankly, it’s countercultural to think beyond ourselves to such a degree. To support an institution like your own parish financially, emotionally, and spiritually and to think all the effort should go elsewhere is tough. We want if not all, at least SOME bang for our ecclesiastical buck!

It’s challenging to think about the church as a missionary society rather than as a club, a comfortable place where we can go and be with like-minded friends every week. And there’s no denying that this is an important aspect of parish life — Jesus called disciples not in isolation but into a community. It is the community of the baptized that gives us hope and encouragement to live lives of decency and faith and it is this community that offers pastoral care and help during times of crisis.

But think about Jesus’ approach. He didn’t say “Follow me” to a bunch of unsuspecting fishermen and then build a little stone chapel where they could gather once a week before going their separate ways. He invited them to follow him into a new relationship with the divine, into a new way of being, into a place of living hope, into a life of transformation.

Now, there must have been some days when the apostles looked at one another and said, “Don’t you think we have enough disciples? Can’t we stop this endless tour of the countryside? Into the boat, out of the boat, how many times do we have to cross the same body of water?”

But Jesus kept at it. He never stopped sharing the Good News, he never lost the hunger to change people’s lives. And that’s what he calls us to do as well, by whatever means or technology necessary.

As we rapidly move into a post-denominational world, I believe that the communities of faith that will thrive are the ones that take seriously the commitment to those who are not its members. The ones that are intentional about reaching out to draw people in; the ones that are passionate about sharing rather than hoarding this Good News with which we’ve been entrusted.

In a sense this concept of the church as an institution not primarily for the benefit of its members, is nothing new. In the Great Commission (Matthew 28) Jesus tells us to “Go make disciples of all nations,” thereby putting this concept in urgently poetic terms. As Jesus is taking leave of the disciples he doesn’t engage in a group hug; he encourages them to go out and draw others in. And that’s a critical piece to understanding the mission of the Church in the world.

Of course, if this was all Jesus told us to do we’d have to go sell our church buildings and hit the road. But he doesn’t. This is balanced with the call of Matthew 25 to serve those in need (“Just as you did it to the least of these you did it to me”) as well as the invitation to care for one another and bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2). I think this form of pastoral care is well-imagined when Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law (Matthew 8). He makes a home visit and comforts a member of his community.

A lot of the stress in parishes stems from the tension between looking inward and looking outward — between outreach and pastoral care and reaching out to the wider community. Everyone has an opinion on which one of these three is most important. Of course they must be held in creative tension which is difficult especially when it comes to budgeting financial resources as well as budgeting the limited number of hours in a clergy person’s day.

Parishes are most effective when they hold these three perspective in creative tension. Not by saying “no” to one at the expense of the other but by saying “yes” to all three. This doesn’t mean burn out the clergy and lay leaders in trying to be all things to all people but rather identifying those with gifts in each approach and encouraging them while simultaneously educating the entire congregation about the fact that these are not mutually exclusive.

I encourage you to reflect on Temple’s statement. In what ways does it resonate with you or challenge you? How has this tension played out in your own community of faith? Has it been creative or destructive? What can we do to better communicate this message?

Beyond Average Sunday Attendance (ASA)

In all the talk about church growth and new ways of doing church, there’s one statistic that’s impossible to quantify: the number of people impacted by a parish’s online ministry.

For some time now, the gold standard for measuring church growth has been Average Sunday Attendance (ASA). Go to any clergy conference and you’ll hear rectors tossing out their ASAs with great bravado. The assumption, of course, is that size matters and bigger is better. Though, if their ASA is dropping, you’ll hear the classic corollary: “It’s not about the numbers.”

In reality, ASA as a standard unit of measurement is a relatively recent phenomenon. For generations “communicants in good standing” was the normative measure of a congregation’s size. The national canons of the Episcopal Church still use this term, though it’s fallen out of contemporary usage.

Canon 1.17.2–4

Sec. 2 (a) All members of this Church who have received Holy Communion in this Church at least three times during the preceding year are to be considered communicants of this Church.

Sec. 3. All communicants of this Church who for the previous year have been faithful in corporate worship, unless for good cause prevented, and have been faithful in working, praying, and giving for the spread of the Kingdom of God, are to be considered communicants in good standing.

It was only until more and more parishioners started signing up for what I like to call the “one or two Sunday a month plan” that ASA became a clearer measure of congregational size. For instance at my own parish, St. John’s in Hingham, MA, our ASA was 245 last year. Of course in a given month we would see a lot more than 245 people — while there is a core group that attends every week others come once or twice a month. Using ASA gives the best “snapshot” of the number of attendees on an average Sunday.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what isn’t included in these numbers and I keep coming back to online ministry. Just as online relationships are real relationships, online ministry is real ministry. Parishes that put effort and intentionality into social media and online communication with parishioners and others are reaching many people beyond the number recorded in the service register each week.

Even when people can’t make it to church, they read or listen to sermons online, they’re inspired by spiritual links in the weekly e-news, they feel connected to the community through pictures or videos posted via social media. These are all ways that a parish reaches out and touches people who identify themselves as “members” of the community.

But many parishes, through official channels as well as the personal online ministry of their clergy (social media, blogs, sermons, things like, um, Lent Madness), reach many people well beyond the local community. This is also a critical part of ministry to the wider community — keeping God in the public conversation — which I believe all Christians but especially clergy have a responsibility to uphold.

The thing is, it takes a new congregational mentality to support this type of ministry. It’s not always quantifiable and the parish doesn’t “benefit” in the traditional sense. So it takes an open-minded congregation to recognize that this is all ministry — especially when it impacts those who will never officially join or even step foot inside the church building.

This is a new model of being the church and it naturally brings pushback from those with a more traditional, congregational, consumer-driven mindset. “Why waste time on Twitter when you’re mostly reaching people who will never pledge to the parish?” I sometimes hear. Or “He has time to write his monthly syndicated newspaper column but he can’t visit Edna in the nursing home more than once a month?”

My congregation is likely sick of hearing me say, “We are called to share the gospel, not hoard it.” It’s one of my mantras for ministry. But sharing the gospel means doing so in creative ways that transcend the way we’ve always done it. It means reaching out and sharing the Good News with others even if they will never become members of our own local tribe. As Christians, one of our mandates is to sow a lot of seeds. The internet allows us to do this in ways and in places never before imaginable. And just because we can’t quantify or monetize this approach doesn’t mean we shouldn’t engage it.

So this is a call to push past the opposition you may encounter and continue to share the Gospel of Christ with reckless abandon. The Church is changing, the methods of communication have changed, but the essence of Christ’s message endures.

Ingredients for Church Growth

In light of our recent Annual Parish Meeting, I’ve been thinking a lot about church growth. If you know me, you’ll recognize this isn’t anything new — it’s one of my passions. But the Annual Meeting always provides that extra opportunity to take a step back, get out of the fray of daily ministry, and examine the broader view.

Out of curiosity, I ran some numbers for the three and a half years that I’ve been rector at St. John’s. Anecdotal evidence aside, I was stunned to see that our Average Sunday Attendance has increased 35%, pledging is up 50%, and we’ve doubled the size of the staff. That’s a lot of growth in a short period of time and, while there are many contributing factors, I do think there are some basic transferable ingredients to church growth.

Of course it all starts with leadership — both lay and ordained. I’m increasingly convinced that, to our mutual detriment, Episcopal Church culture minimizes the importance of strong clergy leadership. No, it’s not all about the priest. But show me a growing, vibrant, healthy congregation with poor clergy leadership — it doesn’t exist. Granted, strong leadership is all about encouraging, nurturing, and empowering members of the congregation to share the responsibility of leadership. But poor leaders are unwilling or unable to do this; thus stunting the ministry of all the baptized and the potential for growth.

For me, growth comes down to a passion for sharing the Gospel of Christ. We’re called to share this Good News with which we’ve been entrusted not to hoard it. And when we share the Gospel — boldly, radically, creatively — the church can’t help but grow!

So if sharing the Gospel is the key to church growth, the next logical question is what does it mean to share the Gospel?

It means looking outward, rather than exclusively inward.

It means reaching out to others — the less fortunate and those in need.

It means communicating in creative ways beyond the four walls of the church building.

It means flinging open the doors to welcome people and being intentional about incorporating them into the life of the parish.

It means thinking entrepreneurially about liturgical alternatives to Sunday morning worship that may look and feel and sound different but still reflect the core values of the community.

It means preaching engaging sermons that connect and relate rather than judge and deny.

It means music that uplifts and inspires.

It means listening for the still, small voice within rather than cowing to the anxiety-ridden, strident voice without.

It means leaving room for questions and mystery rather than providing simplistic answers.

It means joyfully inviting people to partake in the peace of Christ that passes all understanding.

These are hardly prescriptive. But if you’re ready to move forward into a new way of being church, I encourage you to reflect upon these. Perhaps with your vestry or parish leadership. You may have others to add to this list and I’d be delighted if you would share them.

Is it “all about the numbers?” Of course not. You can’t measure spiritual growth with statistics. But they can be important indicators of congregational health and vitality. And when more people are hearing and responding to the Gospel, we’re all living more deeply into our calling as Christians.

“Free Coffee and Eternal Life”

“Free Coffee and Eternal Life.” That’s the essential mission statement of any Episcopal church I’ve ever cared to be associated with. Unfortunately most vestries won’t adopt this as their actual mission statement. Something about not being taken seriously by…anybody.

If you’ve ever been through a process to revise your parish’s mission statement, you may not be able to read this because you’ve been comatose ever since that ninth committee meeting. Group writing projects that seek consensus are brutal. And they’re rife with semi-colons. A general rule of thumb when church shopping on the internet? If the mission statement has more than four semi-colons, don’t even waste your time with a visit. You’ll likely end up on the vestry in that short but heady time between filling out a newcomer’s card and being sent a pledge card.

We’ve started looking at the mission statement at St. John’s as a precursor to engaging in some strategic planning. I actually enjoy the process (don’t tell anybody) because it allows us to take a step back and focus on our passions, examine what makes us unique, and reflect upon where we want to be.

As a starting point I took a few minutes to think about my own personal mission statement. This may sound all life coach-y but that wasn’t what I had in mind. I just wanted to jot down some quick notes about how I envision my ministry in general and at St. John’s in particular. If the rector’s personal sense of mission doesn’t have some major overlap with the parish’s, there may well be a problem. Hopefully both rector and parish discern such congruence during the call process. If not, it’s a template for future conflict.

Here’s what I wrote down as my own mission statement a few minutes before meeting with a vestry sub-committee to first broach the topic of revising the parish mission statement:

Rector’s Mission Statement [written across the top of the page in my barely legible chicken scrawl]

1. Grow the church numerically, spiritually, and financially (not because bigger or more is better but because of the Gospel mandate to share the Good News).

2. Share the Good News of Jesus Christ locally, nationally, and globally.

[I had an arrow pointing off “Good News” to clarify it as the “Message of God’s salvation, forgiveness, love, and reconciliation.”]

3. Build joyful community where people are drawn ever-deeper into relationship with the risen Christ.

4. Help people to take their faith, but not themselves, seriously as they encounter the divine in everyday life, not just on Sunday morning.

That was it. At some point I could always extend the exercise by adding goals and objectives under each one but I probably won’t. Who has the time? But I did find it helpful and suggest everyone engage in a similar process at some point whether or not your parish/organization/business is engaging in a mission statement revision.

This won’t be the first parish where I’ve been involved in such a process. When I was a freshly-minted rector serving a parish in New York I noticed there was a major problem with the mission statement: namely that God wasn’t included. So we went through the process and, a few months and several semi-colons later, had one that much better reflected the faith of the community. I’d like to think God was well pleased.

The “Noise” of Parish Leadership

“Oh the noise! Oh the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise! That’s one thing he hated! The Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!”

Dr. Seuss writes this about the Grinch’s response to the Who’s Christmas celebration. We know how this turns out (spoiler alert) — the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes and he ends up carving the roast beast at the Who’s Christmas feast.

This line has been swirling in my head today not because it’s almost time for me to haul out my well-worn copy of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Rather, I’ve had a different kind of noise rattling around my head. A member of my parish vestry who does corporate leadership consulting often talks about the “noise” of leadership. She’s been a great resource as we’ve grappled with evolving leadership structures and governance models at the parish level. But she also knows that leaders deal with a whole other layer that demands daily attention — what she calls the “noise.”

The noise consists of the ongoing commentary, complaints, and suggestions that surround leaders. It comes through face-to-face conversations, e-mail, cell phones, and he said/she said triangulation. At its worst, all of this peripheral chatter distracts a leader from the big picture vision casting that is essential to an organization’s vitality. It can so subsume daily interactions to render the leader ineffective as he/she spends each day reacting to every minor crisis that bubbles up rather than the major one that may be lurking around the bend. It’s hard to keep a broad view when the minutiae of everyday life keeps drawing you back again and again.

As a church rector for the past decade, the whole notion of “the noise” resonates profoundly as I’m sure it does with most anyone who has served in parish leadership. I also think the noise in church settings is particularly emotionally charged — more so than a typical business environment. And thanks be to God for this! We all bring “our selves, our souls and bodies” into our interactions at church. That is, we bring our spiritual and human fragility right into the mix which can lead to emotional volatility born of insecurity and passion.

This weekend we had four services at St. John’s to mark All Saints’ Sunday — our new Saturday at 5 pm contemporary liturgy; Sunday morning services at 8 and 10 am (with five baptisms and the reading of the necrology); and solemn evensong on Sunday evening.

Following these liturgies I heard lots of conflicting “noise,”albeit most of it third-hand:

1. There were too many baptisms — it was distracting; I loved all the baptisms — it was exciting!

2. You used too much incense; Can’t you use more incense?

3. The joke you made during the announcements was offensive; That was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard!

4. There were so many cars in the parking lot, I had to park way up the street; There were so many cars in the parking lot, I had to park way up the street!

At it’s best, all of this “noise” can lead to some constructive conversations. Perhaps the solemnity of reading the necrology (list of people who have died in the last year) — something that means so much to many parishioners — shouldn’t happen on a day that is so full of (loud) life. I actually love the juxtaposition but I don’t have to sit in the back of a crowded church.

Ultimately much of the noise I hear on a regular basis is a result of growing pains. I understand that and as long as that’s the source I hope it continues to be loud. The often elusive balance for a leader is to be responsive, sensitive, and pastoral in dealing with “the noise” without allowing it to compromise the church’s mission. On this score, sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail. And it’s at times like this that I’m particularly grateful to have strong lay leaders willing to engage with me and the entire parish.

In the meantime I’ll be headed back to my laboratory to work on that skin thickening agent I’ve been trying to develop for the past 10 years.

Calculating Your PYASA (Program Year Average Sunday Attendance)

It’s not about the numbers. At least that’s what priests will tell you even as they’re totaling the Sunday attendance in their heads during the Epistle. Some clergy are obsessed with the numbers, as if their value in God’s sight was directly related to the ir parish’s Average Sunday Attendance (ASA). You’ll be glad to know that mine isn’t. I link my self-worth to the number of friends I have on Facebook.

Numbers are, of course, quantifiable. In a vocation where you sow more seeds than see tangible results, there’s something comforting (or disconcerting) about the black and white quality of your ASA. While I’ve seen some clergy inflate their ASA like Vietnam body counts, most are as faithful and accurate as is humanly possible. I always figure if I’m slightly off, God knows the actual total and that takes the pressure off. The diocese gets as close to the truth as I can offer.

What you can’t ever quantify is spiritual depth. You could count the number of programs offerred and balance it with attendance at, say, Bible Study or the Wednesday night Lenten series. Or come up with some other Bill James-like statistic for the back of your next clergy trading card. But this can never adequately tell the story of how many people have grown in their relationship with the risen Christ in the past twelve months.

I’ve been thinking about attendance figures as we sit on the cusp of another Program Year (generally post-Labor Day through Memorial Day, although I generally push it out through mid-June). Like most parishes we see a major surge in attendance on that first Sunday after Labor Day. The kids are back in school, families return to their regular routines, the choir returns, Sunday School starts, and everything cranks back up.

The problem with the ASA is that it doesn’t take the Program Year into consideration. As much as I try to bang the drum about Summer attendance (and will continue to do so), it drops. Dramatically. And thus, the 12-month ASA figures don’t tell the full story.

I propose that parishes offer more than just that single number as we try to determine just how many people attend church on an average Sunday. In addition to ASA, I’d like to see churches also share their PYASA (program year average Sunday attendance). This would give a better picture of what each church looks like during the church “season” (recognizing that God never takes a vacation from us).

Not every parish’s Program Year is the same. Attendance trends at a church on Martha’s Vineyard during the summer would look very different from the average parish whose numbers drop. And a parish with minimal summer dropoff may be doing some creative things to keep people in the pews. Such data may also shift among wealthier communities where more families, presumably, can spend significant time away whether on vacations or at summer homes.

Out of curiosity I tracked these numbers at my own parish, St. John’s in Hingham, Massachusetts. St. John’s is an affluent community on Boston’s South Shore. In addition to the summer dropoff, there’s a “ski factor.” A good number of families rent or own seasonal ski houses and spend most winter weekends out of town. There are people I literally only see two seasons out of a given year. For this reason I’ve broken it down even further. The Winter ASA mirrors ski season — the Sunday after Christmas through mid-March (12 weeks). In New England, winter attendance is also affected by those weekend snow storms which also impact Sunday attendance.

This is all just a measure of my own curiosity and needing some “labor” on this Labor Day weekend to keep me off the streets. So here goes:

2010 ASA: 222

2010-2011 PYASA: 251

2010-2011 WASA (Winter ASA): 198

So maybe it is about the numbers. At least to a degree.  We all hope to grow our parishes not for our own egos (in parish ministry bigger is not better; bigger is simply different). But the main motivation for growth is to bring more people to know the power and peace that comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts or see your figures if you calculate this at your own parish. Who knows? Maybe we’ll learn something. And if not, it’s been kind of fun.