Church attendance in America, we are repeatedly told, is down. Denominationalism is in decline, and “nones” – those with no religious affiliation – have a larger, if recently plateaued, share of the U.S. population than ever before.
At the same time, readers of this blog have witnessed extraordinary moments like the Asbury Outpouring that have revealed spiritual vibrancy among Generation Z. Close to home, many of us look out from our front door and can point to growing, even thriving, churches ministering in our communities.
So what gives? Are churches in decline as Americans are uninterested, or are churches growing as people respond to the gospel message? The answer partly depends upon who and where, but also how. Christians are not without ability to shape their local church’s missional focus and to be willing agents in God’s providence.
Among those with positive news to report is David Roseberry, an Anglican pastor and author of The Seven Tools: Rediscover Your Church’s Hidden Potential for Growth and Vitality. Roseberry is among those finding that church attendance is “suddenly surging” post-COVID (2023 data from the Anglican Church in North America backs this up), and congregations wish to meet this moment of opportunity. They are finding people dissatisfied with a culture characterized by isolation and individualism.
This week I’ve read Roseberry’s book and also listened to the American Anglican Council (AAC) Anglican Perspective podcast “Biblical Values for Any Church of Any Size that’s Anywhere.” Both resources, a slim volume and three 20-minute podcast episodes, are worth your time.
The podcast conversation between AAC President Canon Phil Ashey, AAC Director of Anglican Revitalization Ministries Canon Mark Eldgredge and the Rev. David Hanke of Restoration Anglican Church in Arlington, Virginia is helpful in recounting what has been learned and what can be reproduced. As I’ve written prior, Restoration was planted by The Falls Church Anglican in 2009 and has grown to become the second largest parish in my diocese. In 2022, it reported a larger average Sunday attendance than the Washington National Cathedral did.
Yes, it almost certainly helps that Restoration is positioned in a highly transient corridor that functionally serves as the economic engine of Virginia. This also presents challenges, as newcomers must be constantly welcomed and those departing the region must be sent on to new fields.
Hanke, a low church Anglican raised in United Methodism and shaped by college ministry in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and InterVarsity, shares tools and experiences that have brought about both numerical growth and deepened discipleship. How can churches quickly plug newcomers into small groups? (Restoration has a trimester system that offers the ability to join a new small group at three different times of the year). How do we guide our people to be externally-focused, rather than a “country club” congregation that exists principally to serve and memorialize its own members? (Restoration sensed an opportunity and launched a legal aid group that provides pro-bono legal services to asylum seekers, among them victims of religious persecution and gang violence).
Both Hanke and Roseberry share about focusing congregations to be outward facing.
In the mid-1980s, Roseberry planted in his living room what became Christ Church in Plano, Texas. By the time the parish departed the Episcopal Church in 2003, it was the largest in the denomination, and it continues as the largest parish in the Anglican Church in North America.
Most Americans don’t attend large churches, but the tools Roseberry shares translate into the context of small and medium-sized churches, too, and they aren’t just for Anglicans: compassion, focus, worship, training, small groups, community, and planning.
Roseberry does not make a guarantee of church growth solely through a checklist of best practices (although there are some vignettes he shares that have been undeniably fruitful). The Seven Tools instead is about ministering within a church so that prerequisites of church vibrancy can be in place, barriers to entry lowered, and parishioners’ hearts oriented to welcome others as their eyes and ears are opened to the relational connections and needs of their community.
In sharing about one revitalized church, the author notes:
“The members realized that reaching out didn’t mean venturing into unknown territory,” Roseberry recounts. “They remembered their mission field included the people they already knew – their friends, coworkers, and neighbors.”
In a personal recollection about a grieving family that his church compassionately embraced, Roseberry shares:
“Remember, you are a Christian and you are a part of a community of people who know the love of God and who love one another and care about common hardships and joys. You have access to a community of compassion. Others deserve the same kind of compassionate community. And they are seeking it too.”
Pastors’ bookshelves are already stocked with books on church revitalization, and more than a few have left a bad taste with marketing plans and corporate-speak. Some did not age well. The Seven Tools is not among those books. Roseberry intends the approachable volume to be read together as vestry (elder board) and staff teams. As a layperson, I especially commend it to groups of laity looking to revitalize their own churches – past experience has shown that a lay-led bible study can be a nucleus of renewal.
“If we are to stand in the lengthened shadow of our compassionate Lord and leader, then we must find every occasion to invite them into the fellowship of our community,” Roseberry shares about welcoming our neighbors to follow Jesus. Amen, to that!
More:
The Seven Tools: Rediscover Your Church’s Hidden Potential for Growth and Vitality by David Roseberry. RML Books, 2024. 129 pages.
Anglican Perspective: Biblical Values for Any Church of Any Size that’s Anywhere hosted by Phil Ashey and Mark Eldredge. American Anglican Council Podcast, September 3, 10, 16, 2024.
Anglican Church Planting Success by Jeff Walton. Juicy Ecumenism, 2023.
Comment by David D Wilson on September 24, 2024 at 11:25 am
Thanks Jeff for a very positive, encouraging piece. I was a lay member of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh “New Church” committee in the 1980s, so named before the “church plant” moniker was invented. Our then diocesan bishop , Alden Hathaway , told us about the Rev David Roseberry and the fledgling Christ Church Plano which we looked at as a lodestar and pattern to follow.
Comment by Jeffrey Walton on September 24, 2024 at 3:05 pm
That makes sense! The 1980s and early 90s were an exciting time in the Episcopal Church, with a number of healthy dioceses posting growth and establishing new churches, Dallas among them. We might forget it today with patterns of Episcopal long-term decline seemingly locked into place, but the denomination only lost a net 18,000 members in the 1990s, and usually that was in places like Newark. Pioneering clergy like Roseberry and congregations like Christ Church were instrumental in holding off collapse when they were within TEC.
Comment by Gayle on September 24, 2024 at 11:26 am
The Orthodox Church is growing dramatically (at least in the US). Per many reports, so is the Roman Catholic Church. It seems that people are hungering for liturgical worship, so it would not be surprising that the most liturgical of the Protestant churches, the Anglicans, are growing as well.
Comment by Jeffrey Walton on September 24, 2024 at 2:59 pm
Gayle, there has been an interesting growth spurt in Orthodoxy, and it’s uneven: the pan-orthodox congregations (those not associated with a specific, dominant ethnicity), or those comprised chiefly of converts to Orthodoxy, are booming. “Heritage” congregations (those with strong ethnic ties) have been in steady decline for the past 20 years, and report church attendance rates lower than Protestants or Roman Catholics (the amazing Ryan Burge has reported data on some of this). There are some exceptions (all of the Coptic Egyptian congregations near me seem to be surging due to an influx of immigrants and larger family sizes) but, in general, Orthodoxy seems to do best when it is positioned as a counter-cultural movement that offers something the wider culture does not. One of my friends has a teenage son who is joining the ROCOR church near me, to the puzzlement of his Evangelical parents. I think what you mentioned regarding the hunger for liturgical worship (Orthodoxy makes demands of its adherents) rings true for what a significant number of young men are searching for. The key thing here is not to latch on to a single narrative to the exclusion of the others: there are a lot of young Evangelicals in DC, for example, who have gravitated to “rad-trad” Catholicism (it’s true) but there are an even larger number of Catholics headed out the door who might retain a Catholic identity but never actually go to church aside from the occasional baptism, wedding or funeral. Both situations are real, and as Mark Tooley reminds me, decline and renewal are often interwoven in that they are taking place at the same time.
Comment by David D Wilson on September 24, 2024 at 4:36 pm
Jeff,
The other great influencer of the 1980s church planting initiatives in the evangelical TEC world was the Christian author and missiologist from Fuller Seminary Dr Peter Wagner. Wagner really fueled the way forward.
Comment by MikeB on September 24, 2024 at 6:58 pm
I do wonder if the growth of the automobile and the general mobility of younger people has impacts on what people look for in a church. While neighboring churches were easy to walk or drive to, by the 1980s and 1990s people were driving 30 minutes to church.
Is it in some cases that people won’t drive 30 or 60 minutes to a church that demands nothing of them, one that says there is nothing different between them and the people who live for the world.
Is is that people who will drive 60 minutes to a church will only do that if that church indeed demands even more and more of them…
Comment by April User on October 3, 2024 at 9:59 am
My husband, an early retired UMC elder, and I found ourselves worshipping in an ACNA parish the next town and state over from us. That church decided to disband and use the resources to plant and support some fledgling new parishes. The bishop asked my husband if he would start a church in our community in North Idaho (30 minutes away from where we had been worshiping). We began with an evening prayer service in our home and shared meal. Concurrently, my husband began the process of ordination in the ACNA. We launched a Sunday morning Eucharistic service February, 2020, a month before the Covid pandemic.. Currently we have about 130 people that call St David’s their home, have called an associate Priest, and have a three year plan to plant a new parish in one of the adjacent cities. Thanks be to God!