By David Kalvelage

We continue to hear plenty about church growth. The church adopts resolutions about it, task forces and committees are drawn up to address it, and leaders tell us how important it is. It has occurred to me that maybe the church does not want to grow. That remark needs some explanation. Most of our leaders want the church to experience growth. But I’m more concerned about the rank-and-file membership. After all, if those folks don’t buy into the idea that the church needs to grow, it’s not going to happen. Let’s face it, Episcopalians and church growth don’t exactly go hand-in-hand.

Elsewhere in this issue, the Rev. George Choyce writes about what makes an apostolic church. A couple of his points are worth exploring in a different context — why we don’t grow.

• Some of us don’t want our churches to grow because we like things the way they are. Recalling my days as a deployment officer, I was told on numerous occasions by proud parishioners, “We’re a family.” What that often meant was, “We’re a tight-knit group here. You’re welcome to worship with us, but we’ve got family matters to attend to.” That is often manifested at coffee hour when a visitor may show up, look bewildered for a few minutes, and leave in exasperation while the regulars enjoy one another’s company, oblivious to a stranger in their midst.

• We enjoy being small. We have been told to celebrate our smallness. There has even been a Year of the Small Church. I think we’ve driven into folks’ brains the idea that we’re supposed to be small, or that’s the Episcopal (or Anglican) way of doing things. So the vestry or the vicar or priest-in-charge may be only too happy to celebrate the status quo, and the congregation struggles on with 30 or 40 members.

There are other reasons why we don’t grow:

• For one thing, it’s a lot of work. We have to find friendly ushers or greeters, people who are willing to interact with visitors or newcomers without being pushy. We need to find people to visit those who sign the guest book. We need to send mailings to the people in our neighborhoods. We need to have people who are willing to help newcomers be assimilated into the life of the congregation. And we need clergy who are willing to work at sermon preparation and delivery as well as sharpen their pastoral skills.

• We’re not comfortable talking about our faith. This old saw has been kicked around for years, but it’s true. For the most part, Episcopalians are poor evangelists. We’ll be glad to tell people about a movie we saw, or a restaurant where we dined, but we’re hesitant to talk about how our lives have been changed by attending St. So-and-So’s or what we’ve experienced there. We don’t ask people to accompany us to church, and we don’t tell them what God has done in our lives.

• Finally, and I realize this theory will not be popular, I sense an uneasy anticipation by some church members about the plan to double attendance by 2020. In short, some of us don’t know what to do with all these people who are going to come through our doors. How will we keep them? What if they want to do what I do?

There are many other reasons why we don’t grow: our infighting on various issues, our attempts to be all things to all people, you name it.

We have a major challenge in front of us. Are we up to it?

David Kalvelage, executive editor

(From The Living Church, March 17, 2002)