Let’s play pretend for a moment. Let’s pretend that, sometime this year, a report is released showing that membership in a conservative religious flock — say the Southern Baptist Convention — had declined sharply. We are not talking about a slow decline seen in recent years. We are talking about a downward spiral that suggests a death-dive.
If this happened, I would expect reporters to allow the group’s leaders to react to the numbers and to take a shot at explaining them. You could say “spin” them, if you wish.
But clearly there would be critics who would have very different explanations of the decline. They would see connections between the red ink and the conservative denomination’s decisions and doctrines that affect its relationship with a changing culture. Reporters would probably talk to former members of this flock and ask why they used the exit doors.
Let me stress that it would be totally valid to seek this kind of input. This is a serious topic and people on both sides of the story would deserve a chance to speak their minds.
This brings me to a Religion News Service report about a remarkable set of church-membership numbers up in Canada. Here is the stunning overture:
(RNS) — A “wake-up call.” That’s what Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, called a new report showing there may be no members left in the mainline Canadian denomination in 20 years. …
“Projections from our data indicate that there will be no members, attenders or givers in the Anglican Church of Canada by approximately 2040,” said the Rev. Neil Elliot, an Anglican priest in Trail, British Columbia, who authored the report.
Elliot based his prediction on church statistics from 1961 to 2001, subscriber data to the “Anglican Journal,” the church’s official publication, and data from his own survey of the number of people on parish rolls, average Sunday attendance and regular identifiable givers across Canada.
“For five different methodologies to give the same result is a very, very powerful statistical confirmation which we really, really have to take seriously and we can’t dismiss lightly,” he told church leaders during the synod.
As you would expect, Anglican Church leaders were given lots and lots of room to react to this report, which was stunning — even though the trend lines have been in place for decades now. The story notes that the peak membership in the Anglican Church — 1.3 million in 1961 — was down to a mere 357,123 in 2017.
So what is missing from this story?
Well, for starters, there are Anglicans in Canada that disagree with many of the efforts by church leaders to modernize the faith’s doctrines on a long list of issues in moral theology. It only takes a few clicks of a mouse to get in contact with the Anglican Network in Canada and even find a local parish.
Where are these critical voices in the RNS story?
There are also church-growth (and decline) experts in evangelical Protestant pews. Surely they would have reactions to this blast of data. Catholics may different reasons to explain this kind of decline.
There may be Anglican progressives who are convinced that the church has not gone far ENOUGH in its attempts to modernize. In other words: Give the Anglican Church of Canada more time to pull out of this dive.
That’s sort of what is happening in this large church of the story, starting with these remarks from Archbishop Nicholls:
In the future, Nicholls hopes Canadian Anglicans will focus more on the church’s calling to be a faithful witness in Canada instead of being drawn into a “vortex of negativity” about the decline.
“We’re called to do and be God’s people in a particular place, for the purpose of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, and the only question is, ‘How do we need to share it, so that it might be heard by those around us?’” she said.
Geoff Woodcroft, Bishop of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land in Manitoba and northwestern Ontario, called the report “dire.”
“We need to take it very seriously,” he said. But, he added, it’s not a “death knell for the church.”
While the report captures the numerical decline, there are still signs of life in the church, he said, adding that Anglicans in Canada are “trying new experiments to live out more fully the call to engage the world as the body of Christ.”
And so forth and so on.
The story contains zero input from people who believe that the church’s statistical collapse is really bad news that may have something to do with fallout from actions taken by the church — as well as negative trends linked to crashing birth rates, the rejection of old-fashioned evangelism and similar trends linked to doctrine.
Remember: We are talking about trend lines indicating that the pews in Anglican Church of Canada will be EMPTY in a mere 20 years. Oh, and is this happening in other “mainline” bodies in Canada? Are any churches growing?
Why not call critics of the church establishment — left and right — and see what they have to say?
Just asking.
ybvdadminuser
