FPC Log: "Facts on Growth 2010" (ix)

Faith Communities
Today Logo

In late 2011, Hartford Seminary's Faith Communities Today program issued a report entitled, Facts On Growth:2010, which contains important statistical insights into what constitutes a growing church in the early 21st century.  The report considers five key areas of church life: (1) context & composition of the church; (its identity & orientation; (3) worship; (4) programs & recruitment of new members; and (5) leadership.  Under each category, the author, C. Kirk Hadaway, sifts through the data to discern the characteristics of churches that are growing and those that are not.  Some of its findings will surprise no one, but some do, and a key contribution  of the report is the way in which it quantifies most of the parameters of ecclesiastical growth.

Insights include the fact that in metropolitan areas downtown churches were more likely to be growing than suburban congregations, an important change in recent years.  The data confirms that Southern churches, newer churches, and churches with more young people are more likely to be growing churches.  Hadaway notes that churches that, "have a healthy mix of ages tend to be growing, but most important to growth is the ability of congregations to attract younger adults and families with children.” (p. 5)  As has been found in other studies, there is little correlation between theological orientation and growth, although conservative or evangelical churches are more likely to have characteristics that encourage growth.  Hadaway observes that,

“More important than theological orientation is the religious character of the congregation and clarity of mission. Growing churches are clear about why they exist and about what they are to be doing. They do not grow because they have always been at the corner of 2nd and Main. They do not grow because they are focused on themselves. They grow because they understand their reason for being and they do the things well that are essential to their life as a religious organization. One of the stronger correlates of growth was the extent to which the congregation “has a clear mission and purpose.” (p. 8)

Other key factors in growth include a joyful worship life, a commitment to growth, excitement about one's church, and particular types of programs including marriage enrichment.  Hadaway writes, “The programs that produced the strongest relationships with growth were: 1) young adult activities; 2) parenting or marriage enrichment activities; and 3) prayer or meditation groups.” (p. 16)  In the reports' concluding section, Hathaway states that congregational growth is more likely if a church is located in a growing geographic location, has a clear sense of identity, is younger, is spiritually vital, belongs to a conservative denomination, has innovative worship, emphasizes evangelism, and is led by a younger and full-time pastor.  In every category, however, there are growing churches that do not exhibit the usual characteristics of growth.

From all of the data and insights contained in Facts on Growth: 2010, the most important insight seems to be that churches that want to grow have to commit themselves programmatically to growth, have innovative, joyful worship, and run other programs that meet people's needs in their community, such as marriage enrichment courses.

Acceptance

When your past
comes to live
in the woods
behind your house,
you must go
to the window,
forgive yourself
once again,
and welcome
the creature
that suns himself
on the sill.

Nancy Compton Williams

Source: Sacred Journey

From inward/outward

The "bi-modal sleep pattern"

If you're having trouble sleeping at night, Stephanie Hegarty's BBC article, "The myth of the eight-hour sleep," might be worth a look. According to the article, historical research suggests that until the late 17th century Europeans normally slept in roughly two four-hour periods divided by an awake period of an hour or two.  "First sleep" and "second sleep" was considered normal.  Things evidently began to change with the advent of street lights as well as changes in the way Europeans valued time.  Spending so many hours in bed was thought to be "a waste of time."

The article also suggests that at least some people who have "trouble sleeping," may actually still be trying to replicate this older sleeping pattern, which seems to be closer to what nature intended for us.  People who wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep aren't suffering from insomnia.  They just don't know that after a couple of hours they are supposed to go back for second sleep!

ab

And a sermonic note: this morning's  sermon at First Presbyterian Church, Lowville, is from John 3:1-21 about the late night encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus, a respected Pharisee.  Commentators and preachers sometimes make much of the fact that Nicodemus "snuck off" to see Jesus late at night as if he didn't want anyone to know.  But, maybe Nicodemus there's nothing more to it than he went to chat with Jesus between first and second sleep.  During the day, both of them were busy.  Jesus, especially, had huge crowds following him around, so maybe it was just easier for Nicodemus to go see him between sleeps.  Jerusalem wasn't all that big a place in those days, so it wasn't likely that Nicodemus could keep the visit a secret, and he may not have really had any reason to do so.  It may be that nothing more is going on here than that he went to visit Jesus between sleeps, a time convenient for both of them,.  Or, maybe not.  We don't know, but it is fun to speculate!

A New Posting at Rom Phra Khun Reviews

There is a new posting at Rom Phra Khun Reviews entitled, "Reflections on Rick Santorum"s View of Faith," which describes and then critically evaluates presidential candidate Rick Santorum's understanding of faith. The purpose of the posting is to discern the impact of his faith on a Santorum presidency.  Theologically, Santorum advocates a form of moral dualism that has serious implications for the way in which he would govern as president.  Readers might find the posting worth a look see.

How Come Zebras Have Stripes?

In an article entitled, "How the zebra got its stripes," reporter Emily Sohn describes research done at the University of Lund, Sweden, on the origins of zebra stripes. What the Swedish researchers discovered was that horseflies, which are a serious bother to herd animals such as zebras, are less attracted to black and white zebra stripes than they are to dark skinned animals. In general, the flies are more attracted to dark surfaces than light colored ones, and they are even alightly less attracted to the zebra pattern than to white surfaces. According to the article, "Measurements confirmed that the most polarised surfaces attracted the most insects." So, one reason that zebras have stripes is to keep the biting bugs at bay. There could be other reasons as well, but at least now science has a partial explanation for zebra stripes based on credible (and interesting!) data.

There is no getting around it.  Evolution is incredible.  The creative potential of living cells to "figure out" things like how to frustrate biting flies seems almost boundless.  It is made all the more incredible when we consider that the whole evolutionary process is evidently random.  Zebras have stripes when less fortunate herd animals don't have stripes for no better reason that they do.  Somewhere way back when tens or hundreds of millions of years ago some of their evolutionary ancestors had (maybe) patches of black and white hide, which marginally gave them a reproductive advantage that increased over the ages always favoring those "zebras" that were more zebra-like.

How come God does these things this way?  Why does God favor seemingly random evolutionary development?  Why has God impregnated creation with this kind of potential and set it on its merry way?  Wouldn't it be nice to know!  One thought: as a process, evolution seems to combine both structure and randomness.  It is not chaotic because it produces concrete life forms of various kinds and complex ecosystems for them to live in.  If anything, evolution seems to produce increasingly complex and creative forms of life as time goes on.  But it does so in a random way within the basic rules of how evolution works.  It is a system that is at once controlled and yet uncontrolled.  It has direction but moves forward randomly.  Evolution is at one and the same time constrained and unconstrained, free and yet structured.  There is Law and there is Grace both built into the very nature of reality as we know it.  Law sets boundaries on the random process that graciously gave zebras stripes.  How come?  Ultimately, God only knows.

Keep Quiet! - Mark 3:11-12 (xxxvi)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 36th in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

This passage, Mark 3:11-12, dove tails quite neatly with Mark 1:21-28, which we looked at in posting #13 of this series. In both of these passages, people possessed by evil spirits declare Jesus to be either God's holy messenger (TEV wording) or the Son of God. In both, Jesus orders the demons to keep their mouths shut about who he is.

From a strictly historiographical perspective, all of this is problematical and outside the bounds of the historian's competence. Assuming Jesus didn't carry on public conversations with the demons (since he was ordering them to silence, it would be a silly contradiction to think he did so in public), we can't verify that he actually did order demons to silence. Demons, in any event, are a phenomenon historians can't study. The best we can do is to say that either the author of Mark had sources that believed Jesus did such a thing, or he made up this theme for his own gospel purposes. This theme does, however, highlight the fact that Jesus was seen to be an unusually powerful exorcist, a man who could converse with and exercise authority over evil spirits. Beyond that fact, it still seems that Mark is using this theme to reflect one other fact, namely that Jesus wasn't obviously the divine Second Person of the Trinity and he never declared himself to be holy or divine. The crowd is testimony to the fact that Jesus' compassion, authority, and power were evident to his contemporaries. The demons are testimony to the fact that other people didn't see in him an essential divine-ness. It takes even his disciples all the way to the end of Mark 8 to figure out that Jesus is something beyond the average human, and even there Peter declares Jesus to be only the Messiah, that is God's agent, not God (8:27-30).

I think we have to take Mark's gospel interpretation seriously. In other ways the author is apparently sensitive to historical themes, such as the growth in the size and complexity of the crowd and the growing antipathy of the over class to Jesus. It seems likely that the empirical Jesus didn't strike most of those who knew him as anything other than an unusual, powerful individual.

The Crowd - Mark 3:7-12 (xxxv)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 35th in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

The crowd is important. It's an active, important participant in the gospel's reconstruction of Jesus' life. This passage, Mark 3:7-12, recalls that theme. It focuses our attention on the crowd of people who swarmed to Jesus, and it alerts us to changes taking place in the nature of that crowd. First, it's clearly growing in size, and one senses from Mark's narrative how overwhelming it was becoming for Jesus. It threatened to crush him (3:9). It contained, especially, many suffering people in need of his healing touch (3:10). Second, it was a more international crowd. Jesus' fame had spread beyond Galilee and beyond the larger Palestinian region. We should note here that people were coming to him from non-Jewish regions as well, according to Mark's list in 3:7-8. Nothing is said of it, but the implication seems to be that Gentiles were now numbered among those attracted by Jesus.

This last point is extremely important from a church history perspective. The first great crisis the church faced, after the Resurrection, was the "Gentile Problem". An important part of the earliest church felt that it should admit into its numbers only those Gentiles who underwent circumcision and converted to Judaism. The bulk of the church eventually rejected that viewpoint. It may well be that the author of Mark is here reminding his readers that the Gentiles began coming to Jesus early in his ministry. He was their teacher and healer/exorcist too.

In any event, the crowd was growing in size and complexity. Again, I'd like to note that while the particular event described here seems generic rather than specific, the underlying developments revealed through the story seem to have historical weight. Jesus' ministry, over time, attracted more and more interest in an ever expanding geographical region. Communications and travel conditions were quite good so that news about Jesus could spread quickly, and it wouldn't have taken all that long for people to travel to Galilee from surrounding territories to find out about Jesus for themselves.

Is Franklin Graham a Christian?

Yesterday morning. Mr. Franklin Graham, CEO of the Christian NGO Samaritan's Purse, appeared on the MSNBC morning news program, "Morning Joe."   The "morning Joe" interview team, headed by Willie Geist, started the interview by asking Mr. Graham if he believed that the president is a Christian.  (For a video clip of the relevant part of the interview, see here).  There has been some controversy over remarks by presidential candidate Rick Santorum on that point.

Graham danced around the question and would not say in so many words without reservation or equivocation that President Obama is a Christian.  He acknowledges that the president says he is a Christian, but the doubt in Graham's mind seems to be that the president doesn't exhibit the marks of a true Christian.  By way of contrast, Graham readily acknowledged that Santorum is a Christian because, according to Graham, he displays the clear values of one.  Mr. Santorum has to a degree relied on the same logic.  Yes, so his line goes, Mr. Obama says he is a Christian, and I take him at his word...but.  What follows the but are complaints about the president's false, unbiblical "theology," which Mr. Santorum seems to think is just an ideology that values Planet Earth over against humanity.

This is all weird and seems to be murky.  Except, it really isn't.  Off camera and away from the reporters both gentlemen would surely agree that whatever the president may think he is, his actions are not those of a true Christian.  We have to remember that we are dealing here with individuals who stand as far right theologically as they do politically, and one of the things Christians do out there on the fringe right is judge the rest of us who are down stream for not being truly Christian.  Such judgmental attitudes are a distinguishing characteristic of their beliefs.

What is troubling is to see exponents of far right theologies speaking on national television apparently for all of us who (with trepidation) take the name of Christ.  What is still more troubling is the influence their narrow-minded, seriously unloving religiosity seems to be having on our political life.  We need to be clear here that in the United States of America whether the president is a Christian or not is irrelevant to the qualifications of his office as chief of a secular state.  We want an ethical, honest, wise, canny, and competent president.  People of other faiths (including atheism) can be ethical.  They can be honest.  They can be wise.  They can be canny politicians and competent statesmen.  Our nation is not a theocracy, and there is no religious test for holding office.  We decided in the years after the American Revolution that we do not want state churches and that  the state is to keep religion at arms length, for the sake of religious freedom as well as for freedom from religious domination.

Injecting religion into our politicking is thus unwise and one could even say, given our commitment to a secular state,  "un-American".  We need to stop it and go back to making the political judgment of who will be our leadership for the next two, four, and six years on the basis of what is best for all Americans.  Now, me, personally, I will draw on my faith in making my judgment on these matters.  That is my prerogative.  I can even state publicly, if I choose, the faith values on which I base my choices.  That too is my prerogative in a democracy.  What is not my right is to expect that public policy must conform to my understanding of biblical theology, which is precisely what Mr. Santorum is claiming to do.  He argues that he is the best candidate because he espouses a Christian theology, which he publicly makes the measure of what is right for the nation.  He does so while casting aspersions on his political opponents including the president, which means he has turned his view of biblical principles into a political tool, weapon, and set of talking points.  There is a huge difference between claiming that the president's policies are unwise or misguided and claiming that they are wrong because they are not Christian.  And that is most troubling of all.

As for the question in the heading, of course he is--just not my kind of Christian, that's all.

Food Stamp Presidents

Matt. 25:31-46 as a Wordle (from "Rectory Musings")

In the video clip below, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois) recently addressed the hot political issue of "the food stamp president" based on data taken from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It turns out that the food stamp program expanded more rapidly in terms of total amounts expended, number of recipients added, and benefit per recipient under Presidents Bush, Jr. and Sr. Rep. Gutierrez makes the further points that: (1) recipients are of every race, creed, and political persuasion; and (2) the primary purpose of food stamps is to prevent hunger among children and the elderly, which two groups are the program's main recipients.

In spite of these facts, certain politicians have taken delight in deriding President Obama for his support of feeding children, the elderly, and other Americans in genuine need of assistance in hard economic times.  What is particularly troubling from a faith perspective is that these same presidential aspirants habitually tout their Christian faith and habitually criticize the president for his supposedly "secularist" attacks on religion.  They call him a "socialist on the European model," further implying an anti-religious bias Mr. Obama does not actually have.

That is, a certain faction of American Christians have managed to find fault with the president for not only doing precisely what his predecessors did, but also for supporting what is clearly a government program that fulfills one of Christ's measures of true faith, namely feeding the poor (Matthew 25:31-46).  This faction of Christians has managed to appear hard-hearted, to be politically divisive, and to cast faith in Christ in a light that does not reflect his teachings and ministry.  Rep. Gutierrez thanked all three presidents for being "food stamp presidents," and so should we.  Amen.

P.S. You can read the transcript of Rep. Gutierrez's remarks (here).

Worth Thinking About

Yesterday's Huffington Post online contained several postings on its Religion Page  worth reading and thinking about.  First, Paul Brandeis Raushenbush wrote a posting entitled, "Rick Santorum's Political and Biblical Mistake," which calls presidential candidate Rick Santorum to task for apparently claiming that President Obama espouses a false, unbiblical theology that he seeks to impose on the nation.  Raushenbush makes the points that it is not wise to introduce theological differences into politics and that Mr. Santorum can himself be charged with unbiblical views.  Second,  an unsigned news posting entitled, "Hannah Kelley, Pastor's Daughter Accidentally Shot At Church, Dies," picks up on an article from the Tampa Bay Times (here) reporting the death of  Hannah Kelley, a pastor's daughter who was accidentally shot and seriously wounded at church on Sunday, February 12th.  The sad incident suggests that sometimes guns do kill people almost of themselves.   Third, there is an article by Peggy Fletcher Stack, who writes for the Salt Lake Tribune, entitled, "Evangelicals Defined: The History Of American Evangelicalism," which originally published in the Salt Lake Tribute under the title, "Who are evangelicals?"  The article offers some insights into how hard it actually is to define "evangelicalism".

And, finally, the posting entitled, "The End of Church," by Diana Butler Bass offers comments on the future of religion in America.  She looks for a reorganization of religion and of Christianity, noting that a large majority of Americans remain interested in spirituality and faith—but not in the conventional, traditional ways of the past.  This posting, too, is worth a read and some thought.  Happy Reflections!