A158 Addressing Church Decline and Fostering Church Revitalization
Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring,
That the 81st General Convention direct every diocese which has experienced a decline in Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) between 2013 and 2022 to submit a report to the Secretary of the General Convention by June 30, 2025 that includes (1) a straight-line forecast of ASA for the following decade; (2) the diocese’s efforts to halt or reverse the decline in ASA and other membership statistics, if any; and (3) all quantitative data on the efficacy of those efforts, if any; and be it further
Resolved, That the author(s), length, and format of the report is left to the discretion of each diocese but the Ecclesiastical Authority in each diocese is to signify their assent to its publication and dissemination; and be it further
Resolved, That the Secretary of the General Convention publish the reports on the General Convention website in their entirety once they are received in the language originally received, but will translate the reports as soon as possible, with the exception of large quantitative datasets for which it may not be prudent to publish on a website, but which will be made available upon request; and be it further
Resolved, That a clearing-house of resources to address decline and foster church revitalization be created by December 31, 2025; and be it further
Resolved, That a Church Revitalization Audit be done and a report submitted to the 82nd General Convention; and be it further
Resolved, That the Budget Committee of Executive Council consider a budget allocation of $100,000 to fund the Church Revitalization Audit.
Explanation
The Episcopal Church has been in free-fall decline for some time. It’s also true there are multiple causes for the decline and The Episcopal Church is far from the only church experiencing it. The fact remains however that we are shrinking. A straight-line forecast would show us having 0 worshippers in our pews within the next few decades.[1] Besides being a failure to follow the risen Jesus’s great commission to us, decline makes everything else we try to do as a church much more difficult.
But a forecast is not a promise. Only God knows the future and the Holy Spirit empowers us to discern and make different decisions. A good place to start is to stop denying the truth or trying to minimize it with euphemisms of “change.”
Addressing our decline, most exemplified by the 43.2% churchwide loss in Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) from 2013-2022[2] is an “adaptive challenge” that requires us to make a fundamental shift in our mindsets, values, and behaviors, not a “technical problem” that can be solved with the “right” solution or expert knowledge.[3] Foremost, to halt, let alone reverse, our losses, we need to daily turn away from the many idols and false gods that distract us and turn back towards the God who made and liberated us in Christ, as did generations of the faithful before us.
Beyond that, we don’t have a churchwide understanding of how to deal with decline and thus, our desire is to hear from every diocese, the basic unit of our church, how they are addressing it in their own contexts with the required reports. We also intend for the reports to generate useful resources of which not every diocese, parish, or individual leader might be aware. Hence, we call for a clearing-house of collated resources available to the entire church, as SCLM did with www.episcopalcommonprayer.org.
Finally, as the 2021 Racial Justice Audit proved,[4] there is valuable information to be gleaned when experts can guide questions, dive deeper into promising avenues of renewal and resurrection provided by the diocesan reports, analyze data, and provide concise summaries to the church. Thus, we respectfully request $100,000 to fund the audit.
It is this committee’s hope that with these efforts, we can have a “whole-of-church” approach to better define the challenge, identify its causes and obstacles to change, discern new experiments, and discover ways to get promising solutions into the hands of all Episcopalians as quickly as possible.
[1] https://religioninpublic.blog/2021/07/06/the-death-of-the-episcopal-church-is-near/
[2] https://extranet.generalconvention.org/staff/files/download/32265
[3] For more information, see The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky
[4] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/racial-reconciliation/racial-justice-audit/
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