Wednesday April 20, 2005
Growing pains
I have yet to encounter a congregation – or any other community organization, for that matter – that says it doesn\’t want to grow. Even in an informal group that gathers periodically for dinner and discussion, I hear a recurring refrain: “We need to attract some new members.”
A surprising number of people assume that growth will enable them to maintain the status quo. It won\’t. It will inevitably change the delicate equilibrium by which all organizations operate.
Of course, so will a decline in membership.
Arlin Rothauge, of the Alban Institute in Washington DC, studied that delicate equilibrium. He found that church congregations have distinct transition points, which often generate internal conflicts.
Up to 50 people attending each week, Rothauge called a “family church.” The people are comfortable with each other. They don\’t need many meetings. They settle issues the way a family does, through informal conversations.
Between about 50 to 150 attendees, the same congregation becomes a “pastoral church.” With more diversification, the pastor holds the pieces together.
The next step up is the “program church” – from 150-350 people. This one has lots of committees, with considerable autonomy. No one person can keep it all together any more. Programs start to operate independently.
Congregations of over 350 attendance turn into “corporate churches.” They depend more and more on paid staff to do the on-going work. Mega-churches, with memberships in the thousands, become almost entirely staff-run.
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No one kind of church is better than another, Rothauge insisted. Each has its own values. The problems come at the transition points – when a congregation grows, or shrinks, and has to start operating at a different level.
For the implications of that change, I can\’t do better than quote Rothauge directly:
“Old timers pull rank on the ungrateful upstarts who won\’t be staying in this town for the long haul anyway… Long time members attend less frequently, and newcomers are less enthusiastically \’adopted\’ into the circle. Attendance dips – which does alleviate the need for a second service… Things are back to normal again…
“This congregation is likely to repeat the whole cycle in three or four years, when lessons learned are pretty well forgotten…
“When a church doesn\’t address the question of size-transition directly and make conscious choices about the future, it will tend to resolve the crisis subconsciously… Leaders get exhausted and demoralized, change-champions leave or withdraw, and the visible tension is reduced. Things get better until the next push for church growth, or the next financial crisis…”
No one deliberately sabotages growth, Rothauge explains. “Declining and stable churches usually believe they are going to grow. The belief protects current patterns of church life and maintains the dream that the old coherence can be recovered by trying harder.”
Rather, people go into denial: “In short, if we believe we can grow gradually without making any new decisions, then hard choices won\’t have to be faced.”
The problem, in other words, is self-delusion. And every organization faces it. Not just churches.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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