Dying With Dignity

My doctoral work was in Practical Theology, which is using social sciences such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc., and theology to inform each other. My focus was ecclesiology (which is probably how I became Catholic) and evangelism (or evangelization).

My Practical Theology projects were usually helping dying churches to grow. I even thought of creating a consulting business for dying churches.

What I learned fairly quickly is:

1) Most dying churches do not want to grow. Most small and dying churches want to be bigger versions of what they already are. They do not seem to realize that it is often who they are that is killing their church. The moment one new family joins the church, the dynamics of the church begin to shift. The more new members and families joining the church, the more the dynamic changes, and people who have spent their lives in the church feel that they are losing the church they love. And they are. And they should. But most do not want to. THE CHURCH HAS TO DIE EVERY DAY SO THAT IT CAN BE RAISED TO NEW LIFE EVERY DAY!

2) The second thing I learned (and I already knew it, but it was confirmed) that what a church really believes in is written clearly in its budget. THE SPENDING OF THE CHURCH REFLECTS THE PRIORITIES AND OFTEN THE VALUES OF THE CHURCH. Most churches seem to spend 90% of their budgets on staff and maintenance. Some churches can pull this off and still be very effective at missions and ministry in the community because a) they are very large and have a lot of members who are willing to volunteer, or they can offer outreach ministries like soup kitchens and food pantries; or b) they realize since so much of the money is going just to maintain itself, that it has decided that ministry and mission must be hands on and not simply financial -- they donate time and work rather than simply donating money. But for the most part, churches often think they are about outreach and the community, when their budgets reveal that they are really about maintaining the status quo.

3) The third thing I learned, and like to forget, is that Everything dies, even churches, and even denominations. All things have their time, but all things must die. Some churches and denominations last longer than others, but even they must pass away. A church or even a denomination may make sense in one time or one period of history, but not another. We must keep in mind that Christianity is not dying. Christianity is going to continue and be just fine regardless of whether this or that church dies, or this or that denomination dies. Christianity is always adapting, always evolving. The Christianity today in all of its denominations is not like the Christianity of a thousand years ago, or fifteen hundred years ago. In some denominations, it is not even like the Christianity it expressed even sixty years ago. And it should not be! For Christianity to be alive, it must always change and adapt and grow -- just like any other living organism.

So the think I have learned years after all this work is that some churches are healthy, some churches are sick, and some are dying. The healthy churches, like healthy people can remain healthy and have longer lives by practicing preventative care. A sick church and a dying church are hard to tell apart. There are some symptoms that usually identify a dying church -- an unwillingness to interact with its surrounding community; it's unwillingness to change ANYTHING; it is populated by fewer and fewer elderly individuals who are passing away over time and are not being replaced by younger individuals or families. But a church that is undergoing all these conditions may find the courage and conviction and make the appropriate changes, thus moving that "dying church" into the category of a "sick church" and if it is sick, it can be saved -- though sometimes the treatment may seem worse than the cure to some people.

Take a sick church that wants to grow, and accepts that as new members and families join the church and become active in the life of the church that the power structures of the church are going to change. Families who have run the church for years or even generations may not be running the church any more. These families may be the larger contributors to the church. They may give more, volunteer more, provide more material goods and needs. They do this because they essentially see the church as "theirs" and they have the instinct to keep it alive because that maintains their power. But new families do not care about who has run the church for the past fifty or one hundred years. The old families feel slighted, or develop resentments, and they stop contributing. Often a sick church that is growing and becoming healthy again gets smaller and poorer before it bounces back. Why? Because sometimes dead wood and dead branches have to be cut away so that the living tree can thrive. Just because some people or families or individuals are making up most of the presence of a church does not mean that they are not dead wood. Frankly, they may be the reason why the church is sick in the first place, and new members and families are the medicine that cures the church.

But what about those dying churches? There are churches that are willing to change. They are willing try anything and they do, and yet, they are still dying. In those cases, the proper course of action is to allow that church to die with dignity. Just as when we accept that there is nothing we can do for a patient, we focus on making the patient "as comfortable as possible" and, as far as we are able, allow that person to die with dignity, that is what the pastoral role is for such churches -- accepting its demise, allowing the people who remain to feel dignified in their church and their tradition, and plan for its inevitable non-existence. PERHAPS WE NEED A HOSPICE FOR CHURCHES.

My default setting is life and growth. I find myself in a sick or dying church and I immediately begin looking for ways to grow it and bring it to health. But that is not always the appropriate response, and regardless of what I may believe to be right, I have to respect the wishes -- the living will -- of the church. Some churches are content to exist on life-support. These are the churches that have huge endowments and live off of interest that pays for everything even though the congregation is down to ten people. They manage to have a budget of $200,000 and 90% of that budget is from the endowment. Other churches are like the chronically ill. Just as there are diabetics who decide not to follow advice, or people with high blood pressure who continue to exacerbate their condition through poor diet and no exercise -- they may live for a reasonably long time but their lives are significantly shorter than they had to be be. There are churches like that which refuse to take the steps to be healthy, and even though they continue on, they get sicker and sicker over time, and their overall lifespan is shortened. Then there are those churches that just want to die, just as there are people who want to die. They do not care about what they could or should be doing, they just want to be comfortable and die. I think there are many churches that operate in a manner that is the social and theological equivalent to taking a bottle of sleeping pills.

So what if a church is dying? So what that if in my mind a church has ceased to be a church and has become merely a lingering, dwindling social club? So what? It is the lifestyle choice of that church and I, who respect so many different lifestyle choices need to learn how to respect that one as well. Whether I think that they are insular and closed and selfish, it is who they are, it is who they chose to be, it is how they choose to live and how they choose to die, and God loves them just as much as God loves me and my rush and drive for life and growth.

So after all these years of ecclesiology (church stuff) and evangelism (good news stuff), I may have finally realized today that the good news may be that even churches can die with dignity, and sometimes my role is not trying to figure out how to save it, or nurse it back to health, but simply to help it die in a way that respects that church and the Gospel.

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