16 minute read
Revitalizing our 100-Year-Old Denomination by multiple authors
G&P: Do you have any words on the future of evangelism, how methods or perspectives may change? ES: It’s harder now to share our faith, and it’s going to get harder. Most of our evangelism is based upon evangelizing people who are nominal Christians. Most people that most Nazarenes share the gospel with already think they’re Christians, and it’s almost like our job is to convince them they’re not so that they can be! Most polls say that around 75 percent of Americans say they’re Christians. Yet only about a quarter of Americans actually plan their lives around their religious faith.
That means about half of Americans are nominal Christians. That’s where most of our evangelism has been. But here’s the challenge: Every year the number of Americans who identify as Christians decreased by about 1 percent, and 1 percent more identify as “none of the above,” or, the Nones. So we need to prepare ourselves for an evangelistic future where we’re not evangelizing nominal Christians to bring them to understand the deeper faith, but we’re evangelizing truly secular people who don’t know Christ and are one, two, or three generations away from any religious memory in their family.
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G&P: Who are the “Nones”? ES: The highest percentage of Nones are younger, but it spreads across the whole spectrum. To be fair, that’s always been the case. You’ll notice during the ’70s, the younger generation was the most secular. People become more religious as they age, according to research, but it’s a little tricky. Among college students, one out of three is actually intentionally or openly secular, and that’s a huge shift from prior generations.
G&P: Is the persecution of Christians increasing, or is that just a perception? ES: It is getting more difficult. In the U.S. and in Canada, people are starting farther away from faith. The strongest, life-threatening kind of persecution is more prevalent outside of the U.S. and Canada. Things like the “War on Christmas,” or a clerk
A common thread throughout most of the books I’ve written has been becoming effective at reaching and engaging people for the gospel.
saying, “Happy Holidays” is really not persecution. I don’t think it’s the Walmart clerk’s job to tell people about Jesus. I think it’s my job and your job to tell people about Jesus.
We certainly see the increasing pressure not to mention religion or share our faith in the culture of the U.S. and Canada, and this is likely at least partly due to the rise in secularism.
G&P: The standard has traditionally been to not talk about politics, religion, or sex in polite society. We definitely talk about sex and politics, but are we still more reluctant to talk about religion? ES: Isn’t that ironic? What has emerged is what I call the “Oprah-fication” of American spirituality in which you can believe whatever you want as long as it makes you happy and you don’t try to convince anybody else. But we Christians are part of a missionary faith. The founder of our faith told us to go and make disciples of all nations. Jesus’ last words should be our first priority. The call we have, to do what Jesus said, doesn’t fit as well in our world. We’re supposed to live and let live, everyone find their own spiritual way, their own path, and as long as we’re happy and we’re not hurting anybody else, it’s fine. But at the end of the day, that’s not really what we as Christians believe. We believe that men and women need to hear the good news of the gospel.
Reimagining Success: Redefining Congregational Success in a Mega-Mall World
B y Ar t R oxb y
For months, I felt as if I were pounding my head against a brick wall. I was doing everything I had ever been taught to do in order to see my church grow. For 15 years, I had seen the churches I served grow in worship attendance and membership.
Then my church went into decline.
I read the most current literature. I engaged in conversations with colleagues. I imagined the church growing and thriving, climbing to the next size structure. We should be averaging 150 in worship.
We should be building a new family ministry center.
We should be the new amazing church in the area— yet we were not.
We were declining. Finances were tight. We had no new building. A cloud of depression hung over me. Slowly, I surrendered to feelings of hopelessness:
I was not a successful pastor, I did not serve a successful church, and I was a failure.
During the throes of my faith crisis, I read about how small churches recovered from being stalled or in decline. Over time, an epiphany occurred. I had unwittingly surrendered to a faulty measure of success defined by American consumerism: Success equaled more.
The goals set for ministry, and ultimately the yardstick against which I measured my perceptions of success, had more to do with the numbers that we throw around at clergy meetings (noses in worship, dollars in the plate, and the size and additions to our buildings) than what appeared to be most significant in the Body of Christ. Perhaps I was encouraging my congregation to pursue the next size barrier more than
I was inviting them to be formed in Christ. Perhaps
I remained too focused on the positive feelings I experienced when others recognized the growth of my church rather than for the spiritual presence of Christ we experienced as we gathered for worship. It took the crucible of several years of decline for me to realize success in the Kingdom is measured differently than success at the corner of Wall Street and Main Street.
Grappling with this new insight, I reflected on the ministry of my declining church over the previous years. At one point, I realized that many of the teens who left the community to go to college had not left the Church of Jesus Christ. They had merely changed locations of worship and were
ministering to the world. The church had nurtured and formed several who were actively engaged in vocational ministry. Members were still being called to ministry. Although numbers were declining, along with the population of the community, the church was making a difference in the world. That is when God spoke to me about the ultimate measure of success in ministry and in His kingdom: faithfulness.
This began a journey. I searched the Scripture, seeking to understand how the Early Church assessed participation in God’s mission. Early Christians understood themselves as successful when they lived out God’s calling in their lives. Success came from new believers finding faith in Jesus Christ, widows being cared for, and disciples maturing in their faith. Interestingly, I discovered that, in the book of Acts, numbers were only mentioned in relation to the activity of the Holy Spirit moving upon people who knew the power of the resurrected Christ and were baptized. The use of quantifiable numbers never referred to the number of people who attended worship services. Faithfulness was measured in terms of the mission that God had given to His Church—to be living witnesses and to make disciples.
Faithfulness is Making Disciples
It is too easy to forget that Jesus did not call us to build a big church or to create slick ministries. Jesus did not call us to be the popular church or the mostloved leaders. Jesus called us to make disciples. He called us to pour our lives into people. We are called to create sacred space where people find Christ and
where the nominal believer comes closer to Christ. God uses us to create the environment in which believers can mature in their faith and become the witnesses we are all called to be.
Faithfulness is Responding to the Brokenness of the World
In the early days of the Church of the Nazarene, local churches had compassionate ministries that sought to alleviate the hunger, suffering, and pain of people in their communities. Worship spaces were designed so that everyone might experience a sense of belonging. Nazarenes moved into the neighborhoods overlooked by many or defined as poor or dangerous.
The image of the early church in Acts finds a people holding their possessions so loosely that they could sell what they had to care for the needs of others. The early Christians laid hands on the sick, the unclean, the broken, and the blind. Through their faith and prayers, all manners of illnesses—and even death—were healed. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are also called to respond to the broken, the hurting, the lonely, and the infirmed in our world today.
Faithfulness in Prayer
The early Christians spent significant time in intense, corporate prayer meetings. Jesus repeatedly stole away from the crowd to spend time with God. The miraculous outpourings of the Holy Spirit came in response to the gathered church humbly bowing before God in prayer. Prayer was central to the power of the Early Church.
Too few Christians and churches spend significant time in corporate prayer. We have long prayer lists for many things, but too often, we are not given to the discipline of joining together corporately in both large and small groups to pray for the renewal of our churches, for salvation of the lost, and for disciples to grow in grace, knowledge, and the power of the Spirit of God. The result is a weak and lukewarm group of nominal believers who make little difference. If we are to realize our unique calling as the Body of Christ, we must return to faithful, ongoing prayer.
Faithfulness in Mission
Much has been made of the centrality of mission. We are charged to carry out the message and hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our local communities and in the world as a whole. Success may only be measured in terms of our faithfulness to that mission.
The realization that faithfulness to our real calling is the true measurement of success was both liberating and sobering to me. It would be easier for me to create a program that people found pleasing and exciting, to which they would want to invite their friends. Living in the story of Christ and leading my congregation to move into that story is in some ways more difficult. However, the understanding that my pastoral “success” and the church’s “success” are really only measured by God released me from the tyranny of living for nickels and noses and challenged me to pursue the only goal worth pursuing—making a difference in the world for the cause of Jesus Christ. It may be time to remember that we live the economy of the Kingdom—not the economy of Wall Street and Main Street.
My prayer is that you, too, might find liberation in the calling of Jesus Christ.
ART ROXBY serves as lead pastor of Milford (DE) Church of the Nazarene.
Nazarene Trends During the 2010s
B y R i ch H o us e a l
While COVID-19 is affecting the church financially, socially, and structurally now, it will be years before we know the lasting effects of these impacts. When Grace & Peace magazine was started in 2010, the U.S. and Canadian economies were suffering from The Great Recession. In what way did The Great Recession affect the Church of the Nazarene in the USA/Canada Region? What other trends or changes have occurred since Grace & Peace magazine’s first edition?
The impact of The Great Recession is visible in the giving pattern to our local churches over the past 10 years. In 2010, local Nazarene churches in the USA and Canada received more than $792 million dollars. Between 2010 and 2019, giving declined by 6.8 percent to just over $738 million dollars. The decline in giving was even larger in terms of purchasing power. When we adjust the 2010 giving to the 2019 purchasing power, the 2010 income figure is equivalent to $929 million dollars. Therefore, since 2010, the purchasing power of local churches actually declined by 20.5 percent. The decline in local church receipts did not start in 2010. Giving to local churches peaked in 2007 (the year before the start of The Great Recession) at a little more than $841 million dollars, or the equivalent of $1.037 billion dollars in 2019.
Based on membership and worship attendance, there are fewer people connected to a local Church of the Nazarene, and they are giving less per capita. Between 2010 and 2019, full membership in active churches slid from 649,733 to 610,223 (-6.1%), and worship attendance dropped from 513,575 to 434,846 (-15.3%). Even with less people, when adjusted for inflation, per capita giving based on membership slid from $1,430 to $1,210 (-15.4%), and
based on worship dropped from $1,809 to $1,698 (-6.1%). It has been suggested that people are attending worship services less frequently than in the past; therefore, while average worship attendance has declined, we are still reaching just as many people, if not more. One can find support for this perspective in the fact that discipleship enrollment increased from 787,252 in 2010 to 810,131 in 2019 (2.9%). However, this would also mean that per capita giving has declined even more than has already been noted.
While many denominations in the USA and Canada have experienced a loss in the number of their churches during the last ten years, there has been an increase in the number of active churches for the Church of the Nazarene. There has also been a shift in the distribution of cultural groups within our churches. The number of active churches increased from 4,994 in 2010, to 5,113 in 2019. A net gain of 119 (2.4%) active churches. To achieve
this net gain, we started 1,206 churches and closed 1,087 churches. While many of the closed churches were predominantly White, English-speaking churches, many of the new churches were predominantly Hispanic. The result has been the continuation of a cultural shift in the distribution of our churches that really started as far back as the 1980s.
Along with a slight increase in active churches and declines in membership and average worship attendance, there is a trend toward pastors being bi-vocational. In 2013, the USA/Canada Region implemented a supplemental questionnaire to the Annual Pastor’s Report (APR). One of the questions asked, “Does the pastor of this church consider himself/herself to be bi-vocational?” In 2013, 59 percent responded “No” to this question, while 32 percent checked “Yes, it is necessary to supplement their family income,” and the remaining 9 percent indicated “Yes” for other reasons. In 2019, the percentage indicating “No” had dropped to 53.5%, while the percentage responding, “Yes, it is necessary to supplement their family income” had risen to 37%. Those responding “Yes” for other reasons remained stable at 9.5%. Given the loss in purchasing power at the local church level, it should come as no surprise that more of our pastors need to supplement their income. Our pastors and their families are making significant sacrifices for the sake of the Kingdom.
In addition to more pastors being bi-vocational, there are also more women in lead pastor roles. In 2010, 6.7 percent of lead pastors were women. That figure had risen to 11.6 percent in 2019. In fact, women are increasing as a percentage of all clergy in the USA/Canada Region, as can be seen in the following table.
Year
2010 2019
NEWLY ORDAINED
Total % Women
382 27.0% 356 35.1%
TOTAL CLERGY
Total % Women
10,992 16.2% 10,564 23.5%
LEAD PASTOR Total % Women
4,480 6.7% 4,179 11.6%
During the past ten years, there has been a slight shift in the distribution of our church locations. The percentage of churches in town and country settings declined from 43.1 percent in 2010 to 39.8 percent in 2019; however, the percentage of churches in major urban areas grew from 30.8 percent in 2010 to 34.2 percent in 2019. While not a dramatic change, there are probably several causes for this shift, including 1) an emphasis to reach urban settings, 2) an increase in Hispanic churches that tend to be in more urban areas, and 3) the financial difficulty of maintaining churches in rural areas. The following table illustrates this change.
Year
2010 2019
Major Urban
30.8% 34.2%
Smaller Urban (Suburban)
26.0% 26.0%
Town and Country
43.1% 39.8%
Total
100.0% 100.0%
In 2017, there were other new questions added to the USA/Canada supplement to the APR concerning live streaming and archiving worship services online. Just adding these questions was an acknowledgment that our churches were making efforts to minister in new ways. The result in 2017 showed that 10 percent of our churches were live streaming their worship service, with an average of 12,480 weekly viewers. In 2019, before the coronavirus, the percentage of churches live streaming their worship service had jumped to 19.5% with 25,883 viewers. Similarly, the percentage of churches archiving their services online rose from 18.4 percent in 2017 to 23.7 percent in 2019.
The 2010s began in the throes of a financial crisis, and it looks like the coming decade is starting with more financial and social difficulties because of the coronavirus. The last ten years have seen the local church make several adaptations to our changing USA/Canada Region mission field. It looks like the next ten years will probably see even more changes.
RICH HOUSEAL is director of Research Services for the Church of the Nazarene.
When the Church Meets the Political and Cultural Issues of Its Day
B y J am e s Co ppl e
The Church has seen major transformation in 2,000 years, but its tradition runs deep. Whether it is a medieval cathedral or a storefront congregation meeting in a Nairobi slum, it is still a place of coming together every Sunday morning to worship, fellowship, give, encourage, and pray. Like the early Church, it is an ecclesia—a group “called out” to testify to God’s presence in the world, sometimes in the midst of threat and insecurity.
The Church has been, and must be, a place of both pastoral care and prophetic witness. These two tracks of religious expression have dominated the history of Christianity. Coming together to worship brings comfort and discipleship to the soul, but it also challenges the believer to create a faithful presence in the broader culture in which it exists. The Church is to be a catalyst for change.
Two Tracks: Pastoral Care and Prophetic Witness
The first track (pastoral care) suggests the church must be a safe place: a place where we go knowing that we will be cared for and loved; a place that strengthens our minds, hearts, and souls. We look forward to the worship experience and the gathering of believers because it is a “retreat” that allows us to reflect on the meaning of life and what that life might mean to others. It should be a place that informs, inspires, and comforts.
Then there is that other track (prophetic witness), fueled by history’s prophets and change agents, where the Church becomes a catalyst for challenging us to be transformational in our living, our ethics, and our practice of faith. It dares to suggest that we are a community that calls into question the values, norms, and behaviors of the culture. We have seen the Church respond to issues such as abolition of slavery, human-trafficking, substance abuse, and juvenile justice reform, to name a few. In other words, the Church uses its prophetic witness in efforts to protect and redeem those who do not have a strong voice in our society.
While most churches excel at comfort and care, many churches struggle with how to adequately
