They do gather to learn how to address varying learning styles of students, to utilize church school curriculum, to recruit teachers, to be creative on limited budgets.
They also gather to learn how to work well with pastors. That is probably one reason that Pastor Eileen Lindner was booked as keynote for this year’s conference. They also gather to learn how they can influence the larger church, a topic that Presbytery Executive Lindner could address. Also again, they advocate for children’s issues. Lindner wrote the book on that.
She also writes the yearbook on demographic trends in U.S. and Canadian churches. At this year’s conference, she presented what Presbyterians Today editor Eva Stimson called “enough statistics to stuff a conference tote bag.”
In the process Lindner shredded conventional wisdom on the shrinkage of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Yes, we’ve been losing about 40,000 members per year since the early 1960s. Conventional wisdom, as shaped by our Protestant work ethic, suggests that we’re shrinking because we deserve to be. That shrinkage surely is somebody’s fault, and of course, the fault is somebody else’s. The villains of choice are denominational leaders. Right behind them are “those liberals” or “those conservatives.” Others catch blame, too: seminaries, the slow pastoral search process, cultural influences. The list goes on.
None of that passes muster with Eileen Lindner. As a social scientist, she collects data like my grandchildren collect Webkinz. And she treats that data with the same intense care they give their little stuffed animals.
Those stats tell a different story. In a typical year of 40,000 net loss in members, 38,000+ of those losses “can be accounted for by age-cohort demographics of morbidity and mortality,” she reports. That is to say, when calculating the births, deaths, baptisms, confirmations, transfers, confessions and reaffirmations of faith, the net effect is that 95% of the dropouts no longer come to church because “they’re too dead to show up.”
Two compounding realities fuel the pattern of shrinkage.
First, “the churches that were the big winners in the baby boom have become the big losers now,” she says. Birth patterns ebbed as income and educational levels grew (higher educated people tend to be more career-oriented, so they tend to bear fewer children.) So as builders and boomers filling 1950s mainline churches have aged and died, they haven’t reproduced enough to fill their empty pews.
Second, a small number of people do vote with their feet. Five per cent of the absentees actually have chosen to go elsewhere — and that’s 2,000 folks we don’t want to lose!
Why have they gone?
The primary reason for such transfers is social location (as explained in the 1929 book by H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism). Those who shower after work usually go to different churches than those who shower before work.
A second reason folks give for choosing for or against a church are the age and cohort groups of those there. Young adults with kids look for other young adults with kids.
A third reason? The environment: either in the area – the plant closed, the corporate offices moved out of town – or the church’s own space: inadequate parking, steep steps, busy highway.
The last and very least reason why folks choose for or against a church: the content of what goes on there. The pastor’s sermons are no good. The service is too dull. The music is too boring or too trite. The church is too conservative. The church is too liberal.
Why would pastor, executive presbyter, children’s advocate, and social scientist Eileen Lindner blurt such statistical data at a conference such as this? Perhaps it’s because church educators educate. They try to tell the truth, correct misunderstandings, set the record straight. Will they find the rest of us to be attentive listeners? Or will we just hold onto our collective despondency over membership loss and to the conventional wisdom that’s quick to blame — indeed, to blame someone else for it?
— JHH
