Right now, it’s at 8.3 percent — with 2010 just around the bend.
But Jerry Cannon, pastor of C. N. Jenkins Memorial Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, N.C., and also a specialist in the PC(USA)’s Office of African American Congregational Support, isn’t discouraged.
Cannon told the Discipleship Committee of the General Assembly Mission Council on Sept. 24 that he celebrates the progress that has been made — the 8.3 percent is higher than it used to be. Cannon is working to help the PC(USA) follow up on a recommendation from the General Assembly that the denomination implement a strategy for African American church growth.
“I don’t want to participate in the decline any more,” Cannon told the committee. “I come with the expectation that the church is going to grow.”
Cannon suggested that “mission is the salt of the church” and discipleship is the flavor. And real growth “is not numerical growth, it is changing lives,” Cannon said.
Cannon didn’t speak to the committee about specifics, more about passion and the necessity of making this kind of change happen.
He wants to encourage congregations seeking pastors to consider calling women, for example. “We’ve got to do some transformation on the mind, heart, and spirit,” Cannon told the committee. “We want it to be a plum” to hire a female pastor, “because unfortunately the tables have been turned the other way for so long.”
Philip Lotspeich, coordinator of church growth and ministry support for the PC(USA), also spoke to the committee, explaining some of what he does when he meets with Presbyterians to talk about evangelism.
Lotspeich said he measures church growth by looking at adult baptisms and reaffirmations of faith. If churches grow just through transfers of membership, “we really haven’t done much,” he said. “It’s great if a Methodist transfers in … but we’re still reshuffling the kingdom of God.”
Real growth involves faith sharing, and faith sharing grows from a deepening of discipleship, Lotspeich said.
“My job is utterly dependent on our members becoming evangelists,” he said.
“If they can’t articulate their faith, if they don’t know their faith, if they haven’t experienced Jesus Christ in a transforming way, they can’t evangelize,” Lotspeich said.
In discussing that with people, the first question he asks is: “Who is Jesus?”
And it’s surprising, he said, how difficult many people in churches find that question to answer. Often “they just kind of look at me with some kind of glassy stare” or say “Jesus is my Lord and Savior.”
But what do those words mean to folks outside the church, Lotspeich asked. “Lord of what? Saved from what?”
Those folks might ask, “Why should I listen to you if you can’t tell me how Jesus has changed you? Why should I listen?”
Joan Gray, a committee member and former General Assembly moderator, said she has seen that when churches grow, “the power comes from spiritual sources.”
When real growth happens, “it has to do with the daily walk with God,” with the ways in which people live out their faith in the world, Gray said. That experience changes people. “Then you bring that to church, and it explodes,” she said. “It becomes an adventure. It becomes magnetic. And things change.”
