Christ Episcopal Church in Watertown has seen everything, from baptisms to weddings to funerals, but after centuries of services, it’s saying goodbye.
But worshippers at the church, which can be seen from anywhere on the Watertown Green and dates back to the 18th century, were told Sunday that the church is closing.
“It’s pretty much part of Watertown,” resident Judy Charbonneau said. “It’s been here for years.”
Watch the accompanying video too if you have time, but by all means read it all.
My guess is that the Diocese of Connecticut would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for demolition rather than sell the building to an Anglican congregation.
What happened to those who left, is there an Anglican parish in town?
wouldn’t it be great to have someone buy it and donate it to the anglicans?
See the story here with a very brief quote from Kevin Kallsen: http://www.rep-am.com/News/420032.txt
#2 – Those who left in Jan ’08 formed New Hope Anglican Church.
Nothing slow about TEC. The website and TEC Chart are already gone. Statmann
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Send the maintenance bill to the Diocese of New Hampshire.
Sad but inevitable result of an atrocious bishop combined with a persecuting presiding bishop with her scorched earth policy. I am sorry for the members of the diocese of Connecticut who deserved better than these goons.
This is the building where Kevin Kallsen and I used to shoot Anglican Report.
Sad, but predictable. This is the legacy of a bishop who invades churches and changes locks.
It is also the legacy of a bishop who holds to “loosey goosey” theology and disabuses the idea of TEC as a creedal church.
Hmm, in state where there’s no Dollar General yet? because the clients are too upscale. And this rich Diocese cannot support an historic church?
Ah, growth ECUSA/TEC/GCC/EO-PAC style.
aw……. c’mon, we’ve got Family Dollar, Ocean State Job Lot, Big Lots and Christmas Tree Shops!!!! It isn’t all Blue Back Square!!!! Oh well, maybe that’s just us rednecks east of the river.
I understand that ~30% of our parishes in the Dio of CT are in difficult financial straits. Support one, pretty soon you’ll have to support them all. And with BHO planning to cut back on the tax advantage of charitable deductions, plan on fewer contributions from Fairfield County.
My former parish, where I was confirmed, my 3 kids baptized, my friends buried, where I served as music director, worked with children’s ministry, served on vestry, and finished up as the senior warden on the day that 90% of us decided to leave it all behind to worship… well, wherever the Lord might provide us a reception.
My family invested 17 years of our lives, time, and treasure in that place before leaving; but it’s still just a place. I’m very sad it’s come to this, but not surprised. I am surprised that the congregation and priest-in-charge expect to continue on in some other space. There’s already another Episcopal church in town, and an ACNA parish (New Hope Anglican) as well. I hope they’re not going to bump us out of the middle school!
A church that has given orthodox Anglicans in North America both Kevin Kallsen of Anglican TV and Professor William Witt of TSM is of special interest to many of us, who don’t live anywhere near CT. As it happens, I once preached in that grand old building back during my seminary days at Yale/Berkeley Divinity School, when I was invited to speak there on Theological Education Sunday.
It’s sad to think of the proud history of all that God has done through his people in that fine building now coming to a sad end. But I’m reminded of a delightful saying I recently saw on a publicity prochure of an African-American Pentecostal church where I live in Virginia. The cover featured a magnificent steeple towering over a large church that looked much like Christ Church, and it read, (Such and such Church), [b] “It’s not about the steeple , it’s about the people.” [/b]
So true. May the courageous people of New Hope Anglican Church thrive and bear much fruit, and so help to bring fresh hope to many Anglicans throughout our country.
David Handy+
This outcome was so predictable. Really. Here is William Witt in January 2008 commenting on the eviction:
In other words…..a money pit.
They can thank Mrs Shori and Gene R for precipitating this sad denouement.
It’s interesting to read this story in light of something else I read this week in the context of some of the number crunching I’m doing on church growth and decline. Before posting the text I’m thinking about, a bit of background:
Lately I’ve been interested in trying to “guesstimate” how many dioceses and parishes in TEC are in “crisis” or on the verge of “crisis?”
— We’ve read of a few dioceses considering mergers.
— Some article I read recently suggested 70 dioceses of TEC are in “financial crisis”.
I’m wondering how do we define “crisis”? What are the thresholds of viability for parishes and dioceses in terms of ASA, pledge income, etc? Obviously it varies in different parts of the country (cost of living), whether the building is old (expensive to maintain) or new, whether the congregation is urban, suburban or rural, etc. So there are no hard and fast rules. But still, I think we could at least set some lower limits as to what typically constitutes a crisis for a parish or diocese.
It might be helpful for TEC to proactively identify which dioceses and parishes need help. SE Florida has just announced that they have created a special task force to do just that (in fact that was a big factor in prompting my recent research.)
Anyway, with that long introduction, here is something Ted Mollegan, noted revisionist and long-time TEC Executive Council member wrote Louie Crew 10 years ago. It is directly relevant to this news about Christ Church Watertown: [[url=http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/avgattend/0003.html]link here[/url]]
[blockquote]A. T. Mollegen, Jr.
Fri, 13 Aug 1999 18:06:38 -0400
* Next message: Louie Crew: “Changing the Structure of the Episcopal Church”
* Previous message: Kevin Martin: “Re: Average Sunday Attendance Data”
In Connecticut, we have a thumb rule that it takes a *minimum* of roughly about $120-130 thousand to run a “standard” congregation in our part of the US: full-time rector, with benefits, already-paid-for church building and parish hall with insurance and utilities (and deferred maintenance), a part-time secretary plus a very, very small amount of program (such as a paid organist for the 10:00 service). (“Deferred maintenance” is a euphemism for not taking care of your buildings until there’s a crisis, and then having a special fund-raising effort.)
Congregations with less than $130 thousand income are considered “stressed,” and about 60 percent of our 185 congregations are in this category. Our average Sunday attendance per congregation (for 1997) is 126, which indicates that the edge of the stress level in our region of the US is just a bit above an attendance of 126.
Canon Kevin Martin of the Dio of Texas tells me that the stress threshold in that diocese is lower, about $100-110 thousand, due to lower housing and energy costs. He says that they have noticed a tendency for larger congregations to grow, and smaller ones to shrink, due to the fact that larger ones have the kind of programs that attract people. The average Sunday attendance per congregation in his diocese is 195, substantially higher than the 126 in Connecticut, and nearly double the ECUSA diocesan median of 103 per congregation.
If the Episcopal Church is to double in size by the year 2020 (a goal to be proposed to the next General Convention, but it will not be a goal without a plan!) we are going to need roughly twice as many congregations as we have now. I say “roughly” because it would be more efficient to have the new congregations be larger on the average than the existing ones. According to Canon Martin, it is about as easy to start a large congregation as to start a small one. (This will obviously not be true in very sparsely settled areas, but most of the US population lives in 39 metropolitan areas.) Those planning to plant new congregations should consider these data very carefully.
Today, the diocese with the largest average size of congregation is Southwest Florida, whose mean attendance per congregation is 223. The median diocesan figure across the US is 103 per Sunday per congregation, and the lowest three dioceses are Northern Michigan with 32, South Dakota with 29, and Navajo Missions with 16.
For more on the effect of the size of the congregation see the Episcopal Network for Evangelism (ENE) website page on attendance at http://members.aol.com/ENE2020/attendance.htm The website also gives data comparing dioceses by average Sunday attendanxce in the whole diocese. The data show that based on average Sunday attendance, the largest diocese is Texas, with attendance of 29,910, followed closely by Virginia with 29,553. Then there is a gap of about 22% before the next three dioceses: Massachusetts 23,463, Connecticut 23,343, and Los Angeles 23,215. The only other diocese with attendance over 20,000 is New York, at 21,991.
There are 32 dioceses with Sunday attendance of less than 5,000 in the diocese, there are eight dioceses with attendance less than 2,000 (all with average congregational attendance of 65 or less), and three dioceses with attendance less than 1,000 (all with average congregational attendance of 33 or less).
What do these data mean from an evangelism and/or stewardship and/or Jubilee standpoint?
Ted Mollegen
Convener, ENE
Deputy from CT[/blockquote]
Some people were asking good questions 10 years ago. However the whole 20/20 program was allowed to die out – trumped by other priorities and agendas. Sad.
I wonder, will the young brides enjoy being married in the local public school auditorium or a General Steel Building? Christmas and Easter should be nifty too for the twice-a-yearers at the local elementary school cafeteria. Well, it’s not about the building of course. But…
By the way, the “70 dioceses in financial crisis” line I remember reading was in the Washington Times article by Julia Duin that Kendall posted yesterday:
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/23368/
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/17/new-anglican-church-poses-dilemma/
Here is the exact quote from Julia Duin’s article:
[blockquote]More than 70 of the Episcopal Church’s 110 dioceses are in serious financial straits[/blockquote]
I’d be interested to know where she got her data. I might e-mail her to ask.
Also of note, David Virtue has been doing a running series on financial cutbacks and crises in various parishes and dioceses. [url=http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10612]Here is the latest installment.[/url] It’s worth reading the series even if you’re not normally one of David Virtue’s fans.
As to the possibility of diocesan mergers, there has been talk of a merger between Fond de Lac and Eau Claire:
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/16654
And maybe Central Gulf Coast and Alabama:
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9967
I think there was at least one other diocese reportedly discussing a merge, but I don’t remember… Of course a lot of us wonder about Northern Michigan. Numerically it’s not viable, but geographically, merging it would be challenging.
[blockquote]I wonder, will the young brides enjoy being married in the local public school auditorium or a General Steel Building?[/blockquote]
A problem that was faced by the early Christians, no doubt. After all, why get married in the catacombs when there is a perfectly good Temple of Mithras right down the road?
Perhaps Bishop Smith can rent out the empty Christ Church as a wedding chapel? With a little ingenuity, he could probably double his customers by bringing in an Elvis impersonator to do the service.
It’s all very sad. There must be people at this church that is closing who are literally grief-stricken. We went through a church closing a few years ago, in which the few remaining people at the closing church “willingly” came to our church, a few miles up the road, here in Indiana. But there were literal tears, for months after the official closing.
It’s not about the building, of course. And yet, for many, it is about the building, too – – because they remember the baptism of their children, they remember their mother’s funeral, they remember – – and it hurts. I am sorry for the folks who are undergoing church closings. I empathize with those who understand that it’s about correct theology, it’s about faithfulness to God and the gospel, its about Christian liberty – – but let’s not forget that there are hurting people there, right now, because the memories and the building cannot be separated by mortals, sometimes.
Since we left Christ Church to form New Hope, we haven’t had any weddings, but we did have some baptisms and funerals. Gateway Bible Church graciously lets us use their space for those occasions (like funerals or Good Friday) that don’t conveniently fall on a Sunday morning when the school is available. We have good rapport with most of the local churches, and I expect most of them would likewise lend us their space in a pinch. There are certainly some fine wedding facilities around, where a religious marriage could be performed.
Sure, it’s not as “churchy” and not always convenient. But on the positive side, we’re not responsible for mowing, plowing, heating, cleaning, and all of the other maintenance that had been a drag on our volunteer labor, not to mention our parish wallet!
Then there’s mission. I recall multiple vestry discussions where we felt called to give generously to a Kenyan mission partner that needed to plant new churches, feed hungry children, and run a micro-loan progam… but our rose window needed re-pointing, or the organ was on the fritz, or the oil bill was higher than expected… It helped to put things into perspective for some of us.
Seriously, some of us had been contemplating extricating ourselves from that building even before we broke from TEC. Property can sometimes be a very mixed blessing.
[Side note: when I was married, my wife didn’t care for the aesthetics of the small modern church we attended. So she asked the rector to call the rector of the fancy gothic church in the next city, and arrange for our priest to perform our marriage at the other church! We both cringe when we look back on it. Dear Fr Craig never made an issue of it.]
Thanks, Karen, for your illuminating additional comments #19 and 21.
Just a couple comments of my own at this point.
First, in your #19 you note that ten years ago the national average (median) ASA was 103. The last figures I’ve seen put the median ASA today at just 72. That is a very serious drop, and it shows why TEC is in such deep, deep trouble in so many places. Attendance is going down, while the expenses keep going up (especially the cost of fulltime clergy compensation, not least regarding health insurance). That’s why more and more TEC congregations are getting squeezed out of the fulltime clergy market. And that has ominous implications for even the possibility of reversing TEC’s decline.
Second, another key stat to track is the average age of those attending church. Of course, that isn’t required on the annual Parochial Report form, so it’s hard to gather firm, reliable data on that. But lots of evidence suggests that the average age of TEC members is continuing to rise. And that’s also quite ominous.
The median age of Americans is around 35. But the median age of TEC members is roughly 60. There are an awful lot of gray-haired worshippers out there in the pews, and a dismal dearth of children in all too many Episcopal churches.
There’s a crucial threshold here too, that should get more attention than it does. At what tipping point does the declining ASA in TEC just go over the cliff and plummet? When the average age of attenders hits 62? 65? 70?
Obviously, at some point, the old folks start dieing off much faster than they’re being replaced by new members. And even before you reach that point of no return, there is the problem that young families with kids visit a church and can tell very quickly if the church is family-friendly or not, and whether they’ll fit in or not.
Bottom line: I think TEC is much closer to disaster than most people realize.
David Handy+
jkc1945: I sympathize; we experienced all of those emotions when we departed. On the other hand, only 3 of those people were “left behind” when New Hope was established. I don’t know who makes up the current congregation of about 30, but they haven’t been there much more than about a year. So they likely fall into two camps: (1) New converts who don’t have that personal history with the parish, or (2) Folks who left the parish over the years when it stopped catering to their whims and started catering to the gospel, but returned when they saw their opportunity to retake the institution. I don’t want to get mired in details, but it’s a historic district, and a lot of the neighbors are “established” families who thought of Christ Church as their “country club” and didn’t care much for the religious aspects of the church community as it became more evangelistic.
Your empathy is admirable in general, but I’m not sure it’s that big a deal in this specific case.
David+ your comments about age structure are very appropriate to the TEC growth/decline topic. I was just reading the [url=http://episcopalchurch.org/documents/BlueBook-HODCSC.pdf]State of the Church report[/url] carefully this morning after having only glanced at it when it was initially released. The report is honest about acknowledging the serious issue of aging congregations in TEC:
[blockquote]Among the most enlightening insights gained from that survey is the skewed age structure of The Episcopal
Church, illustrated in Figure 1 below: [you need to go to page 5 of the report to see the graph…]
To quote Dr. Kirk Hadaway: “The age structure of The Episcopal Church suggests an average of forty thousand deaths and twenty-one thousand births, or a natural decline of 19,000 members per year,†a population larger than most dioceses. The advanced—and still advancing—age of our membership, combined with [b]our[/b] low birth rate, means that we lose the equivalent of one diocese per year. In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s we were growing faster than the population, due to a high birth rate and the fact that many formerly unchurched persons were joining Episcopal congregations, usually with their families. By the late 1960s the birth rate had dropped greatly, and many of our youth began to drop away from The Episcopal Church as young adults—a large number never to return. This trend, plus the fact that the decline in the birth rate was greatest among the college-educated
population (which increasingly is our primary constituency), began the process through which the average age of adult Episcopal membership diverged from the larger population.[/blockquote]
However, in spite of the graph and the comments by Dr. Hadaway outlining the seriousness of the situation, the State of the Church report goes on incredibly to report the following:
[blockquote]As a final comment on the age structure of The Episcopal Church we note two facts. First, “youth and young adults†were articulated by General Convention as one of our top five priorities for the 2006-2009 triennium. The Executive Council, in developing the draft budget [b]for the 2009-2012 triennium, did not list “youth and young adults†as one of their mission priorities. [/b]Second, in the recent reorganization of The Episcopal Church Center staff in New York City, [b]the position of Staff Officer for Youth and Young Adult Ministries was eliminated[/b] and the duties of that officer re-distributed to other ministry areas.[/blockquote]
Pretty mind-blowing, isn’t it. Especially when you have dioceses like Upper South Carolina (in their just-released diocesan profile for their bishop search) citing youth ministry as their top diocesan priority.
See here:
http://lowly.blogspot.com/2009/06/profile-of-conservative-upper-south.html
[blockquote]People were asked to rank the five (5) Most Important Issues/Opportunities in this diocese:
Programs for children and youth 58.80 %
Programs that minister to multiple generations 48.72 %
Declining membership 48.13 %
Evangelism and outreach with sensitivity to our changing demographics 44.99 %
Recruiting, training, developing, ordaining and retaining clergy 43.46 %[/blockquote]
Also related to the question of age-structure is a Presbyterian research report about mainline church growth I found online the other night:
http://www.pcusa.org/research/reports/strenghs_and_growth_06.pdf
[/blockquote]An analysis of what churches are growing
Introduction
What kinds of mainline Protestant congregations grow in this era of shrinking mainline denominations? Cross-sectional research has suggested which kinds of U.S. congregations, in general, grow. These are congregations with heavy congregational involvement, [b]prioritization of children’s and youth ministries, younger worshipers,[/b] intentional outreach to potential new members, suburban location, less conflict, and contemporary worship style.1 Yet not many mainline Protestant congregations are growing. During the past five years total membership and average weekly worship
attendance have declined in at least eight mainline denominations. Since 2000, only a quarter of congregations in the nation’s third largest mainline denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), have experienced net numerical growth in membership. What more can time-series analysis tell us about which PC(USA) congregations have grown? [/blockquote]
See also here:
http://www.churchtoolbox.org/FACT.pdf
and here:
http://ecusa.anglican.org/documents/FACTs_on_Episcopal_Church_Growth.pdf
The fatal fallacy of the Episcopal Church is that it believes that young people will be attracted by their liberal ideology and sexual inclusiveness. But they are preaching a Sixties ideology to young people who have already been turned off of that as being phony and harmful. Or have been personally hurt by the harmful values being advanced.
I think if you go to a church that is growing, you will find that the young people and young families are much more ideologically and morally traditional than their parents and grandfathers. While their worship styles may be more exuberant and modern, with rock bands and praise hymns, their theology is not. As examples of “young people” churches I would give you Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City, Park Street Church in Boston, and Bel Air Presbyterian in L.A. Their congregations are prominently made up of young people, including many highly educated young professionals, but they are conservative Reformed theology churches.
http://www.redeemer.com/
http://www.parkstreet.org/
http://www.belairpres.org/
Dr. Witt,
With all due respect, I think your retort is rather flippant. Buildings do matter, and have since the Church left the Catacombs. Attachment to place is not idol worship — especially if religious and spiritual history has taken place there. The St. Peter’s Basilica? Church of the Holy Sepulchre? Who cares? Might as well meet in the parking lot at McDonalds. Place matters and only becomes an idol if it is about itself and not devotion to the Living God.
My point about brides and so forth was simply what my Grandmother would say, “If you don’t care for precious things, they’ll be taken away.â€
Albany+,
I’m not certain I understand your comment.
RE: “My point about brides and so forth was simply what my Grandmother would say, “If you don’t care for precious things, they’ll be taken away.â€
How would you have recommended William Witt further care for precious things, given that he was standing in the parking lot of the church as the Good Bishop’s minions changed the locks and padlocked the doors?
Sarah,
I regret confusing anyone.
We weren’t talking about Mr. Witt’s experience, but the status of church buildings and the loss felt to the community. Obviously, Bp. Smith behaved awfully as is his cowardly way. I have nothing but the highest honor for all those who have suffered through the CT persecutions.
Albany+, it appears that I misunderstood the meaning of your comment #20 — I mistook it for a sneering and smug and gleeful rejoinder to the idea of Christians getting kicked out of their building by an unbeliever. This did not seem to fit your past comments . . . so I’m glad I tried to understand in a later comment.
I see that I was mistaken and that you were merely saying that yes, buildings are important. I’ve often made the same point, too and I do think that buildings are important.
I do wonder if William Witt may have misinterpreted your “comment tone” in that earlier comment, and thus the comment as well, which is why he may have responded with the tone that he did. But I may be misreading him.
Anyway, I deeply respect William Witt and his fellow parishioners for the nastiness that they went through, as you do.
[blockquote]With all due respect, I think your retort is rather flippant. Buildings do matter, and have since the Church left the Catacombs.[/blockquote]
Of course, buildings matter. And Sarah is right. I have reason to care about the particular buildings of the CT6. I was rather alone in urging the CT6 lawyer to file (not civil) but criminal charges against Drew Smith for trespassing, assault, and computer crime–which is, a felony, by the way.
However, I would hope that newly marrieds would realize that there are some things more important than a picture perfect wedding ceremony. I would hope they would not be willing to sell their souls for a bit of beautiful Gothic masonry.