In developed countries, including the U.S., England and the rest of Europe, membership and average attendance also are down. Fewer than one million attend church regularly in England, where the mother church is officially 28-million strong. “They just go to have the baby christened and never come back,” says Mr. Nicolosi.
In the U.S., the ranks of the Episcopal Church have thinned by 55 percent, dropping from a peak of 3.5 million in 1964 to 2.2 million in 2007.
Still, declining church attendance is not universal. Attendance at the Pentecostal, Baptist and Christian Missionary Alliance churches is growing. “Evangelicals don’t just study the Bible, they study the culture and then connect the two,” says Mr. Nicolosi.
Someone needs to check his arithmetic.
Mr Nicolosi was one of the candidates for Bishop of Pittsburgh in 1995 when +Bob Duncan was elected. After losing the election he moved to a parish in the Diocese of San Diego and was one of the pioneers of open baptism and open communion. He now is a congregational developer for Michael Ingham in the Diocese of New Westminister BC. Not exactly a good trajectory and certainly not one that engenders a lot of confidence in re-thinking how we do church.
This is hilarious or delusional. No, it’s both and tragically sad at the same time, too.
[blockquote]We talk about international issues over which we have little or no control or we talk about sexuality. We have allowed this to happen.[/blockquote]
Like Michael Ingham, his boss, will allow the conversation to be swayed?
[blockquote]Can the Anglican Church of Canada change its approach without compromising its values to attract new members?[/blockquote]
Will his boss, Ingham, allow “compromise” of his compromising of the Gospel? Again, they will not be swerved from the present course.
I found it interesting that he stated that the average age in the ACoC is in the [i]upper[/i] 60’s. Wow.
To clarify:
I know that the article makes mention of congregational development work in the Diocese of New Westminster (with Ingham), but Gary Nicolosi is the Congregational Development Officer of the Diocese of British Columbia, across Georgia Straight. The Diocese of BC includes Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, and is distinct from the Diocese of New Westminster. Gary is in Victoria, under the direction of +Jim Cowan.
Declining membership can be tied to the abandonment of basic Christian theological positions. Churches, on average, who hold to or proclaim boldly, a traditional Christian theology grows.
Follow-up from #2. When the history of the conservative movement in the Episcopal Church is written, the elections in Pittsburgh in 1995 and in South Carolina in 1989 will be seen as having had a pivotal role in subsequent developments. If my memory serves me correctly, John Rodgers was a supporter of Gary Nicolosi in the early stages of the election in Pittsburgh.
I wonder if this is the same man who was an undergraduate at Georgetown University in the early 70s (when I was) and who left the Catholic Church for ECUSA at that time, and who had a position at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Nativity in Bethlehem, PA, in the early 90s.
#6 – Hi Steve
Your memory is correct viz John Rodgers and the Pittsburgh election in 1995 however my memory is lacking concerning the pivotal role of the South Carolina election in 1989. Please explain.
#7
Same Man
We don’t “do” church, we are the church.
Well, perhaps we might change the focus of discussion here. Leaving aside the troubling trajectory and views of Gary Nicolosi, I think there’s merit in the idea of rethinking how we do church, when what we’ve been doing clearly isn’t working in most cases. You know the old AA definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting a different result.
My peeve with the Gary Nicolosi types is that so often the change they advocate seems to be merely to surrender to the culture, You know, the old [i]”If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”[/i] approach that the so-called “mainline” denominations have been following since the 1960s. But the phenomenal success of some new approaches to ministry, whether you think of things like the Alpha Course or innovative churches like Saddleback or ministry training programs like Stephen Ministry or the explosive growth of in-depth Bible study-based discipleship programs like DISCIPLE and Kerygma, suggests that the future is far from bleak for those congregations and parish leaders willing to try some new models of ministry.
But that naturally doesn’t mean buying into every new approach uncritically. The so-called “Emerging Church” movement (associated with Brian McClaren and much worse figures) illustrates the dangers of syncretism all too well.
Anyone up for a discussion of that??
David Handy+