St. John’s, the fourth oldest Episcopal Church in the state, was established in 1853. For most of its history, the church thrived….
[Henry] Delamere said St. John’s predicament is a product of several factors, including a split four years ago in the wake of a church-wide split.
In addition, costs of maintaining the facility continue to increase.
“There’s a combination of other factors,” [Jan] Caselli said. “Megachurches are growing in leaps and bounds, and we have an aging congregation that’s not drawing in young families.”
Sad, but nearly according to script while leaving so many things unsaid about what mysteriously happened to them.
Sounds like a group of decent folks who thought “as long as it’s not in my church/club” things would be OK. No gospel other than niceness, so being good evangelizers was “just not our style”. Jesus expects fruit from His vinyard and He makes it clear in the Gospels what at last happens to unfruitful branches, vines and trees.
There is a common excuse that attendance is based on entertainment. However, boring services will result in poor attendance. I am talking about what Terry Fullam called Sunday funerals. This is a sad snapshot of the state of much of TEC.
Some years ago around half the then congregation changed to an overseas Anglican jurisdiction, and are now Trinity Anglican Church http://trinityacna.org/ leaving a remnant group to carry on.
I just don’t see the need for a service to be entertaining. In my former parish, I used to regularly attend the 8:00 service in the gorgeous Gothic chapel. It was a spoken Communion without sermon or music. Thirty minutes long. I suppose some would call it boring, but I got scripture and the Sacrament and it worked just fine for me. What better way to start the day/week? As an RC friend of a friend once said, “I’ve often been disappointed with the sermon, but never with the Communion.” I say this as one who is now in the choir in a church with outstanding preaching.
Yup – attendance went down from about 125 to 50 in 10 years.
http://pr.dfms.org/study/exports/ParishRPT_20101021_104013.pdf
According to the Trinity link above, they are alternating Rite II and Rite I. Commendable. I hope there are more ACNA folks doing the same.
Katherine,
My ACNA parish used to hold a traditional service at 9:00 using Rite I and a contmporary service at 11:00 using Rite II. For a year and a half, due to having to share our building with another church, we’ve been compelled to hold a single “blended” service using the Anglican Prayer Book developed by the late Dr. Peter Toon for AMIA. We now have sole possession of our building and around Lent we will be returning to the two-service format with the traditional service using either Rite I or the 1928 BCP. I imagine the contemporary/blended service will use Rite II, but that’s not been discussed yet as far as I know.
We’ve never been good evangelizers,†said Caselli of her fellow congregants and those at other traditional churches. “It’s just not our style.†…
Well, even if evangelism was their ‘style’, just what would they say is the ‘good news’ anyway? How typical is this parish and its situation in present day TEC? By the amount of church closings going on within TEC I think we all know the answer.
St. John has seating for 225 but an ASA of 50. A church with over 75 percent of its seats empty is depressing. And the absence of children would drive me away. THAT is really depressing. And the split in 2006 sure did not help in Plate & Pledge. Statmann
The membership and ASA has been stuck with the same numbers, 75 and 52 respectively, for the past three years. When this happens, the actual numbers are almost invariably lower.