Before I get into that, lets look at a few quotes from the [parish] report, which acknowledges “a steady decline in attendance over the past 18 months” and “Overall, our participation numbers in children’s choirs has dropped dramatically since 2008, although a slight recovery appears to be underway.” I have to wonder if any of the report readers recognize the correlation between program and attendance/involvement. I won’t point out those correlations — I’ll just let you view them and hopefully comment.
Let me say, as an aside, that this parish is not unique at all within TEC. All over the US, Episcopal parishes are trying to figure out what on earth is going wrong. Parishes are declining in droves — and many of them are in death spirals. As I shared with someone recently [edited slightly]:
“I personally believe that TEC will continue to decline rapidly, and most of the “hinterland” parishes will die. That is certainly what is happening within my diocese. We’ll end up with some parishes in Greenville, Columbia, Aiken, one in Rock Hill [which is dying] and a couple in Spartanburg — and that will be it. Our “natural size” now in our diocese is around 12 functional/healthy parishes, with the rest on life support until the older generations die out. And I think that’s the level that dioceses of that size will eventually decline to over the next 10-20 years.”
A short case-study of what is going on all around TEC. Ideologically rigid leaders, living on a diet of ignorance, heresy, and secularism, are gradually leading parish after parish into oblivion. That so many would collude with this shows that many parishes long ago put something in the place of the Gospel.
Hursley, in a top down organization, as is TEC, collusion is not necessary. Fear in the lower ranks and pressure from above complete the picture. When bishops stopped being pastors to their priests and started being CEOs of diocesan corporations – which are beholdened somehow to a national holding company – the ability to buck the tide by those on the bottom rung became nil.
It may be that doctrinal discord has some impact on these situations (which seem to be very popular fare for bloggers), but I strongly suspect there’s much more to it. Someone probably has looked at a number of these declining parish stories in depth and factored in the general conditions in the locality, the parallel figures for other Protestant churches in the community, economic and demographic conditions (e.g., has there been a population decline, or an influx of new residents whose religious orientations are different?), the history of the parish (a parish founded in the 18th, 19th, or early 20th century may have made sense at the time, but now is not well located to attract new parishioners). Where are the former parishioners going? Are they dying out, are they moving to one-off mega-churches, are they converting to Catholicism, Islam, or whatever? Only when these filters are applied do these stories have much to tell us. I would think that one would have to have a clear indication that other denominations in the area are thriving while only the Episcopal parish is in decline to begin to suspect that this is an affliction peculiar to our presently fractious tribe.