After just two years and four months, Columbia Hope Episcopal Church at 4603 John Garry Drive is closing because of lack of attendance. The church’s last worship service will be tomorrow. The Rev. Dan Smith, executive officer of the diocese, said about 40 to 50 people on average were coming to Sunday worship.
“To start a new church there has to be a significant growth pattern over a period of time” to keep it running, Smith said.
“Firstly, I’m deeply saddened by this,” he said. “I thought Columbia was a great location for another Episcopal church. ”¦ This one just never gained traction.”
It doesn’t appear their core value was reaching the lost. They simply were mirroring in the pervasive theology of TEC progressivism. There’s no wonder it didn’t succeed.
Judging by what I know about the Episcopal Church’s scant presence in Missouri, it’s a wonder that it even exists there, aside from its presence in St Louis.
#2 Much of the credit for “what” presence TEC had in Missouri to the First Missionary Bishop of PECUSA, Bp. Jackson Kemper. He was very much a believer in the Gospel – an evangelical who supported the Oxford movement. The two dioceses in MO have been headed down for quite some time. The Diocese of MO since Bp. Jones. The Diocese of W. MO since 1990. Both Dioceses are fully invested in the current “rot”, and rotten trees don’t bear good fruit. May God forgive us and change our hearts within us!
Wow, our church-plant started at roughly the same time, and while we have continually grown, we are averaging 35 per Sunday and I’m not paid full-time. What is their standard for success?
http://www.vegasanglican.org
The theme song for the Diocese of Missouri should be, “If you can’t make it here, you can’t make it anywhere.”
Columbia is a rapidly growing university town that should appeal to the liberal denomination. There is one downtown parish that is rapidly declining, dropping by about 25% in 5 years, much more than could be accounted for by the few that went to the startup. The startup, the only one in the diocese of Missouri in years, was on the up and coming south side. It had plenty of seed money. What could go wrong?
It is time for the diocese of Missouri to face a cruel reality…it is toast.
I went to school full-time at the U of M in the late 80’s. Columbia’s a good-sized town but it’s not that big. Calvary was my church of choice then and I don’t remember ever seeing it packed to the rafters.
HowardRGiles+,
Good to hear about your church plant. One does have to wonder about the commitment and staying power of the TEC Missourians; but on the other hand, it is refreshing to hear about your small but faithful and thriving church in Nevada.
I note you were given episcopal oversight by +Schofield, so good for the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin which is prepared to sponsor mission work in this way. I am sure the Lord will bless all of you as you strive to be faithful to him.
The [url=http://transfigurations.blogspot.com/2011/06/mapping-2010-us-census.html ]Transfiguration blog gives a link[/url] to an awesome web resource from the NYT that one can compare 2000 population to 2010 population. If the elves and Kendall+ find this, they might be playing with it for days.
I used it to look at the data for the south side of Columbia MO. The area grew at 38% rate. That makes the church plant effort by the diocese even more pathetic. (It sort of reminds me of Katherine Jefferts Schori’s shrinking of the diocese of Nevada in a time when the general population exploded.) Brian McLaren’s lectures attempting make the TEO hip and cool and appealing to people under 50 doesn’t seem to working. Heresy, blue jeans and wire rimmed glasses doesn’t grow a church.
HowardRGiles+, you’re doing just fine, and I’m sure that you and Erin will continue building up Christ’s Church in Henderson.