He’s been called the diocesan hit man. As a joke, of course. Not a great joke. People with the skills of Simon Bell have become necessary in Canada’s major Christian churches.
He determines which congregations can survive, and why, and which ones have slid so far into the abyss of decline that they need to be put out of their misery. His title is congregational development consultant with the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, the largest Anglican jurisdiction in Canada. Churches call him in when they realize they’re in trouble.
He acquired the hit-man sobriquet after his involvement in the protracted – it’s still going on – and unpopular closing of one of Toronto’s most historic and architecturally significant Anglican churches, St. Stephen-in-the-Field at College Street and Bellevue Avenue.
This is what is going on as Canada completes its emergence from Christendom, the cultural hegemony of Christianity that had defined the country since the onset of European settlement.
For many years it has been argued that Conservative churches are growing and liberal churches are declining. The congregational consultant for diocese of Toronto seems to want to argue just the opposite that clergy who are not getting on the post-modern bandwagon and are too definite in their beliefs will not connect with people on a journey.
Both of these analyses are superficial. There are growing conservative churches and declining conservative churches and their are growing liberal churches and declining liberal churches. It is true that the culture no longer favors nominal church membership and that few people any longer go to church for the sake of appearances. It is also true that the intellectual and leadership elites are being systematically trained to have contempt for religion and that this is massively influential for college educated young adults.
Many of the things that affect congregational growth are beyond the control of an individual congregation. In some ways a congregation is a retail operation and it is very difficult to overcome bad location. Changing demographics in urban and rural areas are making some locations which used to be rather good, now rather difficult. Often the only thing a growing church has to do is be the least worst choice around. This is true especially if the location is good such as in an affluent suburb with an influx of young families.
More and more the church moves into a missionary context in the old Christian home lands. Sacrifice is required to sustain a missionary movement and sacrifice comes from a consciousness of undeserved blessing and grace. It is unlikely that the kinder, vaguer religion of mental hygiene and moral improvement will be able to sustain such sacrifice over the long haul no matter how hip to the post-modern journey.
Can you imagine this consultant explaining his job to Saints Peter and Paul? Patrick and Benedict? John Wesley?
Something similar has been going on politically for much of the last 40 years in Canada, and it took Canada from being one of the world’s important military powers — Canada was assigned one of the five D-day beaches and had a 450 ship Navy — to near-irrelevance. Nothing against the Princess Pats, the RCR, and the Vignt-Deux, they do what they can, and do it very well.
Where Canada once found guidance and importance within the Empire (later Commonwealth, of which the Anglican Communion is one of the last vestiges), it came to seek its identity in the trans-nationalism and post-nationalism represented by the UN.
We shouldn’t be surprised, since in Canada the post-modern push has been very intentional, and since 1968 has often had the assistance of an activist government. The leader of Canada’s Long March into post-modernism and trans-nationalism, Pierre Trudeau, was also (earlier) a leader of the ‘revolution tranquile’ in Quebec, the main purpose of which was to eliminate the influence of the Church in people’s lives and public affairs.
He and his allies succeeded admirably on many fronts. It’s profoundly unfortunate, however, that their goals were so distorted. Heideggerian, even.
Bart- not in contradiction, but simply to point out some of the issues that rose from what you’ve correctly cited, when Canada mobilized for two world wars and Korea, Canada was taking up a disproportionate share of Imperial/Commonwealth burdens, both in terms of material contributions and blood shed in the field. Canada was given its ETO negotiating position precisely because of British propensities in prior cases to rely on Canadian infantry to avoid British casualties. Older Canadians are still bitter about that today, and it probably accounts for the low esteem that younger Canadians place in the vestiges of Commonwealth as well. How this relates directly to the Anglican Church situation is hard to tell, but with the AoC being a crown appointee, as well as several other worthless figureheads in Ottowa, someone could easily place all such non essential vestiges into the same pot and toss the contents into the cultural gutter.
In response to +Leander’s #1, I’d note from a very local and transitory viewpoint in the diocese of Huron that clerical deployments seem to be more problematic in Canada than they are in the US, if such a situation could be possible. Diocesan bishops seem intent on staffing parishes with clerical functionaries and timeservers who are neither “hot nor cold”, but rather Laodicean. When you can go down the street to some non denominational fundamentalist church and get some of the real stuff, why stay Anglican? Canadians under 45 seem more prone to church hopping than Americans, if that is possible. My impression seems to stem from the effects of how the United Church, Anglican Church, and both varieties of Presbyterians have imploded over the past decades.
The elephant in the room ignored by the article and Mr. Bell is that conservative, fundamentalist non-denominal churches are attracting people. Mr. Bell states, [b]”The clergy who say you have to believe this and that, otherwise you don’t belong, are the clergy who are saying simply, ‘Don’t come here.'”[/b] Really, a remarkable statement, one that runs absolutely counter to Christianity. Come to our church and enjoy our insipid gruel! Truly, with leaders like Mr. Bell, the ACoC is doomed.
Little Trinity Church plows its own furrow in Toronto and still seems to be doing OK. The cathedral and other places bill themselves as ‘gay-friendly’.
how’s the Vineyard Airport church doing these days?
Mr Bell thinks of religion as a commodity. His advice reduces to a tried and true business formula: find a market niche and give the consumer what he wants. But true religion is not a commodity, and the man who aches under the burden of his sinful and pointless life is not a consumer. New birth is not subject to the Law of supply and demand.
If the Christian faith is receding from a people, perhaps we should look elsewhere for the cause. Perhaps we should look not to market forces, but to the much more frightening concept of judgment. The self-satisfied comfortable powerful West should well ponder this idea. History might not end with us after all. Its byways are after all littered with the forgotten remains of self-satisfied comfortable nations who also thought themselves the end of History. But Providence is not so easily swayed.
carl
What a pity – we live in a culture where the hatchet-men are valued and promoted to top positions. You see the result of the mayhem they have created, long after they have moved on to other positions and hatchet-opportunities. It is of course the easy way. Much easier to destroy than to build up.
Consider those who built these churches, hard won through sacrifice, faith and selflessness. Those who bought the land, formed congregations, employed architects, raised funds, gave funds, built churches, schools, halls and endowed them with furniture, windows, funds.
All the evidence is that people are waiting to be invited into church, seeking answers, support, community and faith. How do we measure up to those who went before? How do we reach out?
Leander Harding says:
[blockquote]In some ways a congregation is a retail operation and it is very difficult to overcome bad location.[/blockquote]
I very much agree. Working in churches, and traveling around the country, I have noticed that the ones who learned the retailing lessons from the latter part of the 20th Century are succeeding.
1) Location 2) Facilities and I think most importantly 3) Children must be nurtured.
McDonald’s doesn’t just spend millions marketing to children, they give them a toy and build them a nice playground out front. They build the playgrounds because they know that the playgrounds bring in the children who in turn bring in the parents, and they know that the child that they develop a relationship with today has sixty years or more of potential relationship with that “new convert” if you will.
If the kids are nagging the parents to bring them to church, chances are that the church is growing.
Here is the end of the article to which #6 refers:
[blockquote]And there’s cute little St. Matthias, Bellwoods, on the west edge of downtown, 134 years old and looking like a turn-of-the-century Swiss ski lodge. It shouldn’t continue to exist but does – because of the grit and imagination of its congregation and rector.
They march together in the annual gay-pride festival, hand out leaflets inviting visitors to a nearby huge public park, and hold an annual blessing-of-the-animals service.
“I will bless anything presented to me at the liturgy,” says Rev. Jeffry Kennedy.
Annual church expenditure: $165,000. Annual revenue: $165,000. St. Matthias hangs in.[/blockquote]
Says it all, doesn’t it? And soon the good Rev. will get to bless all things the Bible calls sin, including same-sex couples who present themselves to be married, which will undoubtedly be granted. After all, gotta pay the bills somehow, even if it means making the Father’s house a house of merchandise. But God will not be mocked.
The website for St Stephen in the Fields is still up, and they seem to have other ideas about closing.
I think my greatest concern (outside of doctrinal issues) would be the creation of multiple “designer” parishes. That is a particularly North American way of doing things that has specific consequences.
Randall
Tom #4
[blockquote] Canada was taking up a disproportionate share of Imperial/Commonwealth burdens, both in terms of material contributions and blood shed in the field. Canada was given its ETO negotiating position precisely because of British propensities in prior cases to rely on Canadian infantry to avoid British casualties. [/blockquote]
— and the Australians and the New Zealanders (and for all I know other Commonwealth countries). NZ had the highest causality rate as a% of population of any allied country in the first world war — with the result that we did not trust England with command of our troops in the second. The Empire was not always benign!
However, it has not stopped the Anglican church becoming the strongest protestant church in NZ — so resentment of the Empire cannot be a complete explanation of the situation.
Margaret- I wasn’t going to go into the details of ANZAC imperial relations and socio political developments when the subject was Canada in the first instance. I was simply citing how Canada had specific historical events which illuminate the present. Indeed, the 2nd NZ served in Africa and Italy under its own generals, but when the Pacific theatre opened, NZ and Aus pulled troops back to home for good reason, much to Churchill’s chagrin. I am familar enough with Australian history to sense a birth of Australian republicanism in those wartime events, but never was able to tie it to any events concerning the Australian or NZ churches. Where the differences come in start in WWII, but extend to today wrt Canada. Australia and NZ today do not seem as generally cynical about Mother England as Canadians, who largely wish nothing to do with the mother country. I’ve heard family rants in Ontario about the cost of parking the Queen’s plane at the airport, no less. Perhaps closer proximity makes for more cynicism, or proximity to the US perhaps, but when asked for factual reasons for this assessment of Canadian-British relations in all matters, the older generation inevitably starts with the war dead a half century ago, and then move on from there to how 10 Downing Street and Ottawa merely collaborate in packing the Senate with political cronies of the ruling party. It leads finally to the Canadian wail that they would rather mess matters up themselves than have some Englishman do it for them. Which they usually admit as what they are doing, messing up themselves, in the Anglican Church or out.
Gordian – no. 6 – How would you make sure that your parish is not “gay-friendly”, both in evangelism and in pastoral practice?
The Toronto situation is actually quite interesting. The city’s always had a strong Anglican presence including two different-flavoured theological colleges across the street from one another at U of T, plus the ACofC national offices nearby plus half a dozen downtown parishes all within walking distance of one another.
Most of the downtown parishes (some conservative, most of them liberal/progressive), are at least viable these days and many are in fact growing thanks to property development windfalls invested in upgraded facilities and in ministry aimed at the growing downtown population.
Meanwhile, the downtown parishes are surrounded by numerous neighbourhood parishes of various stripes, most of them struggling heroically to remain afloat. These range from St. Matthias, Bellwoods (mentioned in the article, whose priest will cheerfully bless anything) to the Church of St. Chad (not mentioned in the article, but affiliated with Essentials and led by a priest who will NOT bless anything).
Most of the surrounding Toronto neighbourhood parishes, though, are neither hot nor cold, neither high nor low, and tend to be conservative by temperament but not conviction. They’re generally saddled with lovely but unimproved too-large white elephant buildings that have insufficient parking, poor accessibility, and inefficient heating systems. Those without the inspiration, vision, energy, and imagination to renew themselves will wither away on their own quite naturally in time when their reserve funds run out or there just aren’t enough able-bodied people to carry on.
I was involved in one of those white elephant Toronto parishes for a while. In due course, the bishop sent in one of his hit men (not the one mentioned in this particular article). There were facilitated meetings and opportunities galore to catch and articulate a vision for the congregation, any vision – church of the apostate clowns, church of the orthodox reasserters, whatever – but discernment inclined mostly towards nostalgia of the broad church strawberry social variety. In the end the parish was disestablished, the building was deconsecrated, and the property was sold. I moved to one of the more viable downtown parishes where I actually found myself much happier. In time I actually took comfort in knowing that money from the sale of my former parish church has been applied, in part, towards expanding and upgrading parish churches in growing suburbs. This actually strikes me as good churchmanship.
I was quite confused by this article when I read it at last (we no longer take the Globe) because of this description,
[blockquote] The Church of the Redeemer at the corner of Avenue Road and Bloor Street – sitting on one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in Toronto – bit by bit is leaving Anglican liturgy behind to become a community where priest and congregation explore the meaning of faith and spirituality together. [/blockquote]
Funny how I have been attending Redeemer for over 25 years and never noticed we were leaving Anglican liturgy behind…. I still don’t understand what that means! A couple of years ago I was honoured to be asked to preach on our patronal festival, the Reign of Christ, and was able to express some of what I thought was important about our transformation from a dying parish to a resurrection community, and I wish the person who wrote the article had taken the time to read that sermon on the web! We are growing because we are engaged in ministry to the poor and the marginalised at the same time that we have an active Adult Christian Education programme, lively liturgy on Sundays, and sound preaching. I’m not sure what the author of this article thinks we’re doing, though!