Lutheran Church of Australia Queensland District Department of Ministry and Mission. The Changing Church

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1 Lutheran Church of Australia Queensland District Department of Ministry and Mission Background Membership in the Lutheran Church of Australia Queensland District (LCAQD) is declining. Many of our congregations are declining in numbers to the point where they are no longer able to support a full-time pastor and permanent premises. At the same time, a smaller number of congregations in the LCAQD and a proportion of congregations in other denominations are growing. Why? The state of the LCAQD in Queensland shares many traits with other established mainline Christian churches in the western developed world. Whilst we have much to learn from the rapidly growing church in the developing world, our research has concentrated on trying to understand ourselves in our immediate context. Nothing in this report is revolutionary it is more in the nature of a critical analysis and thoughtful response to what, in the end, we found to be a relatively consistent view of modern western church from the best contemporary commentators. While our report may lead to resolutions at District synod, and new district policies or programmes, the work of the LCAQD grows through action by members in congregations throughout the state. It is our hope that this report is of assistance to all congregations in formulating their mission plans for the future of the LCAQD. Our work should not be driven by an inward looking desire to preserve our particular religious institution, rather our work is driven by the great commission and the great commandment to bring Christ s message of salvation and to bring His love to all the world. However, we also believe that the continued viability of the LCAQD is one powerful way in which this message of love and salvation can be spread throughout our communities. A Changing Religious World In this section we look at major global societal changes and how these affect the church through the developed world. God s Church has never been a static institution, since its inception the Church s growth and mission has ebbed and flowed with political and societal changes. Loren Mead describes the Church s history as having two paradigms, the Apostolic and the Christendom. The early Apostolic Church (up to 300AD) was concerned with building strong congregations that nurtured their people to reach out to hostile environments. Against great odds they witnessed the good news of the biblical story and of Jesus the Messiah. Mead reminds us of the diversity in those congregations as they were shaped by local conditions and needs. Later for political and colonial reasons the Church and the State became one around 300AD. This is what Mead calls the Christendom paradigm where mission and outreach not 1

2 only added to the Church but also to the Empire if you weren t a Christian then you were a pagan. Mission and outreach were relegated to the responsibility of the professionals. A religious system was set up with the role of Cleric/Pastor as a strong, central and unquestioned leader. Mead suggests that this Christendom model existed until the 1930 s when a change of consciousness arose. The phrase Ministry of the Laity came into use and a slow change which has yet to have its full impact upon the Church came to light. The Christendom paradigm is now in the process of breaking down, but we have not found an adequate model to take its place. It is not just a case of reverting to the apostolic model as we do not live in a hostile environment now but possibly a neutral and apathetic one. The news is not all bad as American researcher Anthony Healy claims that most of the world today is as religious as it ever was. He has found that many people still hold the same beliefs and values as their predecessors only they hold them in a different manner. It is their religious activity and the way they express their faith that has declined not their religious belief. There have been many changes that have impacted on the transformation of society. From the 1930s on, major changes in society have impacted greatly on the way people view religion and their spirituality. There have many changes in culture not only in Australia but worldwide due to World Wars, mass global immigration, changes in communities and their values and the impact of technological innovations. Australian societal commentator Hugh Mackay (Generations) among others concludes that there are marked generational differences in worldviews between the Lucky Generation born in the 1920s, the Baby Boomers born late 1940s to early 1960s and the Options Generation born from 1970 onwards. This research is based in Australia, but would be similar in other Western countries. Lucky Generation: Gender roles and expectations were, but their harsh pre-war experiences gave way to boom times after the war. They were the last generation to experience a church system based mainly on ritual, when most people were Christian and attended church more or less regularly. Baby Boomers: their early years were boom years filled with optimism for the future. There were rapid changes within society and technology, but in the 1970 s the bubble burst with the cold war and financial depression. People became more individualistic and less inclined to involvement in communities. Patterns of church life were reshaped as a result. This group became very disillusioned, and especially women began to question the patriarchal structure of the church; they became anti institutional and stopped attending church regularly. They became busy, stressed and insecure trying to get everything they could from life, accumulating wealth often through dual incomes as women entered the workforce en masse), maximizing leisure time, over-regulating and over-parenting their children, while family sizes declined. Many have identified with the youth culture of fun with little responsibility. Options Generation, also known as postmodern, are less materialistic than their parents, and still want to experience everything although not all at once. They are very aware that they have options and want to be free to exercise them. They are well educated but under-employed; they are deferring marriage and family, and seem to be stuck in the eternal 2

3 teenage lifestyle with minimal responsibility. Most lack any real experience of church and conduct their search for answers to life s questions through relationships rather than institutions. A Changing Australia and Queensland Hugh Mackay is again helpful. In his book Reinventing Australia, he sets out some of the major change which has overtaken Australia during the last decades of the 20th Century. He highlights the following: a growth in stress and anxiety, changing roles of men and women, changes in the nature of marriage and family, changing patterns of paid and unpaid work, changes in the way we view money and spending, the redistribution of family incomes and the loss of egalitarianism in Australia, the development of multiculturalism and the growth in cynicism about politics and the system in general. Both the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the National Church Life Survey (NCLS) provide valuable sources of information about religious activity in Australia in general, and more specific information about the Lutheran church in Australia. In terms of the general Australian population, census figures indicate that there has been a gradual decrease in the percentage of those affiliated with a religion. From , the percentage was around 90%, dropping to 80% in 1976 and 73% in In 2001, 68% were affiliated with a Christian religion. The vast majority of those affiliated with non- Christian religions were born overseas. NCLS research provides a wealth of very interesting data, and is an essential aid in understanding the nature of modern churches. Perhaps the most telling statistics are those about how the population of church attendees differs from the general population. As a group, church attendees are older than the general population church attendance as a percentage of particular age cohorts drops steadily as the cohort gets younger. Church attendance is not popular amongst the young. Church attendance is lower amongst lower socio-economic groups, churches tend to be middle-class institutions. Church attendance is less popular amongst the socially disadvantaged. Church attendance is lower amongst men, a greater proportion of women attend church. Church attendees are more likely to work in helping professions, than in business, scientific or engineering professions. Church attendees tend to be more conservative in their political views than the general congregation All this suggests that there are major sections of society that do not see mainline churches as relevant to their lives. Another key insight from NCLS is that the nature of the weekly church service the type of liturgy, the type of music, etc. is only a relatively minor component of why people choose a particular church to attend. The main reasons are the relational aspects of the 3

4 church feeling welcomed and feeling as if they are able to contribute to the mission of the church. How our congregations have operated in the past. Many congregations still operate as if they were situated in a village in a stable culture where most people live their entire lives in one place. This is no longer the case almost anywhere in Australia, and so the model can be dysfunctional. Under this model, the congregation s ministry is structured in such a way as to retain the loyal participation of its members through the life cycle, with children growing into adults within the congregation providing continuous membership. The old cycle goes as follows: Child is born and brought for baptism 0-5 cradle roll to remind parents of church connection Sunday School/children s ministry. 12-? Confirmation and youth groups meet future spouse at youth group, married, bring children for baptism. Cycle recommences. This model no longer works for many reasons: Australians of all ages move frequently. Young people do not get married as early as before, find partners in work or social settings rather than church, and in any case usually leave the neighbourhood before raising a family. The emphasis in this model is on the survival of the congregation as a worshipping community this is perhaps the most deadly feature of the model. Any organization that focuses on its own survival becomes inwardlooking and self-serving, and unattractive to outsiders. Furthermore, the attempts to shore up numbers by getting them involved in the internal running of the congregation are bound to fail with most people - people are busy and are not looking for unproductive ways to spend their time. If there is any thought in these congregations of reaching people who are not current worshippers, the focus is usually on lapsed Lutherans. These are the hardest to reach, so outreach tends to fail, thereby convincing most people that it doesn t work. Maintaining the congregation as an organization feels too institutional for most tastes today. Baby-boomers and subsequent generations have largely dismissed institutions as either untrustworthy or irrelevant. Congregations need to find new ways to build and maintain a healthy faith 4

5 community. There are many ways in which to do this the next section provides some ideas. Characteristics of Effective Congregations in the LCAQD What does effective mean? There are some difficulties in describing, let alone defining what an effective congregation is. The assumption in some quarters is that desirable congregations are either large, growing, or full of young people. But some congregations are situated in locations where none of these things can happen. Can they also be effective? Of course, it depends on what we think congregations are there for. If they exist for the purpose of providing a comfortable retreat from the outside world on a Sunday morning, then we will judge their effectiveness differently from if they are there to bring the world into contact with the gospel. As a working definition, we suggest that the church s primary task/purpose/mission is to bring the love of Christ effectively to the people of the surrounding community. There are many nuances that could be drawn out of this working definition, and objections to the use of this language, but we have to start somewhere. If this is the mission of the congregation, what would it mean to be effective? Some points spring to mind: if the love comes from Christ, then we need to be in touch with him; somehow Christ must be embodied, present to the community; engagement with the unchurched community is needed; this needs to be done in such a way that they experience the love of God. Some corollaries might be true: the age of the members or the people they love is not important; the continued operation of the congregation is helpful as long as this core task is being done otherwise it is of secondary importance; the larger the congregation, the more can be done in quantity, but not necessarily in quality; if people feel that their lives have been helped through this congregation, they may be moved to help others in the same way; if people experience the love of Christ through our people, they may be attracted to the community that nurtures this love, but they may not want to participate in it or support it in the ways we have done in the past. Characteristics of effective congregations Some of the characteristics which seem to help congregations live out this mission more effectively: 5

6 Intentionality the congregation shares a reasonable consensus of who they are and what they are trying to achieve; a written mission plan is more helpful than a mission statement in developing this consensus; there is reasonable confidence that the plan will work. Method of operation volunteers are given opportunities to serve in capacities for which they are gifted and supported; there is an emphasis on teams rather than individuals; congregations offer options where feasible (easier for larger congregations) eg two worship services of distinctly different style. Culture/Atmosphere there is a genuine sense of welcome to strangers; the atmosphere is hopeful rather than fearful; the culture of the congregation encourages people to try new things, even if they sometimes don t work; there is a tendency to question things that are either not working or that have not been reviewed for a long time. Leadership leadership is shared between clergy and lay people, and includes people of all parts of the congregation (young and old, men and women); leaders are more focused on training and supporting volunteers than on controlling activities; leadership is permission-giving rather than restrictive; leaders think ahead several years rather than being tied to a short-term perspective. To reduce this list to the most critical issues: lay leadership working in harmony with clergy; intentional planning for effective mission; openness to change; a genuine spirit of welcome to strangers. Futures Taskforce: Summary A key success factor for any organisation is to have a vision of where it wants to be in the future, and to develop a plan for how to get there. These are key issues that the taskforce will be discussing in the coming year. However, there are some immediate suggestions that 6

7 the taskforce can make for considerations by congregations. 1. The future of congregations in the LCAQD will depend critically on their ability to undertake mission and ministry in their local communities. 2. By far, the most successful mission strategy is personal invitation by congregational members to their friends to become involved in the church. This in turn, means that mission involves making friends with the unchurched in the local community, and having functions (not just Sunday worship) that friends could be invited to. Programs such as Alpha are explicitly designed so that unchurched friends can be invited into a comfortable setting. Programs such as playgroups, seniors groups, craft groups, service activities, are all ways that people can first become friends before feeling comfortable enough to even listen to the Gospel. 3. The role of lay leadership in congregations needs to be emphasised. The role of the pastor now needs to include the ability to train and equip lay members to undertake mission. Many lay members feel poorly equipped to undertake mission. Many pastors do not understand how to provide their lay members and lay leaders with the skills they need for mission. 4. Congregations need to be open to change and willing to take risks. Church structures and modes of operation have always changed with changes in society, but in the past these changes have happened slowly over a lifetime. Nowadays societal change is so rapid that the church needs to be continually evolving to maximise its effectiveness. Of course, the message of Christ s love and salvation has never changed, but we need to continually look at the most appropriate ways to deliver that message. 5. Congregations are therefore encouraged to develop a clear mission plan. In short, what can they do to reach out into the local community, either as a group or as individuals, to make friends within the community, and how can they use these friendships to bring Christ s Gospel of love and salvation to their community. From Report to Synod, LCAQD Council for Ministry and Mission,