Experience in merging churches

The diocese I grew up in, in the coal region of PA had so many parishes. It was a holdover from large ethnic populations of coal miners. In some cases there were three Catholic churches in a two-block radius.

A few years ago they underwent major consolidation. Multiple Parish closings renaming of parishes as two or three congregations combined into one.

There will be likely hard feelings on the part of those whose parish is closed. In some cases where Generations were baptized and confirmed... Will now be gone.

In my experience, knowing many people in these congregations you often lose the elderly. So pastoral care needs to be focused on either getting them back to the Church or home visitation.

The youth normally take it well as it results in robust growth in youth group activities because you are combining resources and populations.

One of my best friends that I grew up with is a priest at a now combined Parish. And two of my old pastors are retired and their parishes went away. I can ask them for some input. I also have lots of family in a combined Parish.

Also there might be some people who decide to go to a third Parish if geographically possible. I have some cousins who did that. They did it because there are so many hard feelings over losing their Parish, they did not want any part of the new combine one. They now drive 35 minutes to go to Church, rather than the one they can walk to.

My one big piece of advice as I mention above is take special care of the needs of the elderly. Literally dozens of times I have seen them just say I can watch Mass on TV now or pray at home.... My spiritual home where I grew up is gone. Go to be a great sorrow and broken heartedness in it that requires special attention.

I have also seen them brought back as their grandchildren receive the sacraments in the new combined Parish. It just takes a mourning time of sorts

I was on the team investigating the merger of the non denominational (word of faith) congregation I was in with a local Assembly of God.

The process fell down on the denomination's state level board. The district board was willing to take the non-denom pastor's credentials on a temporary basis until he could take some additional classes approved by the A/G. (2 years if memory serves)

But the state board would not accept his credentials at all. He would have had to start from scratch. So the whole merger fell apart.

There were other questions (like church property ownership) that would have had to be worked out, had the denominational board approved the merger. We would meet at the A/G building since they had plenty of space, and our building would be sold.

As to leadership, the 2 pastors were going to be co-equals. The elder board would be combined with all members of both boards serving.

Good, bad or neutral, I am convinced that we will see a lot more mergers in the coming years, as membership numbers shrink.

Paidiske said:

I foresee the biggest headache being about which site to keep; the one thing the bishop's told me is that if we merge, we don't get to keep both sites.

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Yeah - That makes sense.

Does your denom have a geographical database of parishioners and regular visitors for the affected area?

If you could get a good look at that, it will probably show you which parish would be the most central.

Sorry - occupational hazard. I am a bit of a map nerd.

When I've been involved with a church that merged I had difficulty as it also involved bringing in another senior pastor that had supervision over me. I've found that during all my life's work, whenever my supervisory chain of command would change, especially by a new person at the top, there was much turbulence that had to be overcome.

Invariably there have also been parishioners that have left with their resulting wake of bad or negative feelings. A lot of the rest of the congregations also experienced being unsettled because of not knowing how everything would all work out. This interfers with pastoral care and presents even more barriers when trying to help, minister, and pastor others.

You have a good attitude and it should lead you right through everything that arises from the merger. I will pray for you as I'm sure others are doing as well. God bless.

our church is looking into it. It will require us leaving our denomination, which we havent been in agreement with for a while anyways. Interesting times!

Davidnic said:

My one big piece of advice as I mention above is take special care of the needs of the elderly. Literally dozens of times I have seen them just say I can watch Mass on TV now or pray at home.... My spiritual home where I grew up is gone. Go to be a great sorrow and broken heartedness in it that requires special attention.

I have also seen them brought back as their grandchildren receive the sacraments in the new combined Parish. It just takes a mourning time of sorts

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Indeed, there were lots of parish closures in the UCC back in the day, and I saw precisely what you saw, albeit in a worse way, in that the low population density of some of the rural areas where the UCC operated as the main local church, combined with an aging membership and a relative lack of grandchildren or great grandchildren receiving the sacraments at the UCC (families tended to gravitate towards non-denominational megachurches, baptist churches, and evangelical churches). When the inevitable finally came, the trend in the UCC, owing to the historic nature of many of the churches, precluding their demolition and redevelopment, has been to sell surplus property to a mixed bag of denominations and independent churches, including community churches, “Bible Churches”, Baptist Churches (including Southern Baptist Churches, oddly enough), pentecostals, and small non-denominational churches, which sometimes brand themselves as “chapels,” for example, I know of a small non-denom chapel near LA called the “Sonrise Chapel” and another called the “Blessed Hope Chapel” - I believe this is to differentiate these smaller evangelical churches from evangelical megachurches, which share a common theology but differ substantially in terms of size and consequently, the number of programs on offer.

The problem faced by the UCC and the other shrinking mainline churches in the US again goes back to population density in rural areas. When a rural parish closes and gets taken over by a non-denominational type church, the result tends to be the alienation and de-churching of elderly people, because the distance to the next closest town with a traditional church in the rural parte of the US is very often too far to drive. I know of some Eastern Orthodox diehards who will commute two hours to go to an Orthodox church, but that is simply impossible for most older church attendees. So, when the parish changes hands, usually the worship also changes radically, with praise and worship music replacing the traditional hymns and organ music, if the church is so equipped, unless the parish is blessed with remarkably good luck and winds up being purchased by the SBC, LCMS, WELS, PCA, OPC, or a Continuing Anglican parish, because the first five churches often maintain traditional worship, and the continuing Anglicans always do.

Finally, while my post centered on the UCC, which by all accounts is the fastest-shrinking mainline denomination, they are all shrinking, even the massive United Methodist Church, albeit at a slow rate (however, when the impending schism occurs, I expect the portion comprised of African and traditional North American churches to have growing membership, and I expect the other portion, limited as it were to North America, to contract at a rate that is in the ballpark of the other receding mainline churches.

I need to stress that I am extremely unhappy about what is happening to our mainline Protestant churches, indeed, what has been happening arguably since the late 1950s, but which accelerated and intensified in the 1970s. Even when I grew up, the “reliable churches” were generically emumerated to me by my family as Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Moravian (there was a great deal of love for the Moravians in my family, despite none of us being a member of that denomination, as far as I am aware; we were predominantly Lutheran and Methodist, with the Methodists being ethnically German and the Lutherans, ethnically Swedish (and thus, like many Swedish Lutherans at the time, members of the Augustana Synod, which sadly got swallowed up into the ELCA).

Paidiske said:

Gosh, I'd forgotten I ever started this thread. I've long since left that parish (over a year ago now). I understand they have not found a new priest yet. I am wondering if a lack of success in finding a new priest might make them more open to the possibilities of a merger (they were very resistant while I was there).

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Just out of curiosity what are the qualifications for priests in the Anglican Church of Australia? Such as an MDiv, etc? Also, is there a method by which priests can transfer to the ACA from, say, the Roman Catholic Church?

Paidiske said:

The biggest difficulty is actually when clergy come from overseas but have not received anything like what would generally be considered adequate training here. They're ordained, they're often very good, faithful priests, but very poorly equipped for ministry here. I've known quite a lot of priests like that from the Sudan, where the diocese tried then to give them supplementary training and it was... painful all around.

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Indeed, you had mentioned that group. Alas given the civil war and the extreme poverty, instability and corruption (which by the way frustrates me as a Christian, in that our brethren in the Sudan get their own country, but then forces of evil take over, resulting in the Khartoum government superficially appearing somewhat better off, although this of course is a mirage concealing a veritable litany of genocides, war crimes, torture and human rights abuses).

In the US, by the way, there was a rural Methodist parish which briefly had a Korean American immigrant Elder who was extremely pious, extremely doctrinally orthodox, but who spoke with a thick accent - I could hear what he said, but the older ranchers who made up the majority of the congregation (who were in many cases hard of hearing) were not able to understand him.