Our church is having a difficult conversation

Our church council has started bringing up discussion at coffee hour the fact we'll probably have to sell off most, or all of our property as our church downsizes. They consider building a smaller church on a subplot of the land, perhaps a small chapel, and/or temporarily meeting in a rented apartment building or food pantry.

I raised some pointed questions and it felt like my concerns got partly rebuffed. I'm concerned that the church council is taking advice from the convention without doing its own research. The convention, the denomination, wants the church to remain open, even though I pointed out long-term demographics in the area are not favorable. I talked about merging with the Disciples of Christ or a similar church in the area. That really seemed to trigger some people on the insistence that the congregation would remain in the UCC. The president of the council said this was a temporary 25-year plan, and they were aware of the demographics of the area. So I wonder what the denominational leadership thinks we are signing up for exactly, spiritual hospice? What is the point of selling a church, hoping to rebuild a new one, and seeing the dynamics repeat all over again of decline and barely affording to keep the lights on ?

I understand people are really attached to legacy, but I'm not sure the UCC denominational leadership isn't at least part of the problem, and I personally don't relish giving hospice care to a church in a spiritual holding pattern in the last chapter of my life. I don't feel it fits my vocation, I'm tempted to say "I didn't cause the problem, you clean up your own mess. "God is still speaking" may not be just a slogan, but the problem is you aren't listening." All the national campaigns they have offered to try to revitalize the national brand have failed, and the only growing UCC congregations seem to focus on taking a direction different from the denominational leadership and responding to local community spiritual needs, using UCC materials as needed but engaging in their own process of discernment.

bèlla said:

I think this is something many churches will face in the next three years and I expect many closures to follow. It isn't solely the shift in demographics but the nuts and bolts of financial support. Most of the income received is from the lower to middle class. They provide the bulk of the tithes and they're the hardest hit in this economy.

Add in the portion that never returned after covid who support online ministries and you'll see the problem. Some have tried to minimize the slide by starting YouTube channels. But I expect to see more of that as Ai glasses and VR continue to improve. What few wish to discuss is who's buying the buildings and how the majority exceeded our needs. We could learn a lot from other groups like the Amish who opt for modesty over debt.

Continue to speak up and ask the Lord for wisdom regarding your next steps and don't take it personal. There's a lot of flesh in the subject and too much ego as well. They took pride in the buildings but the treasures were inside.

~bella

Click to expand...

Your insight are especially true of the United Church of Christ's situation. Compared to other Mainline churches, it's income distribution skews the most like a dog-bone shape, thin in the middle. From working-class German and eastern European immigrants in the Rust Belt of Ohio and Pennsylvania, to historic African-American congregations in inner cities of the Midwest and parts of Florida, to New England Brahmins, the income distribution is all over the place. Lots of poor people, lots of very wealthy people. And they don't necessarily go to the same congregations. In the South, judging by the funerals I've attended and the people I've known here, many work low wage service jobs their whole life.

My old ELCA (Lutheran) congregation is in freefall also, an even more rapid rate of decline. I've read that by 2050, there will only be 96,000 mainline Lutherans left in the US, if the current rate continues. Considering there were at one time 6 million only a few decades ago, that's a dramatic crash.

The First UCC of Orlando at one time, back in 2014 when I visited before the pandemic, used to have packed services. It's been a rapid, dramatic change in only about a decade. Perhaps it's like Ryan Berge has noted, that the Internet, especially smartphones, have had a dramatic negative effect on church attendance?