{"id":1012,"date":"2007-09-10T22:02:22","date_gmt":"2007-09-11T03:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1012"},"modified":"2007-11-17T19:41:39","modified_gmt":"2007-11-18T00:41:39","slug":"classic-church-growth-methodologies-that-dont-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1012","title":{"rendered":"Classic church growth methodologies (that don’t work)"},"content":{"rendered":"

An earlier post on Carl George’s church growth books: Link<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This past week, I was leafing through Carl George’s book Prepare Your Church for the Future<\/em>. I was particularly struck by some of the things George says in the second chapter of this book, a chapter titled “Tally What You Inherited.” George claims that every church “embodies growth strategies that can be both identified and analyzed.” Then he proceeds to list sixteen different of the most common church growth methodologies. To my mind, four of these methodologies are of particular relevance to Unitarian Universalist congregations. These four existing and common growth methodologies are Sunday school, feeder and receptor patterns, next-door-to-the-right-institution syndrome, and capture by committee involvement. <\/p>\n

Below you’ll find my brief notes on these four popular Unitarian Universalist growth strategies. Unfortunately, as I’ll detail below, these have not been effective growth strategies for us. We have also managed to screw up so-called Small Group Ministry, a growth strategy based on Carl George’s work, and I have some thoughts on that as well. But first, four classic growth methodologies that don’t serve us very well….<\/p>\n

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Sunday school:<\/strong> Unitarian Universalists put their own twist on this growth methodology in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Under the influence of Sophia Fahs and Angus MacLean, many Unitarian Universalist Sunday schools tried to create truly excellent religious schooling based on the then-successful model of classroom education. Fahs edited a superb series of Sunday school curriculum written by top scholars and educators. Local congregations recruited schoolteachers and other professional adults as volunteers to staff and manage their Sunday schools. The growth strategy worked in the short term, as parents brought their children to Unitarian Universalist churches to receive excellent schooling about religion. But children were rarely taught how to do religion, and by the 1960s one study showed that 90% of the alumni of Unitarian Universalist Sunday schools did not stay in our churches as adults.<\/p>\n

Trying to create an excellent Sunday school continues to be one of the dominant growth methodologies for Unitarian Universalist congregations. However, it is a fatally flawed growth methodology as usually implemented in our churches. All we offer is good curriculum and trained teachers. But Sunday schools are typically organized in a fashion that makes them impossible to administer. Volunteer teachers are recruited with a combination of guilt and veiled threats (“all parents must teach” — or else?…); since the teachers are in the classroom under duress they are likely to communicate to children that religion is drudgery and a chore, and not something that the children will want to pursue when they grow up.<\/p>\n

Compare this methodology (of Sunday school as drudgery), with the Sunday school growth methodology outlined by Carl George. Laypeople are fired up with a vision of Sunday school as a way to grow the church. They are given meaningful leadership roles, with the goal that “each trained and commissioned Sunday-school teacher will increase attendance by ten people.” Classes are not allowed to get bigger than ten people, under the theory that “a volunteer class leader can best handle a group of about ten people.” By following this Sunday school methodology rather than the Fahs\/MacLean methodology that we use, George says that “the Sunday school has been for two centuries a lay-led, small-group movement highly effective in producing church growth.” [pp. 28-29]<\/p>\n

Feeder and receptor patterns:<\/strong> George points out that in many areas there are feeder churches and receptor churches. The feeder church could be a smaller church that doesn’t offer sufficient opportunities for some people (e.g., an inadequate music program or youth program), or it could be a church in conflict that is driving its members out the door to another church. As people in the feeder churches become disaffected for whatever reason, a nearby receptor church attracts them. Cynically, George says that “all the [receptor] church has to do it be the least-worst choice of the searching family, and it will grow in size!” [pp. 31-33]<\/p>\n

I think we Unitarian Universalist have put their own distinctive twist on this growth methodology. A typical Unitarian Universalist church is fairly small and is only moderately well-organized, with perhaps an adequate music program, and a barely adequate youth ministry. We may not fit the mold of the typical receptor church, but for many people who find traditional theologies abhorrent yet still long to belong to a church, we are the least-worst choice.<\/p>\n

A few of our larger churches (with average attendance of over 400 a week) are growing at a reasonable pace. I would be curious to know if those larger churches are growing simply because they are receptor churches in their area, presenting the least-worst church option. Even though it seems a little vampire-ish, sucking the blood out of other living churches, if we were more intentional about it we could perhaps turn some of our churches into really effective receptor churches.<\/p>\n

Next-door-to-the-right-institution:<\/strong> You might also call theis the no-brainer growth methodology. George writes: “Many churches profit from an in-town denominational feeder system such as a college,[etc.]…. These employ or train ready-made parishioners who need little incentive to fellowship… among friends from work or school. Thus it’s not so much this church’s strengths that have recruited them as other… forces….” [p. 38]<\/p>\n

Many reasonably successful Unitarian Universalist churches succeed simply because they are right near a college or university. We tend to attract a well-educated demographic, and colleges and universities provide concentrated pools of people in our demographic. I’ve heard tell of some of our churches which function more like an exclusive faculty club for the nearby university than like a church. Be that as it may, George points out that being next door to the right institution can be a successful growth strategy. Unfortunately, it is an inherently limited methodology.<\/p>\n

Capture by committee involvement:<\/strong> Perhaps the most popular growth methodology among Unitarian Universalists, capture-by-committee is not just a growth methodology, it’s also a way to ensure that you don’t grow beyond a certain point. George writes so compellingly on this topic, pointing out the inherent classism and idiocy of capture-by-committee, that I’m going to quote him at length:<\/p>\n

“Some denominations, like the Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Episcopalians, have become captive to the upper middle class. How does a church keep these often materialistic, high-power people interested and involved? One solution is to offer them a seat on the church board, or after that’s filled, to place them on a significant committee, giving them veto-making authority in order to meet their power needs. In some smaller churches, up to half the adult membership is involved in one of these groups.<\/p>\n

“Sadly, once it has filled the available slots, this system only guarantees that little or nothing can be approved. It resembles a passenger train’s brake cord that any passenger can pull at any time from any car, forcing the entire train to a screeching halt. There is only one accelerator, and it’s located at the front of the train. But access to it was lost when the church founders passed away. So in most cases a multitude of boards and committees serve mainly to prevent new vision from taking the church beyond the status quo.” [p. 37]<\/p>\n

Every Unitarian Universalist church I have either belonged to or worked for claimed that the best way to retain newcomers was to put them on a committee. Every Unitarian Universalist church I have belonged to or served contained more than one committee whose primary goal seemed to be to veto any forward momentum, preferring the status quo (no matter how creaky) to any new vision. This is a growth methodology that contains the seeds of its own destruction. Thus it is sad to see how wide-spread this growth strategy is among us.<\/p>\n

The obvious conclusion:<\/strong> Carl George believes that it’s time for churches to go beyond the old growth methodologies. He is an advocate of nurturing small groups within the congregation to serve as the primary engine of growth. Thus some Unitarian Universalists who have read Carl George have come to the obvious conclusion that they need to form Small Group Ministry programs in their congregations to serve as a new engine for growth.<\/p>\n

The not-so-obvious conclusion:<\/strong> Most of our congregations — including the majority of congregations trying the Small Group Ministry approach — are not growing, or are declining. The denomination as a whole is growing very slightly, but most of that growth can be attributed to a small fraction of larger congregations that are actually growing at a reasonable pace. Most of our congregations are not growing, and Small Group Ministry programs don’t seem to promote growth — at least, not as currently implemented.<\/p>\n

I suspect that the main reason for our lack of growth is that we rely too heavily on capture-by-committee-involvement, thus creating churches full of people with veto power. Small Group Ministry programs have fallen prey to veto power — even though Small Group Ministries are designed to attract newcomers, all too often the participants in Small Group Ministries use their veto power and turn their Small Group Ministry into a Closed Group That Excludes Newcomers. <\/p>\n

Unitarian Universalists aren’t the only ones to screw up small groups as a growth methodology — Carl George acknowledges that other churches have found their own ways to screw up small groups, too. In a subsequent post, I’ll explore Carl George’s strategy for preventing screw-ups, and discuss why I think his strategy will work extremely well in our churches.<\/p>\n

In the mean time, what do you think about all this? Is your Sunday school growing (by at least 5% increase in attendance over a two-year span), and if so, why? Are you next door to the right institution, and that’s working well for you? Have you figured out how to become an effective receptor church? Or is your UU church filled with people who sit on committees and have (or want!) veto power? By the way, I’d love to be proved wrong on any of my gloom-and-doom pronouncements — so if your church has experienced significant growth after implementing Small Group Ministry (say, at least 5% annual increase in worship attendance per year, for at least a two year period), tell us how you did it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An earlier post on Carl George’s church growth books: Link This past week, I was leafing through Carl George’s book Prepare Your Church for the Future. I was particularly struck by some of the things George says in the second chapter of this book, a chapter titled “Tally What You Inherited.” George claims that every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}