All that I have been thinking about the last couple days is church growth, not only because of trying to grow/revitalize this parish (though I wonder, based on the numbers in the books, if it was ever "vitalized" to begin with), but because many "continuing Anglican" (CA) parishes seem to be stagnant or in decline. And that is a major concern on many levels.
Now, we have had growth at St. Francis since I have been here. We have added some five new university students, one older professional, and one retired professional. I am VERY THANKFUL for that growth! And, thanks be to God, most CA parishes, dioceses, and jurisdictions can probably claim the same type of growth - though the demographics are different based on where they are located (i.e. we are across the street from VA Tech, so we have a number of college students; other parishes are in retirement communities, so they have lots of older, retired folk, etc.). So we ARE growing at St. Francis! And other parishes in the APA and in similar CA jurisdictions are also growing! The numbers prove that. As I have seen it said on other CA sites: "We are growing, slowly, but we are growing."
But is the growth keeping up with 'inflation'? In other words, how much of our parish growth is actual "new adult conversions to Christianity" growth verses getting folk from other Anglican parishes, or other churches? And how much of our growth is getting folk who are converts from some other tradition, such as Presbyterianism, Anabaptism, Romanism, etc.? From what I know it is far to say that most of our very small and slow growth comes in those areas, which is not bad (no growth is "bad", per se), but not good either. Very little growth (and none so far in my tenure here at St. Francis) is growth in terms of adult converts to the Christian religion! To be honest, in my whole life I know of only one adult person who went from being a complete, unbaptized pagan to becoming a Christian entirely in a continuing Anglican church! I am sure there are more out there, but I personally only know of one. And incidentally he is no longer CA but Orthodox, I am told. But is this an inditement of CA churches alone? By no means!
The sad truth is that across the board according to statistics ALL denominations (in America) are "growing" more in transfer of membership from other churches RATHER than by adult baptisms and conversions (Source: "Comeback Churches" Setzer/Dodson) - even the so-called "true church" - the Roman Church. That is warning to ALL Christians. We are supposedly "growing" (and megachurches are "growing" a lot, so it seems), but it is not real growth! It is just baptized people transferring memberships and attendance around! In other words, the growth of the Kingdom of God is not keeping up with the growth of "paganism" at this point! The bottom line is this: the Church (across the board) is NOT growing... if anything it is slowly shrinking. The statistics prove it. The question is what are we Christians going to do about it? More important, what are we so-called "continuing Anglicans" going to do about it?
