Before we get to the story (AP headline: “Struggling Minnesota church asks older members to go away”) behind this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), I would like to share a parable.
It’s about some elderly Lutherans and an old hymnal.
In the early 1980s, while working for The Charlotte News (RIP), I wrote a feature story about the last congregation in town that was resisting the use of a new hymnal prepared for the churches that merged to form the progressive Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Everyone called the “Service Book and Hymnal” the “red book,” and emerging ELCA elites thought it was old fashioned. Thus, the modernized “Lutheran Book of Worship” came out in 1978. It was the “green book.”
At this Charlotte church, I met with an older man who led the fight to retain the “red book.” He had a long list of reasons — historical and theological — for why the old hymnal and prayer book was superior to the new. A teacher by trade, he was very articulate and calm.
When the interview was over, we walked the center aisle toward the foyer and main exit. At the last pew, he stopped and picked up a battered red hymnal. Tears began running down his cheeks.
“I married my wife with this book,” he said. “Our children were baptized with this book. I buried my wife with this book. … They are not going to take it away from me.”
Forget his long list of defenses for the “red book.” What I was hearing was a cry from his heart, as well as his head. Church officials had ruled that his faith — his life — was out of date and he was hurting.
With that in mind, think about the press coverage that grew out of a Twin Cities Pioneer Press story that ran with this headline: “Cottage Grove church to usher out gray-haired members in effort to attract more young parishioners.” Here’s a key passage that captures the tone:
The church wants to attract more young families. The present members, most of them over 60 years old, will be invited to worship somewhere else. A memo recommends that they stay away for two years, then consult the pastor about reapplying.
Officials say the church needs a reset, and reopening the church is the best way to appeal to younger people.
But the older church members say they see that as an insult.
“This is totally wrong,” said Gackstetter’s wife, Cheryl. “They are discriminating against us because of our age.”
After the plan was explained by a visiting pastor on Jan. 5, she said, “I called him a hypocrite. I said, ‘You are kicking us out of our church.’ ”
It helps to know that this church is located in a part of North America where United Methodists are in sharp decline. The North Central Conference had 1,381,468 members in 2008 and 1,193,111 in 2015. This region (it’s not alone) is aging and shrinking.
This particular congregation is only 30 years old and it has already been through one merger with another church. But the story notes that the Cottage Grove area is growing and has only 13 churches, when researchers say it could support 37.
So what’s wrong with this United Methodist flock?
Apparently it’s tiny and the few people remaining in the pews are old, old and old.
It helps to know that church-growth pros estimate that it takes 80-90 people or families to consistently donate enough money to support a full-time mainline Protestant pastor. Cottage Grove UMC lost its pastor seven years ago. These days, 25 people show up for worship on a typical Sunday.
But did UMC officials really tell the old people they HAD to leave?
Sarah Pulliam Bailey followed up with a story that let denominational officials fill in some details. Thus, the Washington Post headline stated: “A church allegedly asked older members to leave. Leaders say that didn’t actually happen.”
Let’s work our way through some crucial material (and, trust me, Bailey’s experience on the religion beat shows up early and often).
When a small church in the suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul shuts it doors in June, some of the members, who are almost all older than 60, are worried about where their funerals will be held. When it reopens perhaps a year later, the traditional hymns could be missing and a new pastor will be almost three decades younger.
One 70-year-old member called the church leaders’ decision to fold in order to start a new congregation “age discrimination.”
A United Methodist church in Minnesota has put the spotlight on widespread generational challenges across the county, with many leaders trying to attract younger people without alienating the elderly members who are the backbone of their dwindling congregations.
There’s more:
It can be challenging for pastors to convince older parishioners that taking more dramatic measures to close the generation gap is valuable, said Jason Byassee, a professor at the Vancouver School of Theology who has served as a Methodist pastor in North Carolina. “The attitude can be, ‘We give the money, don’t change a thing,’” he said. “That’s not church, that’s a club.”
When the Cottage Grove location opens again in the fall, it will include a different look and feel. … It currently includes hymns and a traditional choir, for instance, but the new music — which has caused generational strife across denominations — has not been determined yet. (The Grove Church is already part of the progressive wing of the larger United Methodist Church and is not part of a nationwide denominational split over same-sex marriage.)
Members of the tiny flock — most of them elderly — were invited to be “silent partners in the Planting Project through prayer, community expertise and support services.”
But church officials were funding this reboot and, thus, there was that old golden rule: He/she who has the gold makes the rules. There was going to be a new pastor whose assigned task was to attract young families with children. Worship rites would change. The music would change. The hymnal would change.
Wait! What’s a hymnal?
The old members could quietly hang around until the changes were solidly in place or they could drive 15 minutes to the sanctuary of their partner congregation. If they chose to return they would find a radically different church with all new leadership structures. They would be “silent partners” in all of that change.
Did that feel like the old-timers were told to go away?
All of these dilemmas are coming soon to religious congregations near you. See the Ryan Burge chart embedded in this post. #SCARY
So, enjoy the podcast.