THE PRIESTLESS PARISH - LUXURIES WE CAN'T AFFORD

Note:  Christianity is entering a post-Christian era. This has caused some concern among church-attending Christians as the number of attendees are dropping in smaller parishes; particularly, in the United States of America where financial support is totally dependents upon a church's membership. The following posts will address various factor affecting the small parish as a call to make sweeping changes to the structure of organized religion both here in the United State and world-wide.

THE PARISH

By definition a parish is an administrative term used by Christian denominations to define an area that has a church and a priest or a pastor.   Increasingly, however, such parishes consist of fewer parishioners.  In the United States, Christian parishes or congregations are self-supporting and rely on the parish's membership for financial viability.  Affording full-time clergy is no longer possible for most small parishes; particularly, in countries like the United States.  

Added to that is a dwindling amount of ordained clergy.  Even if a small parish could afford a full-time pastor or priest, the likelihood of attracting a newly ordained or attracting one from a well established parish is becoming a near impossibility.  The most a small parish can hope for is either finding a priest who is covering several parishes or finding a half-time or quarter-time priest.

I began writing this post a year ago last August when the small Episcopal parish I belong to was on the verge of losing our three-quarters time rector to retirement; a priest who had served us for over seventeen years.   Since his retirement, I have been serving on our parish's search committee trying to discern how to proceed.

Like many small parishes that comprise an aging population and have become reliant on interest from invested reserve funds to make ends meet, our little parish no longer can generate enough income from its pledges and offerings to afford a full-time or a half-time priest without digging into investment principal and risk rapid depletion of that monetary source.  We're not alone in this situation. 

LUXURIES WE CAN'T AFFORD

Ordained clergy are becoming a luxury many small parishes cannot afford.  I know something about luxuries small congregations cannot afford because I'm one of them.  I'm my church's organist.  I've been the organist at my church for the past twenty years.  For about half that time I received a small stipend of appreciation to keep me tethered to the organ bench.

When it became apparent that our parish was beginning to struggle financially, I was among the first to say I'd offer my services freely and have done so since that time.  I have never regretted doing so and rather enjoy the sense of having lost the tether.  In my part of the country, most organists probably are in  the same situation.  I also suspect organists are a rarer specimen in a church's ecosystem than clergy.  Fewer people are taking up the King of Instruments nowadays.

The trend is that priests and other ordained clergy are headed in the same direction of ecclesial extinction as organists.   Seminaries are closing as fast as organ programs in university music departments.  The mainline church environment is changing fast; where the term "climate change" has taken on a whole new meaning as small congregations are losing body heat due to membership decline and are dying from demographic hypothermia.

Traditionally, the answer to these problems has always been "Get a priest or minister; one way or the other: full-time, part-time or an occasional supply priest/minister. It doesn't matter. Just get one!"

The dependency on ordained clergy in mainline denominations as the mains source of leadership remains extremely high; even as the number of ordained clergy are declining as a result of their aging out and the fact that younger people are showing less interest in entering traditional Holy Orders or ordination. 

In my neck of the woods, there are few Episcopal churches to draw from; thus, not an abundance of Episcopal clergy to spread around. We do have the option of appealing to the clergy from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for assistance, but, at present, this has not been seriously considered  Besides, the ELCA is facing the same problems with regard to supplying pastors as the Episcopal Church is having with supplying priest.  Being in the Dakotas is not a big draw to those ordained clergy who can pick and choose parishes that are more financially lucrative and more stable than ours.

Some might question, "Where's your faith, man?  God will provide."   As a person called to discern where God is leading our parish, I have no doubt God will provide. The question is what is God providing and where are we headed?

For me, the current moment is an opportunity to ponder the possibilities this juncture in our parish's life offers.   A host of "what if" questions emerge as time goes on.  Our parish's limited financial and human resources puts on equal footing two diametrically opposed questions: "What if we don't get a priest?" with "What if we do?" 

It is one thing to close the doors of a church because a small parish really can't afford to pay for the upkeep. It's quite different thing to say that if or because we can't afford a priest or minister we will be losing our church and cease being a parish.    It seems to me, at least, that now is the time to think differently about the role of our congregation in community life before those become our only options.

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All Christian denominations are hierarchal in structure; from those claiming to be independent to those long established and identified as catholic and orthodox.  There is no way to avoid the human proclivity to order things by rank.  The longer an institution exists the more prone to order its structure along hierarchal lines.  

Organized Christianity has been around for over two thousand years.  Two thousand years of organizing and reorganizing the structure of the Church has seen the Church evolve from a seemingly subversive movement that defied imperial rule to becoming an imperial realm in its own right, known as Christendom.  It has evolved from a being a church hiding out in catacombs to a church that builds basilicas and cathedrals throughout the world. 

Everything on this planet is subject to change.  This includes the Church, as a whole.   The weight of its varied structures and its inability throughout the centuries to deal with changes brought about by scientific understanding and social development which have challenged its traditional ways is forcing it to buckle under its own weight and shrink.

The loss of influence that  Christianity has on culture, government, politics, and society in general is like watching a glacier melt quickly into a multitude of easily forded streams.  This is acutely and readily observed at the local level, where the local church no longer holds the importance in maintaining a sense of civil order it once had; where membership in a mainline denomination is no longer a prerequisite for attaining or maintaining social status.  It is the small parish, like an endangered species in a rainforest, that demonstrates an environmental shift in the political and social climate in which these parishes exist by their increasing disappearance.

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As my small Episcopal parish is coping with the reality that it may not be able to afford the luxury of a full-time rector (priest) for the long run, it nevertheless has opted to search for one in the hope of that doing so will result in finding a priest who will either be so dynamic a leader who increases the size of our small flock or who will so inspire our small flock to bring others into our small church from our community.  It seems that few have really considered the ramifications of such an undertaking or have no other alternatives in mind but to think in such terms.  

In filling out a questionnaire that our diocese has requested we do to draw candidate consideration, I ran across one of the question that gave me pause, "How are you (our small parish) preparing for the Church of the future?" 

I found that such an interesting question that it begs several questions. For instance, one question that immediately came to mind was,"What has the dioceses been doing to prepare small parishes like ours to prepare for the situation we are now facing?"   Apart from dwindling our resources on a full-time or part-time priest that may or may not increase our parish's viability, "What other models of leadership and parish viability exist that we can explore?"

Pondering such questions and the dwindling situations the small parish or congregation finds itself in will be the focus of future posts. 


Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm