It is a familiar sight in many of our churches: to see the empty space, the pew that once held up a faithful member, a devoted, active, loving Christian. One of us.

And now, an empty space.

Nobody has died, of course. Not this week, anyway. The space is empty because the person who was normally there just isn’t there anymore.

'What then is the church if we are not to wrestle with our greatest struggles?' Share on X

Last fall, new research revealed a striking new phenomenon that upended the usual narrative about church decline. People just stopped coming to church.

They weren’t shopping or looking for a different church or one that better matched them. They stopped coming to that church and any church at all.

And the group most likely to quit were former leaders.

Instead, they were staying home, sleeping in, maybe tending to the garden. Something. But any which way you write it, they were done with Sunday.

Not the Usual Suspects

We’ve been having the same conversation for decades now. The youth are leaving church. Or specific churches are declining because of their politics. Or other specific churches are declining because of their leadership. Or other specific churches are declining because they hate people. Or other specific churches are declining because of sex scandals. Or other specific churches are declining because they have abandoned the Bible. Or other specific churches are declining because they full, FULL OF SIN!!!!

And then we started talking about demographics and the shift in our churches. I’ve been talking to good church people about Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR) for more than 10 years, long before there was a term for it.

But what all of these reasons and excuses have in common is that they are political. Or more precisely, that they are based on institutional choices. Talk of decline always has a scapegoat.

With the rise of the Dones, we are seeing a different issue. We are seeing people worn out, exhausted, and not seeing an end to the work.

If you remember, nearly two decades ago when Mother Theresa’s posthumous diaries were released, there was the great revelation that she hadn’t heard the voice of GOD in years, decades. That sometimes she felt separated from GOD.

This was huge news. How could Mother Theresa feel that way? Mother freakin’ Theresa! But the second half of the statement was that she served GOD anyway. Not out of duty or responsibility or a promise she made, but because she had felt GOD before. She didn’t need to feel GOD now.

And I wonder what is going on, what is really going on, with our people.

Ignored

Tony Clavier has a theory. In a new article for The Living Church called “The ignored minority,” Fr. Clavier argues that a missing minority of Episcopalians weren’t at the National Cathedral Sunday to celebrate the installation of the 27th Presiding Bishop. A quiet minority that has “slipped away” from the church over conflict, mostly. Those good, faithful members who come each week, serve, often lead. But are no longer there.

Why did they leave?

Did they leave about women priests or gay marriage or new liturgies? Not necessarily. They left because they hate conflict and faction. They no more want to be members of the Society for a Pure Church than the Pressure Group for Sexual Excitement. One sermon too far about the wickedness of Progressives, or the deadly sins of Traditionalists, drove them out. That last experiment with yet another trial liturgy, at a moment in their lives when familiarity and memorized language were desperately needed caused them to give up, their souls and spirits ruined.

It is a strong argument. The first half anyway. Then he drifts into a different argument toward the end. But like every attempt to describe the nature of congregational decline, it is too simple, too narrow, and too easy to name a scapegoat.

The cause of decline Fr. Clavier begins to lay out is about conflict. Specifically not so much those who are doing the fighting, but those who can’t handle the fighting. This is incredibly perceptive and fits into the narrative we heard ten years ago when discussing matters of human sexuality in church:

The statistical breakdown showed that in the Episcopal Church in 2003, 20% supported LGBTQ equality, 20% were against it, and 60% demanded we never talk about it.

This is deeply important for us to tackle: that our problem may not actually be that we are change-averse, but that we are conflict averse.

However, he has also begun to outline a separate (and conflicting) issue and in the very next paragraph he lays out a very different cause of decline:

In time of need, they found their priest too busy attending meetings in support of a Cause to notice them let alone give them a call, drop them an email, or, heaven forfend, visit them at home or even in hospital. Perhaps the parish leadership was too busy organizing church growth and evangelism to notice their absence.

Of course, this may also ring true. But it is a shockingly different idea than Fr. Clavier offers up from the one he offers at the beginning. For this is not an issue of conflict aversion anymore, these simple people, trying to have a simple faith without hearing Mom and Dad bickering all the time, but now, here is an appeal for more direct attention. And I know many people who would agree with this statement but not the other; or would agree more with the former than the latter. And certainly some will agree with both.

Perhaps many of our people would feel more attended to if things were different. Or perhaps the needs themselves have changed.

Over-Worked

The former dean of my seminary said that about every decade, the church suddenly concludes that there’s something essential to the church that the clergy aren’t getting in seminary. Some training or preparation they don’t have. So they demand the seminaries add a sequence of classes to help build those skills in the prospective clergy.

They don’t say what the seminary should take away. Just that they should add to it. Every decade, new classes, a new area of focus.

On top of everything else.

We also hear at the diocesan and national levels that we should make sure our aspirants have certain skills before going to seminary.

So we’re not only adding to the work in seminary, we want to add to the work the aspiring clergy must do before seminary. Make sure you leave a really good career, preferably in management so they can deal with people and business so that they can deal with a church budget. And law, so that they can deal with estate planning and with church arcana and by-law revisions. Make sure it made you a lot of money because you are going to need it.

Also, we expect that you will have successfully run a church stewardship campaign as a lay person, taught many Sunday School classes, and led the mission team.

In the last few years, we’ve added an extra wrinkle: aspirants will probably need to keep that other job while we’re at it. Leave for residential seminary for three years, but have this other job. Hopefully a more lucrative one. Especially if it offers health insurance. That would be perfect. Be like Paul, they say. Save the church by being bivocational.

In the same breath that the Episcopal Church has spent the last 50 years trying to renew our churchwide call to embracing our baptismal faith and raising up the ministry of all the baptized, we are unloading all of the pressure of leadership of a postmodern church in perpetual crisis onto the clergy. We are governing through our canons to flatten our church, but raising up and instituting through our process of discernment a pragmatic approach of heightened clericalism, with both increased responsibility and scrutiny.

Meanwhile, our congregations (like many of our friends in other denominations) are sputtering and spinning through decades of decline and confusion of how to live out the developing faith since the 1960s. The demographics offer a pretty bleak picture and the economics of growth don’t match many of our congregational realities. Our people are doing more work with fewer resources and fewer people to assist them. There is increasing pressure at the top to cast an attractive vision while maintaining the democratic participatory relationship of the people.

Our leaders are taking on more and more responsibility with fewer and fewer opportunities to off-ramp into less directive leadership positions.

Every leader is running around trying to save the church. And the people keep saying “while you’re at it…”

Avoiding Conflict

I commend Fr. Clavier’s piece for your reading because both of the things he writes ring true, particularly for those who are in the midst of that experience. However, I worry that many of the people reading it will see it as another opportunity to pile more onto those others ministering to the postmodern church. Not just the clergy alone, but all those in leadership.

I also take a very different response to the issue of conflict and the conflict-averse in our congregations and those who have “slipped away”.

Namely that these are similar, but not entirely related issues. The research around the Dones is revealing the primary reason for being done with church is not a lack of pastoral care from the top, but that the work itself is too much and that other pursuits are more gratifying. That many are losing a sense that this work is essential to their lives or that we are getting any headway in building up the Kingdom.

How often have you heard someone refuse to serve in leadership, not because of politics or direction of the church, but because there is an extra circle of hell labeled “vestry”.

Perhaps these leaders are, in fact, spending too much time fighting – not only with the “opponents” in a political dialectic, but perhaps also with this “ignored minority”.

Of graver concern for me is how we choose to deal with this dynamic around conflict. I worry that we might grant the conflict averse parishioner an outsized influence on how the congregation actually deals with its major issues. I certainly am no lover of conflict and I find that sense of vulnerability Fr. Clavier describes around conflict quite reasonable. But, avoiding necessary conflict to save the conflict averse from discomfort is often a disservice to the people and the congregation as a whole.

And it rarely prevents the outcome our political fights are trying to save us from.

We know that this is especially true in cases of abuse. How often have we seen the victims of abuse stay with their abuser to avoid the confrontation, or accepting the conflict so as to protect the children from seeing it? Or more tragically, the victims of abuse, choosing their abuser over their own children. Avoidance of conflict is not inherently healthy. And certainly not something we should condone.

Understand, yes. But not condone.

Addressing the Community’s Needs

What then is the church if we are not to wrestle with our greatest struggles?

The most profound witness to faith of the 20th Century came in the midst of and aftermath of the Second World War. Great questions of suffering and the nature of GOD arose out of this incredible and devastating moment.

It also produced our great shame. A doctrine of Christian supremacy and anti-Semitism and those deals made by the church to either support or not oppose Hitler led to his rise and dominance and wrote the very ticket to the Holocaust.

And yet it was this very wrestling with evil and the purpose of the Christian in the face of such evil that forced us to face both our complicity and our opportunity.

The years that followed led to a great revival in the faith as people from all walks of life came searching for GOD in the midst of great fear and confusion.

One could certainly argue that they sought stability and permanence, reaching out to a timeless institution which could provide the answers to their great questions.

But it is also true that this was a period of innovation and the seeds for change were sown and rebirth and renewal brought about great opportunity for ecumenism and revision. New discoveries provided a brand new glimpse into ancient scriptures and worship practices. And we were propelled into a future of living out a more vibrant and important faith, reflected not only in our tradition, but in our experience.

For what else is faith?

How is the church the church if we don’t face our challenges? And of what use are we if refuse? Or in our fear, take ourselves hostage, not to the political whims of the Left or Right, but the personal anxiety of the comfortable and those unwilling to entertain that their neighbors may not be half as comfortable as they are? Shall we not share in their discomfort?

If we don’t struggle, aren’t we already done?