Growth: It Is a Matter of Biblical Interpretation and (sigh) Electric Guitars

A year and a half ago there was a story from the Guardian.com that required a little bit of background checking before posting it here. Their report on research into the characteristics of growing and declining mainline Protestant churches in Canada piqued my interest,

"Among the key findings are:

• Only 50% of clergy from declining churches agreed it was 'very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians', compared to 100% of clergy from growing churches.
• 71% of clergy from growing churches read the Bible daily compared with 19% from declining churches.
• 46% of people attending growing churches read the Bible once a week compared with 26% from declining churches.
• 93% of clergy and 83% of worshippers from growing churches agreed with the statement 'Jesus rose from the dead with a real flesh-and-blood body leaving behind an empty tomb'. This compared with 67% of worshippers and 56% of clergy from declining churches.
• 100% of clergy and 90% of worshippers agreed that 'God performs miracles in answer to prayers', compared with 80% of worshippers and 44% of clergy from declining churches."

These findings would seem to be self evident to my fellow reasserting Christians. This type of research generates hypotheses which The Guardian must have been thinking about when they jumped the gun and titled their piece, "Literal interpretation of Bible 'helps increase church attendance'". That is called drawing a conclusion based on an association, and the findings are not proof of the hypothesis.

Alas, the social sciences and The Guardian were never really big on science, so they might also have felt free to conclude (they didn't) that "electric guitars and drums help increase church attendance" if they had written about more of the data in the original paper,

 67 %  of growing churches always used drums or other percussion instruments compared to  8% of declining ones.

 78 %  of growing churches always used Electric guitar or bass compared to  8% of declining ones.

I encourage readers to read the paper by Haskell, Flatt, and Burgoyne in order to better appreciate the magnitude of difference between growing congregations and declining ones. The main differences appear to be along the lines of "revisioning" versus reasserting historic Christian beliefs. It is sad that so many declining churches have to say the Nicene Creed with their fingers crossed.

I think the problem begins with the clergy's beliefs, or lack thereof, for they are the ones who should be teaching their congregants that Gospels are true. The presence or absence of electric guitars is not going to influence the Gospel message unless the music is done poorly or the words of the songs contain false teaching.

Bible study and small groups, and evangelism are found more frequently in growing churches. I remember going to my revisionist priest and asking to start a small group Bible study since he had not led a Bible study in 20 years and attendance was declining. I wound up leading that small group with no input from my rector, but I did have help from a priest in another state with whom I was in communication and who helped provide study questions.

As far as evangelism goes, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard revisionist priests and bishops state, "Numbers (of people in the pews) are not important!"

In a way they are correct. The fewer people under their charge, the better.