I was struck by a couple of paragraphs in a blog post on UM Insight by Darryl Stephens I'd read recently. Here they are:
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Desert Church
"There are over 32,000 United Methodist congregations in the United States, almost one in every county of every state. We have more local missional outposts than the US Post Office. We also have more local congregations worldwide than McDonald’s has franchises. There are nearly 40,000 United Methodist churches worldwide.
"This means that every time we engage excitedly in conversation about new church starts, there is another half to that conversation that is not nearly so motivational: old church closures.
"The truth is, the UMC has too many congregations in the United States. We have so many congregations we don’t know how to manage them all or what to do with them. And, our leadership does not have the courage or the moral will to close them. So, every time we focus on new church starts without also discussing the hard work of old church closures, we are contributing to the delusion that ministry is only about birth and growth and not also about sustained presence, a good life, and, eventually, death."
Rev. Stephens' words reminded me of a story my dad tells about the time, 20 years ago, when he worked as communication director for the Iowa Conference. My dad came to this position from the world of journalism, not the church.
While he was working there, the conference decided to close two small, rural churches. My dad, following his journalistic instincts, thought that it would be an interesting story to write about these churches and what their congregants were experiencing as they prepared for their churches' closure. He was told, however, that in no way could he write a story about churches closing. It was not the message the denomination wanted to send - closures could too easily be interpreted as failures.
Yet if we are unwilling to talk about church closures, yea, even church failures, then we as a denomination are failing to send a very important message: that Christ Jesus triumphs even over death. Unless we recognize death, we cannot recognize resurrection.
Moreover, in order to really understand the dynamics of denominational decline and possible revitalization in the US branch of the UMC, we need to talk about church closures (and those churches that don't close but perhaps should), not just about aggregate membership numbers for the whole country. One of the central tenets of successful mission work is to pay attention to context. Just so, the dynamics of church decline and growth are shaped by contextual and institutional factors, and two of those factors are congregational size and congregational closures.
If we're not willing to talk about church closures, then we fail to witness to our belief in the resurrecting power of Jesus Christ and we fail to do an adequate missiological analysis of the American mission field.
Dr. David W. Scott, a United Methodist layman, serves as assistant professor of religion at Ripon College in Ripon, Wis. He curates the collaborative blog UM & Global on behalf of United Methodist Professors of Mission, from which this post is republished with the author's permission.