Life cycle of a congregation
02-03-2012Life cycle of a congregation
Short-lived church starts bring blessings
By Amy Forbus
Editor
Each year, churches within the United Methodist connection are born—and each year, United Methodist congregations make the decision to close. Some of these churches existed for decades or centuries, while others seem young in comparison.
Since 2008, when the denomination began its Path 1 initiative (www.path1.org), church planting in the U.S. has increased by 58 percent. With this intentional focus on new faith communities, the survival rate of new church starts has increased. But the fact remains that not every congregation will live a long life.
“It is hard to get a new church started,” says the Rev. Bob Crossman, director of new church starts and congregational advancement for the Arkansas Conference. “Every local church has a life cycle, a life span.”
Crossman says that a colleague of his in another conference has declared new church starts a mystery.
“They have put what they thought was the right person in the right place, and it hasn’t worked. They have been hesitant to place a person in a location, and it thrives,” he said. “It’s not a cookie-cutter process.”
But a short life is not a useless life. Congregations that survive only a few years can still bear fruit for the Kingdom of God.
‘This one family’
Crosspoint UMC, a new church start in Conway born out of a partnership between two existing churches, Grace UMC and Salem UMC, began holding worship services in September 2008, and closed its doors on Aug. 19, 2011.
“No one really told us when the end was,” said the Rev. Tammy Garrison, the founding pastor. “And so we kept going until we couldn’t go anymore. I even went part-time, and took a position at UALR so we could keep the doors open, because we were seeing some things happening in individual lives.”
She tells of one family that had no previous involvement with a faith community, and first came to Crosspoint because of a flier the launch team distributed at the county fair parade. The father of that family and all four of his children eventually chose to be baptized.
“It’s possible that Crosspoint existed simply to help this one family be introduced to Christ and to begin a Christian journey,” Garrison said. “We feel like, if nothing else, that was worth all of our work and effort. But I think we made some progress in other people’s lives, too.”
She spoke of situations where Crosspoint may not have gained new members, but still served to reconnect people with a faith that had gone dormant.
“We had a Vacation Bible School, it wasn’t huge—we had 12 children who came—but one of those children was a little girl whose family was Catholic, and who had disengaged from their faith.
“Grandma and Grandpa brought her. She had such a wonderful time, and they saw her—for the first time, I think—really paying attention to the fact that she was learning about God. They decided that after it was over, they were going to go back to church.”
When Crosspoint held its closing service, Garrison said there were some sad moments, but the overall outlook was that of celebration.
“I don’t think anybody was sad or disappointed to be a part of what they were a part of,” she said. “I think everybody was glad that they’d had that opportunity and really felt like they had a purpose and had made a difference, that they had been there for a reason. Whether [Crosspoint] made it or not as a congregation, they really felt like it was not time wasted.”
Closing, not failing
Foundery UMC was a new church launched in Lowell (northwest Arkansas) in 1999. Michelle Morris, in her twenties at the time, was baptized through that church’s early ministry, and soon became a leader in the congregation, which closed in 2004.
“One of the questions people usually ask is, ‘Why do you think Foundery failed?’” Morris said. “I correct them right away. Foundery didn’t fail. It closed. There is a difference.”
For evidence that Foundery didn’t fail, Morris points to her own transformed life. Now a student at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology, she earned her Master of Divinity degree in 2009, and has stayed there to pursue a Ph.D. in religious studies with an emphasis on the New Testament. She hopes to return to serve within the Arkansas Conference in 2013.
Morris isn’t the only former member of Foundery to recognize the valuable impact of its brief existence. A majority of Foundery’s members transferred to Elm Springs UMC and contributed to making that already strong congregation even stronger in its witness.
“I think the discipleship we learned at Foundery goes with us and allows us to contribute to the building of God’s reign wherever we have been planted,” Morris said. “The tiny mustard seed has indeed grown into a huge plant.”
Crossman emphasizes that no matter a church’s age, people must remember that their work fits into a much larger picture: furthering the Kingdom of God, not their particular congregation.
“Local churches do not last forever. I don’t believe any of the churches the Apostle Paul started are still open every Sunday,” he said.
“It’s not a human enterprise. We can’t make people want to be in a church… and if we did, that wouldn’t really be the church. This is a faith adventure.”
For more thoughts from Michelle Morris, read her commentary on Foundery UMC.
