Changing Neighborhoods: The Holy Spirit vs. Demographics ?

My church is facing changing demographics in our neighborhood and declining membership. My church is on the northern side of a major city and up until a few years ago things seemed to be going pretty well, we were growing, and the church was even considering adding on another building.

At some point, the church began losing members. I'm sure we dropped the ball in some areas (shame on us) but we were also fighting an uphill battle against demographic trends beyond our control. Next thing I know, the preacher left for another church and the church began a serious self-examination to address the drop in membership and think about what kind of pulpit leadership our church needed. One step the church took was to hire a statistician from our denomination.

One of the things he did was look at the addresses of our "active" membership and plot them on a map. The results startled me a little. I knew that a lot of people had bought houses north and northeast of the church but I had no idea how pronounced the trend was. He presented some charts similar to the ones below.

On the left is how I theorize the chart would have looked maybe 40 years ago. On the right is a chart roughly representing the current situation. The congregation over the years has moved north and particularly northeast of the church. Only a small percentage live south of the church now.

The statistician went back into the computer databases of addresses looking to see what the geographic spread of addresses was like only 3 years ago and determined that in 3 years there had been a loss of 12% in the members of the congregation living south of the church.

He gave some other comments that really ruined my day. This is not to say I disagree with the data or facts, maybe I just didn't want to hear the message.

• The people moving into the neighborhoods close to and south of the church are from other socio-economic groups (I assume black and hispanic).
• What has likely happend to our community is that the children of our "blue hair" members bought homes north and northeast of us. For a while, they drove back to their home church in the old neighborhood.
  
• Members who live that far away have a hard time convincing their new neighbors to drive back towards the old neighborhood to go to church.
  
• When young adult members' kids get to be school age, their school friends go to a church close by in the new neighborhood .
  
• Eventually, the parents join a church closer to their house so their kids can go to church with their school friends.
  
• The most promising "thinking outside the box" approach for us to take today is to open a "satelitte" church maybe 20 or 30 miles away to the northeast and link the two locations by video. He cautioned us not to build a new location too close. The unstated assumption was that the satellite would eventually grow into the primary location and we would perhaps abandon the current location.

My reaction was something along the lines "Shouldn't we embrace the new residents and reach out to them in Christian love?"

What do the statistics say?

• The socio-economic groups moving into our area don't want to come to church with us. They go back to their old neighborhoods to go to church with people like them. Or.. they build their own churches in their new neighborhoods.
  
• Only 1 church in 20 that tries to reach out to the new socio-economic group moving into their area is successful getting the new socio-economic group to embrace their church.

Upon this news, I must admit I got knots in my stomach. Could it possibly be God's will that we abandon our neighborhood over the next few years? Could it possibly be God's will that we not try very hard to reach out to the new residents who are different from us? Is it true that we are "gifted" by the Holy Spirit to reach the needs of the people who are moving north and northeast and we should follow the demographic group we are gifted to serve? Am I really as open to new people in my church as I think I am? Or.. would God have us take the 1 out of 20 odds on faith? Am I ready and willing to accept the inevitable changes? Am I as ready to welcome other socio-economic groups as I think I am?

I don't profess to know the answer but I guess I still hold out hope we can reach out to the new residents. The pastor search committe took a survey of what characteristics we thought they should look for in our next pastor. I found myself writing that our next pastor should be bilingual. I hope I really meant it.

God, I lift up my church situation to You in prayer. I pray that You will lead us and help us discern Your will for us. If it is Your will that we reach out to the new residents, I pray that You will enable us to serve You in this way. If it is Your will that we follow our traditional constituency, I pray that You will enable this also. Prepare our hearts in either case to serve You and follow Your will. I pray also for our pastor search committe. I pray that You help them discern Your plan for our church and that You would guide them to recommend the person who would align our church with Your will. Lord, search my soul and show me where I need to grow. Help me align myself with Your will no matter where I am. Bless my community, no matter where they came from or where they're going. Draw them all close to You. Amen.

Copyright © 2006 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved