Why do some denominations flourish while others decline? A Methodist minister tells Adventists how they can stop growing!

It's a little ironic, I think, that somebody from one of the declining churches should come to talk about church growth to a body that is growing at very significant, precisely constant rates. Church growth seminars such as this may facilitate some of the mechanics of bringing growth about, but I believe denominations basically grow or decline because of something far more profound and basic—whether or not they are good religious institutions.

If they are not able to meet people's religious needs, they're not going to grow. The mainline ecumenical bodies are declining, by and large, because they are not meeting people's religious needs. They may be very good as adult education institutions, or entertainment arenas, or baby-sitting enterprises, or any number of other things, but they're not making the grade as religions. It isn't a matter of how much energy they have; it's what they use it for, and what they understand themselves to be doing.

My focus here is not on the local church, but on national religious bodies. Some local congregations may be growing; some may not. But the denomination as a whole will behave in surprisingly organic ways.

Membership Patterns

If you look at the membership curves of mainline, national denominations from 1958 to 1974 (these are the curves used in the paperback 1977 edition of my book Why Conservative Churches Are Growing), you will see traces of one of the most interesting phenomena of the twentieth century. Certain of the so-called mainline, national Protestant religious bodies that had been following the population escalator for nearly two hundred years suddenly stopped going up, peaked, and started down. That isn't easy to do, but we managed to do it in the mid-sixties!

The United Church of Christ, which wasn't going up very strongly to begin with, suddenly started dropping off, followed shortly by the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., which showed an even sharper rate of decline. The Episcopal Church likewise headed downward.

The three Lutheran churches behaved in what I think is a very significant fashion. The Lutheran Church in America dropped off sharply. The American Lutheran Church dropped off a little less precipitously. And the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod just began to drop off in the early seventies. Now the interesting comparison here is that the Lutheran Church in America is the most ecumenical of the three, since it belongs to both the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. The American Lutheran Church is a little less ecumenical, because it belongs to the World Council, and of course, the Missouri Synod doesn't belong to either. But even the Missouri Synod began to decline slightly in the early seventies.

Contrast

My book apparently was one of the first national publications to point out this embarrassing development. For that reason it was not received with great enthusiasm by these bodies, who thought that although this decline might actually be happening, it was poor taste at best to call attention to it—particularly when one noted that some other churches were behaving rather differently. The Church of the Nazarene, for example, was going upward when these larger, more august bodies were declining. The Jehovah's Witnesses were heading up like skyrockets, and the Seventh-day Adventists were showing a strong upward trend that contrasted sharply with the declining curves of the mainline Protestant churches.

That contrast is, perhaps, most notably apparent in a comparison of two of the largest Protestant bodies in the country: my denomination, the United Methodists, and the Southern Baptists. The Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical and United Brethren in 1968, and rather than the merger serving as a shot of adrenalin to the larger group, they both went down together. The Southern Baptist Convention, however, headed ever onward and upward.

Figures through 1981 bear out the downward trend of the mainline churches. The United Presbyterian Church had the sharpest drift—it had fallen to 75 percent of the membership it had in 1958. The United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church continued to show downward direction. The Lutheran bodies, however, may have bottomed out. Of all the mainline ecumenical denominations, the Lutherans (all of them) have traits that are most like the churches that are still growing. They are a little less permissive, wishy-washy, or however you want to put it.

Growing Churches

When we turn to the record of the upward-moving churches, we find that the Southern Baptists, because they are so large, have curves that are a little less exuberant than smaller bodies. The Salvation Army has a real zig-zag trail that seems to be flattening out at the upper end, though I think they'll take off again shortly. The Church of the Nazarene goes up until we have to move it down to get the upper reaches on the chart. The Seventh-day Adventists go climbing off toward the upper right-hand corner of the graph.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) are increasing at the rate of almost 5 percent a year; and Jehovah's Witnesses have the highest rate of increase of all of those on the chart. They run clear off the board up to about 240 percent, and then they have a sudden glitch, drop down, and then head up again. Their last figure was more than 250 percent of their 1958 membership! Why this glitch? The editor of the Yearbook of American Churches tells me that they predicted the end of the world again, and that produced a certain drop as a result of disappointment. But they'll take off again and keep on going, I expect, for quite a while.

Why?

One wonders why these churches, at this particular time, behaved in that way. Why did some churches suddenly stop growing and start declining? Why at that time?

I have my ideas of why it happened. For instance, I believe that strict membership requirements were very important in maintaining church growth, as well as rigorous theological assertiveness. Not indoctrination so much as the idea, "This is what we believe, and we stand by this. If you don't believe it too, you don't belong here."

They are the relics of once-flourishing religious bodies that are no longer flourishing because, in my view, they are no longer ministering religion to people who need it. They are largely content with the handful of people left over from the last great awakening, or rather, their children or grandchildren.

Religion's Function

Now, if those churches that are best able to meet people's religious needs are the churches that are growing, what are our religious needs? What is the business of religion? The business of religion, in my view, lies not in the area of power, or economics, or entertainment, or art. It's in the area of meaning. It is an effort to respond to the universal question: Why do bad things happen to me? Or to those I love? Or to good people? This is not the only religious question, but it's one of the central ones. Why is the universe the way it is?

If people are unable to find answers to these questions, to bound back from the bad experiences that come to us all, they will tend to fall victim to bitterness, frustration, resentment, listlessness, and aimlessness, and will fall into one or another of the maladies of meaninglessness that are increasingly prevalent today—various escapisms, drug or alcohol addiction, derangements, and even some forms of crime and suicide.

The great religious movements have the ability to take a handful of unassuming little men and women who, because of their total commitment to the explanation of life that a charismatic leader at their center has given them, are lifted up in the scale of human enterprise till the rest of the world slopes down from them, and they become the index of what it means to be really human. That happened in Britain in the eighteenth century, in the Wesleyan revival, where it changed people's expectations of one another. People no longer were willing to put up with the corruption and the exploitation and the victimization that was going on in that society. The Wesleyan revival transformed England.

Why Some Prosper

Well now, suppose that is the function of religion. Then why do some groups succeed with it and others do not? Why does one religion appeal to those with religious needs better than another? I don't know the answer to that.

The function of religion depends upon its being a religion that answers people's meaning needs. And I would contend that it is effective in doing that to the degree that it costs people to belong to that group.

In the realm of religion, money is cheap. Now it's a lot cheaper for Methodists than it is for Adventists, or maybe the other way around, because the per capita giving rates are very different. The Seventh-day Adventists just about lead the field in the amount of money they are willing to give to their church. Methodists are way down somewhere, and Episcopalians are down farther yet.

Discipleship Levels

But money is cheap. That's just the first level of commitment. After someone cares enough about the promulgation of the gospel that he is willing to tithe to support it, then he's on the first level of discipleship. After that comes the giving of one's own time. And then his own energy. And then his own anguish. And then the discipleship of the whole self. Most of the conventional religious bodies haven't even gotten to the first step. For them, religion is one of the peripheral interests of life, meritorious, no doubt, but not one that should take up too much of one's time or effort. That's what passes for religion in most churches, including mine.

How to Stop Growing

What I have to say next might be pointed up best if I speak about how the Seventh-day Adventist church can stop growing and begin declining like the Methodists. I'm sure you want to know that! There are several ways in which the Adventists could become like the rest of us, and I would be surprised if there were not, somewhere among its advanced thinkers, some who have unknowingly found them already. I don't know; I'm not referring to any individuals. But judging from other churches, including my own, I would suggest that there may be those who are offering what they fondly hope will be seen as brave and startling new insights.

You have probably never heard any of those ideas before, but those who are on the advanced edges of religious thought may sometimes come upon them. I don't want to belittle entirely the necessary role of those whose task it is to go about and test the pilasters and the stanchions and the other pillars that hold up a temple, to make sure they're not deteriorating. But sometimes they also discover that the church doesn't need this one, it doesn't need that one, and that all these quaint and peculiar truths are really just trimming on the cake—all that one needs is love or faith.

Too Easy

If rightly understood, it may be true that love or faith is all one needs. But the trouble with these unstructured simplifications is that they're too easy. There is almost nothing you cannot justify doing, if you hold yourself only to the criterion of love as you interpret it. It's too easy. It is too self-indulgent. Rather than being guilt-ridden, most of us are prone to be innocence-ridden, that is, to find justifications and excuses for doing what we want to do anyway. And if we can justify it in the name of love, all the better.

These oversimplifications are inadequate because they deprive faith of its unique and necessary texture and practice and cost.

Rigorous Demands

I would suggest that there need to be a few rather rigorous and specific demands in every religious group to bolster its explanation of life and make it convincing, because convincingness derives from seriousness, which derives from strictness. How can a religion expect anyone to take it seriously if it doesn't take itself seriously?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints requires each of its members to put in two years as missionaries. Not at the expense of the church, but at their own expense! And the Mormons are increasing, not in spite of that requirement, but because of it!

The things that I have mentioned about tithing, the seventh-day Sabbath, foot-washing, et cetera, are the things that make the Seventh-day Adventist movement unique, distinctive, and demanding. They give it its bite, its convincingness, its seriousness. Each church needs its own way of insisting that "you've got to live up to this to be one of us." If you strip the requirements all away, you can render the movement feeble, pallid, and ordinary overnight. So there's the answer to the question: How can the Seventh-day Adventist church stop growing? Be like the Methodists.

Maxims of Seriousness

I was asked by my publisher, in preparing my book, to provide a little "how to" at the end of it. I don't know what will cause those curves to reverse, and declining churches to turn around and start increasing again like an old man growing young. But I suggested what I thought it might take. At the end of the book, I listed several maxims of seriousness:

Distinct

First, those who are serious about their faith do not confuse it with other beliefs, loyalties, or practices, or mingle them together indiscriminately, or pretend they are alike, of equal merit, or mutually compatible, if they are not.

Demanding

Second, those who are serious about their faith make high demands of those admitted to the organization that bears the faith. They do not include or allow to continue within it those who are not fully committed to it. For decades there hasn't been anything you could do that would get you drummed out of the Methodist Church. But John Wesley, in his journal, describes how he came to one of his little societies in Bristol, and found there among the eighteen members a number of triflers and dissemblers. He says, "I made short work of them." After he left, there were seven members of the society. And it was much stronger!

Disciplined

Third, those who are serious about their faith do not consent to, encourage, or indulge any violations of its standards of belief or behavior by its professed adherents.

Definitive

Fourth, those who are serious about their faith do not keep silent about it, apologize for it, or let it be treated as though it made no difference or should make no difference in their behavior or relationships with others. Now I know it's true that there is no particular thing you can do to commend yourself to God. But there are a lot of things you can do that will separate yourself from God. They are called sins, and we do them all the time. But true, effective religious faith requires that you do something different, that you be something different, than you would otherwise do or be if you didn't have it. It must make some significant difference in your life, something that will cost you a lot, because that's what makes religion work. If it doesn't cost, it can't be worth much.