CULTURE SHIFT: Leading a Growing Church in Uncertain Times

By Gary Nicolosi

These are difficult times for churches. Less than half the population in the
United States and Canada are now members of any church, and the percentage
of people who call themselves Christian or even believe in God is rapidly
declining. And yet, churches still have the potential to grow into vibrant,
life-giving communities that engage the culture, attract new members, do
good works and share the good news of God’s amazing love in Jesus.
CULTURE SHIFT surveys the history of a changing culture to explain the
conditions which the Church confronts and the challenges it must address.
It details three major culture shifts that are impacting the church and then
offers a framework for an effective missional response.
The heart of the book consists of seven workshops that will be especially
helpful to vestries, parish councils, evangelism and church growth committees,
or even in a parish forum. Any of the workshops may be used without
copyright permission. These workshops include:
• Ministry in an Emerging World
• Building a Missionally-Effective Church
• Change and Paradigms
• Marketing the Church
• Worship Planning
• Building a Better Stewardship Campaign
• Diagnostic Tools for Strategic Ministry Planning
With his extensive experience in ministering to urban, suburban and rural
churches, large and small, Gary Nicolosi is convinced any church can grow if
the leadership and members desire to grow and are willing to pay the price.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663268433

Gary Nicolosi

The Rev. Dr. Gary Nicolosi is an Episcopal priest, lawyer, and church consultant. He is the founder and director of the Institute of Law and Religion which focuses on the interaction of law, religion and culture in North American life. Gary has pastored urban, suburban and rural churches, large and small, throughout the United States and Canada. He is the author of three books and hundreds of articles, including two award winning articles on sacramental hospitality. He has led mission conferences in 37 dioceses throughout North America. He has delivered church growth presentations to the Anglican and Lutheran Bishops of Canada and at the Canadian Anglican Editors Conference, and twice been a keynote speaker at Canadian Synods. Gary has served in many diocesan roles including as a two-time deputy to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. In 1995 he was invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury to participate in the video The Many Faces of Anglicanism. When he served as Congregational Development Officer in the Diocese of British Columbia, he taught a class on congregational development for the Vancouver School of Theology. As Rector of St. James Westminster Church in the Diocese of Huron (Canada), Gary developed the Post Ordination Training Program that trains newly ordained clergy in parish ministry. His sermons are widely disseminated across North America. Although he is now retired, Gary still is active in the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, serving as an interim rector, doing supply work throughout the diocese, and serving on the Church Disciplinary Board. As a member of the New York Bar, Gary practices pro bono immigration and veterans law, and has a keen interest in elder law and special needs planning. Gary has degrees in philosophy from Fordham University (B.A.) and Georgetown University (M.A.). He received his Juris Doctor from Temple University Beasley School of Law, his Master of Divinity from Trinity College, University of Toronto, and his Doctor of Ministry from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He lives in Peoria, Arizona with his wife Heather. Their daughter Allison is a happy resident at Treasure House in Glendale, Arizona.

Book preview

Copyright © 2024 Gary Nicolosi.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

844-349-9409

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6842-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6843-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024923101

iUniverse rev. date: 11/12/2024

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

PART 1: That Was Then…This Is Now…Now What?

Whatever Happened to the Episcopal Church?

1. The Age of Stability: 1950s

2. The Age of Disruption: 1960s and 70s

3. The Age of Hope and Prosperity: 1980s and 90s

4. The Age of Polarization: 2000 to the present

5. An Episcopal Future

PART 2: Culture Shift

Shifting Culture, Changing Religion

Navigating Culture Shift

PART 3: Workshops

How to Use the Workshops

1. Ministry in an Emerging World

2. Building a Missionally Effective Church

3. Change and Paradigms

4. Marketing the Church

5. Worship Planning

6. Building a Better Stewardship Campaign

7. Diagnostic Tools for Strategic Ministry Planning

The Shape Of The Church To Come

Endnotes

About The Author

Books By Gary Nicolosi

PREFACE

Where I live in Peoria, Arizona, there is a gated community called Blackstone. In a natural desert setting, there are about six hundred houses that surround an 18-hole golf course. At the center of the community on the highest hill is an impressive Spanish-style country club with dining, social and athletic facilities. If you didn’t know any better, you would on first glance think it was a monastery. However, God and religion have no part in this club. It is a non-religious organization designed to meet the physical and social needs of members.

If we lived in the 13th century, the country club would indeed be a monastery, or even a cathedral, with houses surrounding it. Life would be centered on God and the liturgical life of the church. The bells would toll and people would either pray or come to worship. But not in the 21st century where golf, pickleball, bocce, dinners, social events and group gatherings occupy the members. It is not that people are no longer religious, though many club members do not belong to any church. It is rather that the secular world has pushed religion to the margins of our lives. That is the power of secularism – relentlessly pushing religion to the sidelines.

I have no illusions that the church can become the center of cultural life once again. The days when the Christian ethic permeated society are over. And yet, churches still can be loving, life-giving communities. This book offers a way to lead and grow the church in these uncertain times.

I want to thank those who have assisted me in this work. Ken Andrews, Deacon Bill Zettinger, the Rev. Carolyn Richardson and Greg Thompson read the book carefully and offered many helpful suggestions. The former Chancellor of the Diocese of Huron, Stephen Adams suggested I write a book on church growth specifically tailored to American Episcopalians and Canadian Anglicans. His support and encouragement has been most appreciated. To Ken, Bill, Carolyn, Greg and Stephen, thank you for being such dear friends.

Finally, I want to commend my former Bishop Kirk Smith for his calm and steady leadership in the Diocese of Arizona, and my current Bishop Jennifer Reddall. She represents a new and younger generation of church leaders possessing an ancient future faith to lead the Church into new horizons filled with enormous challenges but also great opportunities.

INTRODUCTION

Shortly before his death, Archbishop Fulton Sheen spoke at the Law Society of Ontario in Toronto, Canada. He began his talk by saying that we are at the end of Christendom, but not Christianity. Christendom is the economic, political, legal and social life of nations and cultures as they are affected by the gospel ethic. And that now is ending. This means that society is not going to have the influence it had before from Christianity.

But if Christendom is coming to an end, Christianity is not. Christianity has undergone crises before. It is not a continuing thing. Rather it is like Good Friday and Easter: it dies but rises again. Now we are at one of those ages of death – not the death of extinction, but the death of what has gone before.

Take, for example, the period of the fall of the Roman Empire. It is hard for us to imagine what profound shock Christians experienced over the decline and fall of Rome. There was St. Jerome in a cave at Bethlehem disturbed by it. St. Augustine spent eighteen years writing The City of God, trying to understand the significance of the fall of Rome. And then, he thought, This is the end of the world. It was a death. But then, Christianity came to life again with the missionary movement and the conversion of Europe.

Today we are experiencing another period in which Christianity seems to be dying, but it is not the death of extinction, only the death of what has gone before. Christianity will survive, but as in generations past, it will need a new way of being church in a secular, post-modern and increasingly post-Christian culture.

I have ministered as a priest both in the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. Throughout my ministry I have seen churches decline in members, struggle with finances, consolidate resources, and eliminate programs.

The once prominent Anglican Church of Canada that claimed 2 million members in a country of 18 million back in 1961, now has fallen below 300,000 in a country of 40 million. There has been a 57% drop in church membership since 1999. Average Sunday worship attendance is now less than 65,000. The Anglican Church had 2,836 congregations in 1999. By 2024, that figure had declined to 1,498 – a 47% drop. Some church watchers have declared that the Anglican Church is on a deathwatch. That may be an exaggeration. Not all Anglican churches will die, but if trends continue, many will no longer be around by the second half of this century.

The Episcopal Church, though it is far wealthier, also has dramatically declined in members. In 1965 it had over 3.5 million members in a country of 200 million. Today there are 1.5 million in a population estimated at 345 million. The 1.5 million includes churches outside the United States. Remove those churches and the Episcopal Church has about 1.4 million. Moreover, the Church is shrinking not only in numbers but in places of worship. The Episcopal Church had 6,736 parishes and missions in 2011, but only 6,249 in 2022. In other words, 500 have been closed in one decade. The Episcopal Church is spiraling downward – there is no other way to say it.

And yet, it is not just the Episcopal Church that is declining. According to a 2021 Gallup poll, for the first time in 80 years of surveys, church membership in the United States has dropped below 50%. That event marked decades of decline, given that 70% of the country belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque as recently as 1999. Even more disconcerting, over the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% to about 30%. Church membership decline has affected all major subgroups in our population: men and women, college and non-college graduates, married and unmarried, Republicans, Democrats and Independents, conservatives, moderates and liberals, Protestants and Catholics, and people from every part of the country.¹

Mainline Protestant churches are hemorrhaging members. About 1.7 mainline Protestants leave the faith for every one that joins, while conversely, 1.2 evangelical Protestants join the faith for every one that leaves. The numbers are indisputable. Mainline churches, including the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada, are shrinking at an alarming rate.²

Many churches in the United States and Canada seem incapable of addressing what is happening. As one Canadian Anglican bishop said in response to yet another state-of-the-church presentation, Don’t tell me any more bad news. I can’t handle it.

It is no longer possible for the Church to put its head in the sand and hope that the present crisis will pass over us like a desert windstorm. In today’s secular culture, six in ten people lose their faith in Christ and the church for every one person who converts to it. In both the Episcopal and Anglican Churches, about half of all who are raised in the church no longer attend or even believe anymore. If present trends continue, by 2070, the Nones – those without any church affiliation – will be a majority of the U.S. population. The trends are not on our side.

These are anxious times for the church. This book is written to help clergy and lay leaders navigate these times – what I call culture shift. As a priest I have led church growth workshops and seminars in thirty-seven dioceses across North America. My message at every workshop is that church decline is not inevitable and church growth is possible. Despite culture shift, some mainline churches are growing.

My former church, St. Bartholomew’s, Poway, California, became one of the fastest growing Episcopal churches in the United States. When I left the parish in 2005, it had over 2,500 members. A church started in 1959 in a rural part of north San Diego County experienced enormous growth thanks to excellent clergy and lay leadership. Parishioners caught the vision of an open church with a passion for Jesus.

While not every church can grow like St. Bart’s, every church can grow. There may be exceptions in economically depressed and rural areas, yet even in those communities there will be people who do not belong to any church. In fact, there is likely not a community in the country where the church does not have the opportunity to reach out, minister to, and share the gospel with people who are unchurched.

Every church has the potential to grow spiritually, numerically and financially – and this book shows a way to do it. Growth begins when we develop open churches with a core gospel message combined with flexible methods of ministry. The task is to build bridges between the church and the secular world. Churches need to have a clear and positive message focused on Jesus combined with a caring and supportive community that explores the questions in an open, non-threatening environment. Episcopalians refer to this kind of church as one that offers radical hospitality. A church where people can face tomorrow in the power of God’s love. A church where people can make a lot of mistakes and still feel loved, accepted and forgiven. A place of grace for everyone willing to live with grace towards everyone in need of grace.

Culture Shift: Leading a Growing Church in Uncertain Times gives the principles and methods for leading the church to renewed growth and vitality.

39001.jpg Growing churches have a passion for Jesus. Church growth is not primarily about feasibility studies, demographic reports, marketing strategies, church management seminars and master plans for diocesan restructuring. These things may be helpful, but church growth is fundamentally about having a passion for Jesus. When Jesus is the center of a church’s life, it grows. Growing churches may vary widely on theology, liturgy and ministries, but they all have one thing in common: a passion for Jesus and a desire to share Jesus with others.

39001.jpg Growing churches seek to understand the community around them and to fashion their ministries to meet the needs of their target audience. They strive to be culture-friendly, building bridges with the people outside the church, and connecting with them at their own level of need and understanding.

39001.jpg Growing churches have defined parameters but allow freedom and flexibility for people to explore Christian faith in their own way and at their own pace. They accept that the church is more of a way station than a destination, and that people will come and go, but that they will always be welcomed and accepted at whatever stage of their spiritual journey.

39001.jpg Growing churches have a clear message of Christian faith but their methods of ministry change and adapt to changing circumstances. They hold fast to their core faith but make everything else secondary.

39001.jpg Growing churches welcome and accept seekers into the church as the surest way of helping them believe in the faith of the church. In growing churches ‘belonging leads to believing’ rather than ‘believing leads to belonging.’

39001.jpg Growing churches know that people desire an encounter with God before they accept beliefs about God: experience + community = faith. We live in an experiential world where truth is not discerned by the mind but experienced in the heart. Seekers do not want to know about God; they want to know God in a personal relationship. Experiential religion is what attracts Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z to church.

39001.jpg Growing churches have leaders who are cultural anthropologists. They know and study culture with as much diligence as they study scripture. They engage people, know who they are, their values, beliefs, lifestyles, experiences, and backgrounds. They also know the culture and whether it is hostile, neutral or friendly to Christianity because that will shape how they do ministry.

39001.jpg Growing churches are bilingual: translating the language of classical faith into the language of contemporary culture. They do not presume that the majority of the population knows the Christian story or knows it accurately. Nor do they presume that when the church speaks, most people understand what is being said. They know that Christian rituals, such as the Eucharist or Baptism, may not resonate with people who have little knowledge or understanding of Christianity.

39001.jpg Growing churches have a mission to transform lives in Jesus by meeting people at their point of need and understanding, accepting them as they are rather than as we expect them to be, speaking their language, answering their existential questions and showing unconditional love and acceptance.

39001.jpg Growing churches have leaders who develop the vision and see the big picture while not ignoring the details. These leaders are focused, yet humble; committed but open; decisive but collaborative; caring for people but doing what has to be done to accomplish the mission.

39001.jpg Growing churches are healthy churches. Healthy churches have the ability to grow; unhealthy churches do not. How do we know which churches are healthy or unhealthy? For one thing, they have healthy church leaders. Secondly, they practice the seven ministry areas well: Service, Worship, Education, Evangelism, Pastoral Care, Stewardship and Spirituality (SWEEPSS).

39001.jpg Growing churches hate bureaucracy because it kills initiative. Simple and functional church structures are the least likely to stifle new ventures in ministry. These churches encourage new ministries that are compatible with the mission of the church. They empower members without micromanaging their actions or second-guessing their decisions. They know that giving people permission to fail is the best way to help them succeed.

39001.jpg Growing churches know that all ministry is contextual – there is no one size fits all approach. Every church is unique with its own set of challenges and opportunities. These churches explore and experiment with different models of ministry that fit their particular cultural context. In a world of increasing fragmentation, these churches are comfortable with diversity while maintaining a core faith.

39001.jpg Growing churches, in the words of an ancient Chinese poem, Go to people. Live among them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build on what they have. These churches do not bring Christ to people, rather they find Christ in people.

These principles are explained in more detail throughout the book. Part One surveys the history of culture and church from the 1950s to the present day, and concludes with an assessment of the Episcopal Church and its likely future without a turnaround.

Part Two details three culture shifts that are severely impacting the church today. It offers seventeen pointers on how churches can navigate culture shift in these uncertain times.

Part Three, the heart of the book, consists of seven workshops: ministry in an emerging world, building a missionally-effective church, change and paradigms, marketing, worship planning and stewardship. There is a concluding workshop on diagnostic tools for planning which is designed for vestries, parish councils, evangelism and church growth committees, or even for the entire parish. Any of these materials may be used