CREEDE HINSHAW: Churches face survival challenges

A Catholic Church in Boston is in the news because the parishioners refuse to leave the building. They have kept round the clock vigil in the church for nearly 11years, spending $100,000 to keep the church open.

Many congregations would love to have dedicated people who won’t leave the church. The trouble in Boston, though, is that the Roman Catholic hierarchy decided 11 years ago to close St. Francis X. Cabrini Church, consolidating or merging it and other Boston congregations. Many of the congregations protested, but most eventually gave up. Not the Cabrini Catholics, who contend on their website that the Vatican is shutting them down in order to afford their sexual predator lawsuits.

Last week, another appeals court ruled that the Vatican, represented by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, has the right to do what it wants with its property. The parishioners were given until 5 p.m. May 31 to vacate the premises. As of my writing, I’ve not been able to learn if the faithful parishioners complied, but suspect they’re still there. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Boston media report the deadline was reset for 5 p.m. June 5.)

You have to hand it to these parishioners. They’ve fought to keep their church going. I don’t know how it goes in other denominations, but the United Methodist Church has hundreds of tiny congregations in open country, county seat towns, suburbs and downtown city centers in danger of closing.

Some of these congregations are just going through the motions. They can afford — for awhile — to pay a preacher and keep the lights turned on, but have no long term hope beyond survival. Some of these withering churches failed to discern how the slow creep of time and death, combined with a changing world, was robbing them of their future.

Most denominations, United Methodist included, cannot shut down a congregation against its will, so the disastrous Boston media spectacle (from the Vatican’s viewpoint) would be a rare occurrence in Georgia. Many of these local churches will either decide to close or will finally wheeze their last breath by default.

The challenge facing most congregations is not whether somebody with more power can shut down a church. The challenge is whether those within that local religious organization can maintain their freshness over the course of decades or even centuries.

A young pastor once accepted the leadership of a declining congregation. He was hired because he had convincingly promised to lead the church into greater vitality. At his first meeting with the church leadership, he boldly announced, “I plan, God willing, to bring this church into the 20th century.”

When one of the leaders politely corrected him, “You mean the 21st century, pastor,” the young man replied, “I’m working on this problem one century at a time.”

Is your congregation open to the fresh wind of the Spirit? Do you have any sense of purpose, of call, of mission? Survival for the sake of survival will not save the church.

Creede Hinshaw, of Macon, is a retired Methodist minister.