Is St. Clements, Seattle poised for growth? Part Four
We are called to be fully human in a way most of us have scarcely begun to imagine
Please, before you read this, look at Part One, Part Two and Part Three
This will be an odds & ends posting. Thoughts that have some relationship with whether any parish can grow. And I’ll continue with the examples being mostly from the life of St. Clement’s Seattle.
Deciding to grow, or not
Kurt Lewin’s three step change theory
Truth
Context
Deciding to grow, or not
In March 2022 the congregation gathered for a “St. Clement’s 2040” meeting. The topic was growth.
For years the word at St. Clement’s was, “We want to remain a small parish.” The March meeting entered into a process of asking “what do we mean by ‘small’?” What we discovered was that, yes, we wanted to be a small parish and “ but not that small!” What difference did the decision make? Two things occur to me.
It provided a reason to make other changes. Once you know you’d like to grow, the question that comes with that is – “what will we have to change to make that more possible?” The answer will be different in each parish.
Will the changes make growth more possible, not in theory, but in fact? We don’t know yet. That means the way you think about change is critical. Some try a change for a bit, don’t see quick results, and want to give up. And sometimes that’s the correct route. Other times it’s an invitation into persistence and humility. That’s where wisdom and discernment come in. I like to think of the change process as a kind of action-research. We identify a change we want to make, an improvement or the solution to a problem. We do something to make the change. We then reflect on what happens. We learn. If we’re not satisfied, we may try again.
At St. Clement’s the decision to grow included three changes. Most started putting on a name tag at coffee hour to make it easier on newcomers. We rearranged the space to allow for milling and conversations. This was in addition to what had been the norm of tables of four that we’d all sit at. And we created a space for child care.
The second shift is less tangible. Maybe something about how we see ourselves. A climate that looks to a future, is more hopeful. Possibly a move from assuming we were on a slow decline to accepting responsibility to grow if that was possible.
The process
We had a short version of Doug Walrath’s size chart on newsprint in the front of the room. The model was explained and people placed a mark on the chart indicating the size that hope we would grow into. [i – see notes for the details]
The exercise is a way of helping the group understand what it seeks. That doesn’t make anything happen in itself. But it can remove the uncertainty about what we desire and open people to the possibility of changing some practices to make growth more likely.
In the St. Clements case there were three obvious barriers to growth. First, was an uncertainty that anyone wanted it. The talk in the parish was “we want to be a small parish.” We didn’t really know what “small” meant. Second, the coffee hour space was arranged in such a manner that everyone was sitting at a small table. It’s an arrangement that can be intimidating to the new comers who finally come downstairs and are confronted with having to join a small group of people they don’t know. Yes, some people are fine with that, but many are not. The issue was how to create more options for the visitor? Third, there was no child care space. People with children had nowhere to leave the children while at Mass.
Parishioners engaged the exercise and discovered that it was true we wanted to remain small and we wanted an ASA of between 56 and 100.
The new clarity helped the parish take action that provided visitors with more options and make their entry easier. The coffee hour tables were moved closer together making space for milling near the coffee pots. The rector purchased two cocktail tables to provide a place for those wanting to stand and talk for a few minutes before leaving. And an unused liberty room was repurposed for child care.
This also illustrates that change is often a gradual process taking years. So, while the parish now has a space for child care it still has no families attending in need of that space. That can only change when the parish hires two people to do that work. Such hiring requires attention and care. And the parish has had other priorities pressing for the attention of the leaders who would do the hiring. So, it’s in the queue. Even then the parish will need to communicate to the broader community that families with children are welcome. How to do that? Certainly placing it on the website is a must. But that can’t be done until it actually exists. There is also the reality that once underway, there will be many Sundays when the parish is paying child care staff and there are no children. And that is likely to cause some tension for some parishioners. People are more or less patient with change processes and willing to invest time and money.
Here's the chart from March 2022
The size we desired was an increase in Sunday attendance from the mid 40s to someplace between 56 and 100. We heard the collective voice of the congregation saying it was open to growth.
Here’s an image of the results of such a process in 2005 in another Seattle parish (transferred from newsprint to this format)
They had an average Sunday attendance of 89. As you can see people believed the parish could be significantly larger. Within several years that parish did move to an average attendance of over 250. We’ll return when we look at Kurt Lewin’s three step change theory of 1) unfreeze, 2) move to a new level 3) refreeze.
Sustainable as we are
God gives the growth. Or not! And sometimes we don’t grow even when we say we want to. We don’t grow even when we make changes to help us grow.
I think St. Clement’s is poised for growth. I may be mistaken. We may find ourselves going another ten years on the same plateau. And that might be just fine. We could continue to engage the purposes of a parish church. We might be institutionally stable with enough resources of money and people. Maybe always a bit apprehensive. Always aware that even another ten people at mass on Sunday would offer a margin of security. And God might turn even our apprehension to good account. The truth of Jesus’ words in Matthew – “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life” – might bring us to a deeper and richer faith and appreciation for the bonds of love among us. It’s useful for a church to make a clear decision about its openness to growth and it usually takes some anxiety to drive that decision. And it is also true that a parish that is anxious about membership growth will communicate that anxiety. Visitors and newcomers may experience it in a variety of ways and it will be off-putting.
Kurt Lewin’s three step change theory
Unfreeze -- Move to a new level -- Refreeze
Lewin believed that you could not understand an organization until you tried to change it. The error consultants make 'is to separate the notion of diagnosis from the notion of intervention.' At every step in a process of planned change you have the opportunity to learn more about the parish, e.g., what information people kept hidden, who had significant influence, what alliances exit, and so on.
Step One: Unfreezing
The current state of things has a kind of comfort in it. There’s a degree of safety and a sense of control. So anything new can threaten that sense of safety and comfort. The proposal to change the physical arrangement of coffee hour can cause discomfort. I may even understand and agree with the reasons for a change and still feel uncomfortable about it. The idea that this will improve things in the future may seem right to us and yet it doesn’t cause a congregation to make the change; to move from the “frozen” position.
You help the unfreezing take place by engaging people with the sense that the current state of things is hurtful in some manner. Things aren’t as we might want them to be.
Now making changes such as wearing name tags at coffee hour -- ones you write your name on and stick on your clothing, not the dust gathering pre-made ones in plastic – doesn’t happen because there is “hurt” over their absence. But the thought of your parish slowly declining, of all you’ve invested ending up with closed doors and sad people, that might touch you. And in that context, inviting you to engage your empathy for the stranger by making it easier for them to engage people without them having the experience of hearing five names and forgetting all of them within a few minutes. So, you put on a name tag. And over a few Sundays you also experience, it’s easier on you because the visitor has their name on them in nice large letters.
And imagine if your parish also developed a deeper understanding about hospitality and welcoming the stranger - “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matt 25:35)” (From the Rule of St. Benedict) – you’d have a shared rationale rising from Christian spirituality to undergird some change.
There are various methods that allow people to experience a gap between what is and what they think should be because there is some degree of hurt in the way it is now. Probably the most effect organization development method for enabling change is survey feedback.[ii] It tends to make the parish aware that there are problems, that some people are disturbed by how things are or where they are going. You can also unfreeze by having experiences with another way of doing things. I had a client that was looking at improving the church school program. I suggested that they interview people from three other parishes with a reputation for high quality programs to see if that stimulated their thinking about what might be done.
Sometimes you don’t have an adequate level of “hurt” or dissatisfaction in the congregation as a whole to unfreeze the situation. To some extent that’s the case at St. Clement’s. The overall satisfaction ratings (see scale in Part Three) indicated room for improvement but maybe not enough dissatisfaction to create a sense of urgency and persistence in the larger group. But it was enough to do some unfreezing. That kind of situation turns things back to parish leaders who see the necessity of change and are willing to engage their own sense of urgency and persistence along with the wisdom to keep things moving while not becoming too annoying about it. It’s a mix of the Apostolic Core and the institutional center providing the energy to act upon the unfreezing that occurs. (See Chapter 3 “Power from the Center Pervades the Whole” in A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery)
Step Two: Making the Change – Transition
You actually make the change. You stop talking about change and do it!
So, the name tags and magic markers are at the entry to the parish hall and most people make themselves a name tag. The physical space is rearranged and for the next 7 months, every Sunday morning, a few people return the room to that configuration after it is changed by other groups using the space. Making the change is a journey rather than a simple step. You may need to go through several stages of misunderstanding and reinforcement. The hardest thing may to be to just start. The second hardest thing is perseverance.
At St. Clement’s the rector and Sister Michelle can often be seen moving from table to table to sit with a new comer for a few minutes. I tend to hang out at one of the tall-boy tables with my coffee and will find myself engaged with a newcomer hesitant to go to one of the tables. In many parish’s the rector needs to look for someone with the gift for such engagement.
Step Three: Refreezing
The Episcopal Church is filled with NF clergy. They may be introverts or extraverts but most take in information with a focus on possibilities and what might be (Intuitives) and sort through information based on their values (Feeling Types). We have a blindside about staying connected to the facts of a situation and making decisions based on logic. That can lead to is a lack of follow through. We get something going and we don’t institutionalize it. A danger that comes with all the intuitive (N) clergy and lay leaders is that they will overload the parish system with good ideas and may keep pushing for more and more (a form of greed and pride). People may fall into a state of “change shock”, where they work at a low level of efficiency and effectiveness as they await the next change
An example related to membership growth can be seen in another Seattle area parish that grew rapidly over several years from 89 Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) to around 265. And when the rector left and the new rector arrived the parish ASA had fallen by around 60. That trend continued until the parish ended up with an ASA of 160. Sister Michelle and I believe that the primary cause of the fall in attendance, and members, was a lack of refreezing. Too many of the new members hadn’t been fully incorporated into the Episcopal Church’s tradition and spirituality.
The refreezing process involves helping people establish a new stability with roots in practices and values that align with the new way of doing things. It took St. Clement’s about seven months before the new physical arrangement for coffee hour was fully established. If those monitoring the change fail to be persistent it is likely that the system will drift back to the old ways. Just because the change happened once doesn't mean it will continually happen or that it will maintain itself. You've got to cement the change into the parish's culture.
Standard methods of refreezing include affirming and rewarding those who help the change become stable and building the new ways into the rest of the system. [iii]
Truth
We are called to be fully human in a way most of us have scarcely begun to imagine. We ourselves are to be places where heaven and earth come together. (N. T. Wright, Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive into Paul's Greatest Letter)
The “truth issue” for any parish isn't simply a matter of morality or ethics. It is one of vocation. The parish exists to be holy, "places where heaven and earth come together." Within most of the secrets of parish life is our sin and human limitation. A reality that can only be addressed by sacrifice, mercy, reconciliation and forgiveness, what Charles Williams called "Acts of the City", the “habits of heaven.”
Being willing to engage the truth is part of how St. Elisabeth’s was able to turn from slow decline to stopping that trend and eventually move to slow growth.
Let’s look at two parishes both in the Diocese of Olympia. I’ll call the first one Parish T and the second is St. Clement’s.
About the truth. I don’t mean the kind of truth we see in statements such as “speaking my truth.” That’s often just another way of saying here’s the part of the truth that I’m at ease with. In the worse cases it’s here’s the conspiracy theory I like. We’re referring to “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” We can see the issue in Parish T as they look at and avoid looking at membership growth data and dynamics.
Start with three possible ways of looking at the Parish T data —
1) They focused on a month by month Average Sunday Attendance from the fall of 2022 to Spring 2024. You could see a trend of increased numbers. It went up and down month by mouth, as you’d expect. But the trend was clear. They had moved from 95 to 116 over about 20 months.
2) Another possible presentation would have been to look at the numbers over a 10 year +/- period. And all year-by-year. In this case you’d see something like this -
2014 - 242 2015 - 214 2016 - 206 2017 - 186
2018 - 181 2019 – 160 2020 - 147 2021 - 54
2022 - 68 2023 - 114
3) A third possible exploration might go further back to see if there had been a significant shift in the recent past. Here’s what you’d find.
2005 - 89 followed by steady growth years-by-year until 2013 when it is reported at 265 in the parochial report. Then we’d see a steady decline - 242, 214, 206, 186, 181, 160, 147, 54, 68, 114. So finally, maybe a turn around.
Each presentation would surface different responses and questions. On the assumption that there might be organizational culture dynamics effecting the ASA increases and declines you’d want to look at the statistics beginning at least in 2005. If you wanted to focus attention on an optimistic outlook you might stress the month by month numbers. Our approach in consulting and leadership would be to offer both.
Here’s one other piece in their puzzle. During the last three interim periods they suffered significant decreases in attendance. I don’t have the number for the first one about 20 years ago. But we do have a statement on the parish website acknowledging a measurable decline in attendance and membership. They also experienced a decline in ASA of about 100 (around 1/3 of their attendance) about ten years ago and another decline of more recently of 33 (about a fifth of their ASA). These last two declines were not acknowledged in the parish history and as far as we know have not been examined in a transparent and professional manner.
At St. Clements we looked at our own numbers.
2011 - 62 2012 - 67 2013 - 55 2014 - 59 2015 - 35 2016 - 47 2017 - 45
2018 - 40 2019 - 40 2020 and 21 - no numbers 2022 – 45 2023 - 43
The parish church exists in sin and human limitation. So, truth is hard. If it calls for much sacrifice we avoid it. We opt for a bit of harmony and a sense of comfort. And in some cases it’s of little consequence. And at other times it is a cancer.
The willingness and ability to see and work with what is true is about the parish’s faithfulness and health. Sometimes it shows in what people feel free to mention and discuss, many parishes have “undiscussables,” which is part of how some churches have found themselves dealing with accusations of sexual abuse. Other times it’s about either not understanding normative organizational behavior, for example, you don’t want any conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest, e.g., the vestry can’t be seen as hiring themselves to do paid work for the parish.
A word about “undiscussables.” Many organizations have things they don’t talk about. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. We respect people’s legitimate privacy needs. We avoid gossip. Other times it’s a serious problem. Two non-church examples. I was consulting with an elementary school faculty in Maine. By the time we completed the morning session I sensed suppressed anger and frustration in the room. I had just presented the Relationship Cycle in Organizations and several people had indicated how the school didn’t have effective ways to manage the “rubs” that emerged. I decided to push things a bit. I asked everyone to close their eyes and to raise their hand if there were significant “undiscussables” in the school’s life. Just about every hand went up. They opened their eyes, and I told them about all the hands being raised. Then I asked them this, “If you are willing to trust me with the information, please write on a piece of paper what is undiscussable. Now fold the paper and pass it forward. I will do what I can with the information.” That gave me the information I need to work with a small team to address organizational issues. (Here’s a PDF of the Relationship Cycle in Parishes).
It was a social service agency. I was meeting with the management team of maybe ten women who were in charge of various departments. We had already spend about a year in which they had learned methods of group problem solving and ways to get everyone’s ideas on the table and acted upon (sometimes moved forward, other times set aside or held to a future time). I wanted to get a read on how much progress we had made. I did the same exercise as in the school example. Only one person raised her hand. I shared that information with the managers. There was no system wide problem with information flow. I spend some time later with the manager who had raised her hand.
One of the signs of a faithful, healthy parish is that there are no undiscussables. What do I make of the two parishes and their willingness and ability to deal with the truth? How does that show itself in facing into the undiscussables and being able to address strategic issues?
What’s the strategic issue in each parish?
Parish T – Why the attendance and membership drop during interims?
St. Clement’s – How to get off the plateau?
What about their ability to deal with undiscussables?
Parish T – There are significant problems there. They appear to avoid acknowledging and looking into the facts around the declines. Is it that they manage the interim period poorly? Or is there an inadequate incorporation process? Or …? The parish can’t even openly discuss these things.
St. Clement’s – A lot of improvement. In recent years the parish was able to talk about things that had been undiscussable. It’s a great starting point. I think there may be a few other areas that will emerge and I’m hopeful that the leaders and the congregation will be able to respond to them with the same humility, courage and persistence.
Context
What is the context that St. Clement’s exists in that impacts membership growth? What is the context of your parish church?
Let’s begin with the local context. Seattle is the least religious large metro area in the United States; 64% never attend religious services. That’s a bit higher than the result for the state as a whole.
Then there’s our institutional context – Episcopal Church membership has been declining for decades. It peaked in 1959 at 3.4 million and had fallen to under 1.6 million in 2022. Average Sunday church attendance for Episcopalians nationwide was 614,241 in 2015; by 2022 it had dropped to 372,952.
Then there’s the larger societal context. From a Pew Report – “The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.”
The pandemic didn’t help – “one-in-five Americans say they now attend in person less often than they did before the pandemic.”
And an even larger scale issue that helps us see religious activity as part of a wider trend. A New York Times interview with “Robert Putnam, the Harvard political scientist whose groundbreaking book “Bowling Alone” warned that America was transforming into a nation of loners who are going to church less frequently, joining fewer clubs and losing trust in fellow citizens. Putnam is now 83, and in the two decades since “Bowling Alone” he has watched the nation become steadily more lonely and polarized.”
For more on contextual issues see Chapter 3 of Finding God in All Things.
My assessment is that St. Clement’s is doing rather well to have stayed on a plateau for the past ten years. We came out of the pandemic somewhat stronger than we enter it. We see new people visiting, and some staying, more frequently than in the past.
Hopeful
I’m hopeful. We may grow in numbers or not. As Paul wrote about something else, “I do not know; God knows. But I do see the more important growth. The kind of growth pointed to by Martin Thornton and N.T. Wright. The kind of growth the rector preaches and the Eucharist feeds.
There is nothing so contagious as holiness
We ourselves are to be places where heaven and earth come together
We are called to be fully human in a way most of us have scarcely begun to imagine.
This abides,
Brother Robert, OA
Feast of the "The Righteous Gentiles"
Notes
[i] It’s useful for a parish to have a common voice about central elements of its direction. About 40 years ago Robert developed a simple process to help a congregation decide what it was seeking in regard to membership growth. He and other consultants have used it in hundreds of parish churches. Here are the steps.
1) A presentation on parish size. There are several available. We generally use Doug Walrath’s - Very Small, Small, Middle-Sized, Moderately Large, and Very Large. We like using the more neutral language rather that “Family”, “Corporate”, etc. We also like how his approach helps people focus on the dynamics and issues of size not just on the numbers.
2) The sizes are offered on large newsprint pages on a spectrum graph / VS/S/MS/
3) An X is placed on the spectrum indicating the parishes current ASA (Average Sunday attendance)
4) Parishioners go to the newsprint and place a mark indicating the size they hope the parish would move toward in the coming years.
5) We have a conversation about the result.
[ii] More on survey-feedback in Chapter 2 of Finding God in All Things. “Survey-feedback is an effective method for expressing and hearing the collective voice of the parish. It also offers a strong connection between the gathering and analysis of information and the ability of the parish community to act.”
[iii] Lewin, K. A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1935. Lewin, K. Principles of topological psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936 Lewin, K. Field theory in social science; selected theoretical papers. D. Cartwright (Ed.). New York: Harper & Row, 1951
Is St. Clement's, Seattle poised for growth?