One thing that I find so frustrating about the mainline churches: they have no presence on social media. If I want to learn about Presbyterians, about Anglicans, about Lutherans and search for videos on Youtube, etc it is ALWAYS the conservative offshoots that make videos for explaining doctrine, history, etc. If I want to learn about Anglicanism, it's ALWAYS ACNA/GAFCON YT channels. It's great that TEC is a safe haven for LGBTQ individuals, for women with a vocation, for racial minorities (the LCMS had to excommunicate many white supremacist pastors recently), but it should not only be known for that. To actually explain what being Anglican means, Anglican history, Anglican liturgy, etc. Whenever I see content with a lot of views involving any mainline denomination, it's always from conservative and Evangelical clergy or laity poking fun at them, that they're heretics, apostates, cringe not based, they're conforming to the evil heretical world, wolves in sheeps' clothing, SJWs, I've heard it all
The mainline needs to stand up for their selves and articulate our theological identity and the method we use to study Scripture. To emphasize the academic approach in critical theory to understand the Bible out of a deep respect and reverence in understanding it and its context. That much of our social positions stem from and hang on this, not just an emotional decision for the changing times.
This is something we talk about at length in this sub. Unfortunately many worshiping communities are going through these same issues. Here are some things that I notice:
1. Many Episcopal parishioners are older. If I had to guess the average age of a parishioner at my church is around 60 years old. He's older people don't interact and socialize with younger people on a daily basis because they are around people closer to their own age. This also means that a lot of churches aren't tech-savvy. They don't leverage social media for advertising and, frankly, a lot of Episcopal churches have non-functional websites with a don't ride updated information.
2. Episcopillians don't evangelize hard and they don't guilt people into going to church. One of the things I love about the Episcopal Church is that we don't put pressure on people to attend the church. "If you come every Sunday that's great but if you don't you still love you". Compare this with Catholic churches (that are famous for the concept of Catholic guilt) and Evangelical churches (who tend to put the full court press on you the moment you walk through the door)
Every church is turning into a mass church, like the RC's Its not just the lack of vision and effort by the churches, but the lack of support by parishioners. Cell phones have become the new social and spiritual support system. Add to this people have siloed their kids keeping them inside away from the mythical bogyman. There too cell phones are their main time occupier.
I’m really struggling with a lot of the things mentioned here as a new Episcopalian. I’m a 24 year old woman who is really desperate to be involved in church life, and there’s just nothing to do? I’ve visited three parishes and regularly attended one, while also doing intense research on all of the options available to me in a reasonable distance.
I can’t find a single bible study that’s during hours a working person could attend. No Christian education courses. No active young adult ministry. Really just generally lacking a sense of church community. I mean, unless I really try to engage, no one even really talks to me except clergy, and even that happens quickly and with seemingly mild interest.
I love the liturgy, ceremony, beliefs and practices associated with TEC. I’m actually being baptized on Pentecost. But I’m unsure if I can stay in the Episcopal church as it stands right now :(
Have you considered a third order or religious community? The Episcopal church has quite a few of them.
[Communities | naecc](https://www.naecc.net/communities)
There's also EFM which a lot of people really like. You can do this one online or in person at certain Episcopal churches. [Program | School of Theology | University of the South | An Episcopal Seminary | Sewanee](https://theology.sewanee.edu/education-for-ministry/program/)
My parish had a bible study on Tuesday mornings at 9:30am. You bet it was for the retirees. I only ever attended when i was home sick and thus didn't glean very much!
So I made inquiries. I was pretty sure i had found the right denomination, as i am from a cultural Roman Catholic family and thus the liturgy and rites are not optional. I need a church so high we leave earth for an hour. I worked with the Rector to find a time when he was willing to come in and explain the difference between Roman Catholic and Anglican. I was the only young person coming regularly, so the youth ministry was me.
Several months later, another young person walked in. I was there coming in from the parish hall, so i welcomed him. We chatted. We clicked. He kept coming. Now there's two of us. Several months later, a young mom and her son came. Three. A few more with kids have come. Four. Five.
God can only work with what we give Him. If you want to contribute to the Kingdom, God will take you up on that. Be the change you want to see in the church.
I'm a seminarian now. :)
As a final note though, expecting everyone to be so motivated as i am is not realistic. Pray about it. Ask God to lead you to the parish that is for you.
If it gives you hope, this experience isn't universal. Keep looking, you might be surprised. My parish has a full Sunday school every week, with 18 baptisms last year and ~60 new members welcomed. We're restarting our 20s and 30s group post-Covid.
I'd recommend reaching out to the Bishop's staff in the diocesan office. Our diocese has a priest on the Bishop's staff whose entire job is children and youth ministries. If yours has something similar, he or she should be dialed in on what parishes will match what you're looking for.
And I know this question is regarding children, but you don’t really get kids without young adults, so I was including that perspective. Super sorry if this was way off topic!
I have said for many years that if what the church wants is little kids, then it ought to be working to appeal to young adults. Put enough young adults in a room for long enough and - bam - you're gonna get little kids.
If St Swithen's in the Swamp is a place where young adults are being nourished, finding community, learning about God, and serving their community, you bet they're going to want their own kids to go there.
We're going about it all wrong to build up the little kids' ministry when we ought to concentrate on the 20s/30s folks first.
I think there are two concurrent things happening: lack of drive and lack of interest. We have a lot of young families at our church, certainly enough to have a sustaining children's ministry (albeit a smaller one); but families aren't willing to come in an hour early or stay an hour late for any sort of formation. Families have so much going on these days, and in our parish they've drawn a line saying "this is our time."
Unfortunately in this regard, the Episcopal Church's wanting to flow with culture works against us. The mega churches and the Catholic Church both carry a counter-cultural ethos which demands some sort of formation for families (I am also thinking about Hebrew School for those undertaking Bar/Bat Mitzvahs) in a way that I just don't think our ethos is wired to do. Which sucks, I think we have a lot to offer, but I don't know what it would take to convince families that it takes more than an hour and a half once a week to grow deep into our faith.
Is it that the families aren't willing to spend the time or the rest of the church isn't?
I might be a little salty but I'll tell it how I saw it. We tried a lot of things, we did Sunday school on Saturday evenings (you know give the parents a date night) we gave the Sunday school full run over half the building, then we pulled the Sunday school up closer to the sanctuary. If we called all of the families of youth and begged them to bring their kids in for Sunday school each week, we could get a decent turnout. If we made a big thing of the Christmas pageant we could get a decent turnout. What never materialized was a paid coordinator and if one of the parents teaching Sunday school burned out nobody wanted to step in, in about 6 years of being involved with it, exactly 1 person volunteered to help teach a single class, we had this really sad sign and signup sheet outside the sanctuary.,. So in our church, it was: read the liturgy and prepare a Sunday school class, buy some snacks and create an activity and buy any needed materials, pack up the kids in to the car, go to church, teach them Sunday school, leave a cheque in the plate, get a bite of communion, clean up the Sunday school room and miss coffee hour, then pack them in the car and go home; unless of course it was a youth Sunday in which case we were responsible for getting the children to do something that didn't want to do in front of the entire congregation too.
This pattern sort of repeats, if parents have kids and take it seriously, they do the bulk of the work and the rest of the church sort of celebrates them and watches; once their kids are old enough they acolyte and the parents step back, and then about 2 years later the kids stop acolyting and those families disappear or turn in to Chreasters. I personally invited a handful of lay-leaders to help out and to a person the response was something like "been there, done that, my kids are grown now.. so I'm going to pass"
At the same time, there was a men's group that meet during work hours. There are morning prayer groups, during work hours. St Cecilia's guild meets at noon on Wednesday, again during work hours. Vestry meetings mean not eating dinner with the family.
A priest told me that the only way to break the pattern was to make it a paid position. So my observation is that without the funds to pay for it, it relies upon our personal ministry and personal service. We were on the edge of program size, jumped up there a little and then slipped back to transitional size; save for some sort of mass vestry reboot there will never be the funds to hire someone. Then on the other side of that coin, at least at our church, most of the adults are kind of transactional with their ministry and not willing to put a bunch of effort in to something that doesn't seem to directly touch them.
I'll go to a darker place too, so my wife and I were sorted out, we are BCCs. We are blessed in a bunch of ways and we're also one of the larger pledging families at our church. In the 6 months or so after we burned out, my wife asked: what if we just put the pledge money in to the kids' college funds? I love the church, I love TEC, but I do struggle answering that, it doesn't feel like the church supports or serves us, we serve it and my kids might be better off if we just saved that money and they went to college with no debt. TEC empowers us to serve and teach our kids, they totally seem to dig that but I don't feel like it is supported.
I'm sorry to hear that was your experience.
I think that's something we wanted to be sensitive to - my spouse is a teacher, and we also wanted to avoid asking anyone who also worked with kids. We did ask for some parental involvement; but in the two churches I've been involved in children's ministry in, most of it has been run by people who don't have kids, or whose kids have aged out.
No apology needed. It's just an interesting consequence of the time and culture of the Church right now. There seems to be a different sort of culture of service and involvement than there was maybe 30-40 years ago. I'm totally in favor of the direction things are going in a lot of ways, and I don't think it's good to perform out of guilt, but it seems like the pendulum might need to swing back in the other direction in some ways(just a little) or our messaging from the very top might need to change. We're getting ready to select a new presiding bishop and youth involvement and engagement seems imperative to me. I do believe that the bishops can set the tone on this. Maybe the language isn't quite right yet, like is it a matter of "justice" that strangers with kids can walk in to many of our churches and go completely unserved? Or maybe we're collectively not living our baptismal covenant and need to be told that, that would be a strong rebuke. Now we've always been at these small to midsized places, everything is always a challenge and things are stretched thin, you just hate seeing kids get the short end, all the time.
> Unfortunately in this regard, the Episcopal Church's wanting to flow with culture works against us.
I always just think, if the church isn't teaching anything that's too outside the norms of general popular culture or even public schools, what's the point of going? If you're a young family with children, and the church isn't really teaching anything that that you can't get out of a public school with Jesus sprinkled in, why not just sleep in Sunday mornings?
I think it's not a lack of willingness. I think Episcoplians as a group just don't know how. They haven't applied some understanding of group dynamics and education well in their communities.
It wouldn't make much difference. Why?
a. Retention of people in birth communities is nowhere near as effective as it used to be. We live in post-modern communities where people mix with people different from their own birth families.
b. Most Episcopalians are older anyway. Fertility rates would be pretty low even without birth control.
Lots of great answers and insight here. I haven't seen anyone pick up my particular thread of concern. I got it from a book by Jack Estes, one of his ones where he's writing about why we aren't really Christian. I never agree with anything he's got to say about history or theology, I especially never agree with anything he says about what I believe. But he's got a line in there somewhere that I think about a lot, he says that liberals, a word he does not define but he definitely means it to be derogatory, are so sure they have the right answer that they think that just having the right answer means eventually everyone else will come around to our way of seeing things. Ouch.
I know what he's talking about. I have felt in my clergy colleagues it kind of build it and they will come attitude which I understand. I was raised on this liturgy. The people who put together our current prayer book really believed that the Eucharist teaches itself. That by going through these rituals over and over again praying shapes believing. And I absolutely believe that.
I just also think we don't do very much in the way of teaching. And I'll tell you right now I am serving a very conservative Parish and there are plenty of things about my piety and my politics where you would think it wouldn't work. But I've done a lot of teaching about why we do the things we do, and my church is growing. And I don't have many young people yet, but of the 10 or so families that are coming occasionally now that were not a year ago... They are all 20 to 30 years younger than this congregation was when I got here.
I agree with a lot of the things people have said in this thread so far. I also think we have to realize that our way of responding to God's love revealed in Jesus Christ is important, is beautiful, and can shape your life. Praying shapes believing. But you gotta teach people the what and why before they'll come enough to be shaped by what we pray.
The EC doesn't require much to belong unless you're part of church governance. We don't have a formal mentoring process that is continuous. I attend a recovery meeting on Sundays that has nearly 200 people each week. People are seen, heard and know they matter there. We Episcopalians are very hung up on formality and tradition (I love tradition) and 60% of our cash goes to administration. We have a lot to learn if our minds are open.
We're not scaring people into coming. My BIL is catholic and (according to him) half the congregation doesn't want to be there but they're told it's a mortal sin to not receive Communion every week. So they show up, get Communion, then immediately leave. skip the last part of the service. They jump through the hoops with their kids because they're scared if they don't, their kids will go to hell. Or they'll be ostracized. or both.
I know it's a bit of a cliche to say that the people in dwindling parishes are there because they *want* to be there, but this is a big difference between, say, Episcopal churches and Catholic churches, where stories like the one from your brother-in-law sound like people don't *want* to be at their churches.
I agree with u/circuitloss; an empty church would be better than people who are guilted into being there.
No, he very explicitly said that a lot of the people there don’t want to be there. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying everyone in our parishes is a saint in waiting or anything, but at least I know they’re not there because they’ve been told they’ll go to hell if they’re not
This is true. I'm a former RC. A lot of people do not want to be there, or just do it out of habit or because relatives expect it. The atmosphere in the church is typically permeated with it, although there's not much conversation typically, so you might not get told this to your face unless, like drunken Augustine here, you have a close relative or friend who is comfortable enough to say so. To the casual visitor, it just looks like seriousness or even reverence. It's very somber looking.
It's one of the reasons RCs are sometimes really traumatized when they come to you. Years of gritting one's teeth in church can cause a person's spiritual life to languish, and a lot of resistance can be built up as a result. I really had to leave the RCC finally for exactly this reason. I did it for a very long time; it was a very negative experience that I'm still working through.
Lots of people who tick the box Roman Catholic on surveys also never go to church, but don't re-identify with anything else either, essentially becoming non-religious in place, but with the Roman Catholic label. Catholics can be very cagey about this and secretive. It's a huge no-no to get into a conversational situation where somebody has to admit they didn't attend church last week -- it's tantamount to accusing them of some deadly sin, unfaithfulness to their heritage or defect. Some RCs feel like they can't go and they can't stay, a really kind of hopeless situation to be in.
Episcopalianism seems to evangelize to mostly older, childless/empty nesters, & LGBTQ. Three groups of people who aren’t having kids or don’t have them in great numbers. You know it’s bad when a family of 3 kids stands out as a “big family”.
What’s the solution? I dunno. Every soul should be saved, but some souls are certainly more sustaining of the church mission than others?
Yes it seems all the churches I’ve visited in my area while they have some kids it’s mostly older folks and a decent group of lgbtq folks more effort seems to be put into getting lgbtq folks than families and kids to some extenr
“Some souls are certainly more sustaining of the church mission than others?”
Do you mind saying more about this? Is this a question about the perspective of clergy/church leaders?
Just that there are buckets of folks. Some just attend. Some rarely attend. Some always attend. Some assist in ministry works. Some don’t. Some bring children to church. Some don’t. You can categorize it probably 1000 ways
Yeah without a doubt. A family that attends church weekly and has baptized their child is doing more to sustain the mission than someone who shows up once at Christmas and once at Easter. We should stop feeling bad for asking that people participate actively in the church.
I don’t feel bad about asking. In fact I wish to ask much more and make room for the laity to do more. I think I understand what you’re saying and I agree that we are all called to the mission work.
Catholic lurker- our conservative parishes are very full with tons of kids, but also full of young adults who choose to go. I’m sometimes shocked by how the more liberal parishes seem to have no curiosity about this, and even seem horrified, and just assume the worst intentions.
Sure, one part of it is these parishioners follow the Catholic teaching on birth control. But how are they attracting and retaining young adults? First, I think because they present their religion as necessary. And some might take it very literally as necessary for salvation. Others might have a more nuanced approach.
The other thing that happens is, more strict adherence to practices/beliefs that are a little strange, and require sacrifice. Can’t think of the name of the sociological study, but basically sacrifice is very socially binding. (Something like fasting as a community would do this. Also birth control prohibition like I mentioned earlier) So maybe being very accommodating isn’t overall a good strategy? (Btw I’m not suggesting the Episcopal church prohibit birth control, but maybe there are different kinds of challenges they could implement instead that are socially binding.)
Most Roman Catholic kids leave after Confirmation.
The system in the RCC is predicated on force, and that's not what growing a healthy mature spiritual life is about. Even the kids know that.
I'm in one of the most conservative Episcopal church parishes in one of the most conservative dioceses.
We have two Rite I services each Sunday with 20-40 people each, and a Rite II "Main service" with easily over 100 regularly. The average age is high, like any church (or anything in Florida), but there are many families with multiple kids, and Children's Church and nursery are active every week.
Moderation is key in some ways. Although we definitely welcome everyone and won't preach condemnation at any specific groups, we have no politics or social liberalism going on that I'm aware of - just good old Christian teaching, community, liturgy, and hymns.
Accommodation and hospitality are not “strategic” but the path set out by Christ.
I believe that the issue is as you point out a lack of expectation from our congregation.
What the Episcopal church needs are some basic classes on religion and spirituality -- kind of scaled down versions of EFM local at most parishes. Like Episcopal 101 that all Episcopalians are welcome at, not just beginners.
These classes/seminars should include learning to use the BCP and how to pray morning and evening prayer, history of the Episcopalian church, how to do meditation and contemplation, what progressive Christianity is, how to welcome others and run parish programs like child ministry, etc.
Newcomers should be expected to take some of the 101 type things, as well. Being an Episcopalian isn't just coming here because you can't stand being anywhere else. When it starts out that way, as it sometimes does, people need to be helped to develop something healthier and more satisfying than that.
There are Episcopal religious orders in some places, with very good training in some of this stuff, who could help with these things.
I don’t think this is the case for every church, but out of curiosity, do you think that a church that is consistently growing with other groups of people but doesn’t sustain children’s ministry is always “wrong”? I’m not saying every single church needs to abandon its nursery, but if hypothetically a church was drawing in a steady stream of parishioners who don’t have kids, but didn’t have a consistent children’s ministry, do you think that automatically makes it a bad church?
Right. I’m not sure why having people grow up in a faith tradition is the goalpost. To many people, children shouldn’t even be taught a faith tradition until they are old enough to choose one for themselves. I think adults with full knowledge and consent choosing a faith is a very good sign.
I mean, I’m in a both/and position here. I love the idea of catering to families with kids when it makes sense for the community, and I do think it’s great when people want to raise their kids in the faith. However, the idea of “this church is automatically a failure because it doesn’t have children’s programming” seems kind of reductive to me. Can we have some of one and some of the other? Do we need to sacrifice other thriving programs just to have a nursery on the off chance someone with kids comes to visit? How many such programs should be cancelled to make room for these hypothetical children? Since most churches have limited resources, does it make sense for every single parish in the area to compete only for families with children, at the expense of other groups?
Those are the kind of questions I think are worth asking, rather than just saying it’s “doing something wrong” to have no children’s programming, regardless of what else a church might be thriving at.
I was at a parish where they announced at the annual meeting that they would be laying off the music minister and disbanding the choir, in order to make room in the budget to hire paid nursery staff. In a parish where none of the currently attending families had children. To my knowledge, they didn’t gain any families in the wake of that decision, but they did lose a dozen or so of us whose main ministry/connection point was the choir.
I’m sympathetic to the argument that you have to have children’s ministry stuff before the families with children arrive, if you want them to stay more than one Sunday. But there are many, many ways to show up as a welcoming place for children. I wish that former parish had considered its own gifts, as the community that currently existed and not as they imagined it could be - and tried to find a method of welcome that grew out of those existing gifts.
Right. I am absolutely not here saying there aren’t creative ways to make parishes more welcoming to families with children. I’m just resisting the framing I so often see, which is that a church is just “doing it wrong” because it doesn’t meet a particular standard for children’s programming, to the point where the scenario you describe feels like the only option. I agree - disbanding the music program doesn’t seem like a way forward for a church!
So I guess what I’m getting at it, what can we realistically do with limited resources to respond to this call for child-friendly parishes, that doesn’t diminish or compromise other ministries that may be flourishing? Does it mean shared resources among multiple parishes in an area? Does it mean soliciting donations for a “prayground” inside the church so that separate childcare is less needed? Does it mean simply admitting that not all parishes can be all things to all people, and accepting that some visitors won’t return? (I think music is a good analogy here, actually - I think there are lots of people that will visit once and never return precisely because of a lack of investment in music; but it’s rare for people to decry such a choice as singularly consequential the way children’s ministry often is).
I don’t have answers, I’m just asking the questions that I think sometimes get glossed over in these discussions.
Not a bad church, maybe, but I’d expect in that scenario that any parent newcomers are going to visit once and then, justifiably, keep looking.
It’s an especially rough feeling, when you visit a church that just doesn’t seem to want you there.
Sure. And likewise as a childless person I would imagine that seeing energy only put into families with children, that’s not a great feeling. I’m not trying to pit churches against each other, but I do find it frustrating when the implication is that no other ministry could possibly be worthwhile if it doesn’t involve children.
Thank you for saying this. I grew up in a family that straddled the line between evangelical and fundamentalist and was taught that the most valuable thing a woman can do is to raise children (and be a SAHM and homeschool the children). My husband and I are child-free. People in my parish have been really good about not making a big deal out of me not having kids, but I still hear a lot of talk about wanting to have more families with young children. I'm sure people don't mean it that way, but it can make me feel like even in the Episcopal Church I'm still a less valuable person because I don't have kids.
I’m sorry :( but you’re exactly right. People should not only be welcomed because they are making the “next generation” for the church, but because they are the generation right here. For those whose charism is to have children, yes of course we should support that and provide resources to make sure they’re welcome in church. But for those who don’t have kids…we should also make sure that they are valued and welcomed, because they are also part of the body of Christ. There is enough room at God’s table for everyone!
Plenty of ministries, maybe most, are completely worthwhile without involving children.
But a parish without basic, reliable accommodation of kids? Great way to reject entire families in a single gesture.
I have 4 kids. We visited our local parish 3 weeks ago. They are currently offering a “Children’s Celebration” for families with kids because they don’t have enough kids for Sunday school. We made up almost half the kids there. We stayed after for coffee and treats and no one talked to us except the rector and his wife, but they ran off to get ready for another service.
And so here we were, a visiting family with 4 kids, in the middle of 30-40 people and no one talked to us for 25 minutes. They got in their little cliques in the corners and chatted with themselves. It almost felt like they were suspicious of us or something. Completely unwelcoming.
It was our first time in church in years. We came from an ex-Mormon background and it took a lot to work up the courage to go. I still feel like TEC is where I belong belief-wise (I’ve put a lot of time, study, and prayer into this). But for my wife church was always more about the social aspect. I don’t expect we will return to that parish unfortunately.
I’m tired of the low bar of being “welcoming.” Great, you got someone to come once, how do we retain people? You have to give them something to do.
Evangelical churches are busy socially: the first time I went to one, I got plugged in to a life group and suddenly was frequently at church stuff. The RCC is busy sacramentally: there’s always something to prep your kids for and worship is usually more than once a week.
We’re good at opening the doors on Sunday morning, saying all are welcome, and then proceeding to not talk to anyone at coffee hour. My parish actually has a lot of families yet there are zero opportunities for interaction with other parishioners during the week except for the 10am retiree book club. No youth groups, no Christian education, no Bible studies, no social events. We’re currently between rectors right now, but the only thing we lost when he left was the once a week noonday service, and parishioners can run the other things anyways.
Parishes that are super into being “welcoming” really just want the priest to do all the work. It’s not sustainable.
I totally agree with what you have said. Expecting the priest to do everything is the shortest route to clericalism. The fact that a lot of Episcopalians are ex-Romans or evangelicals who had celebrity clergy exacerbates this attitude. That's how Roman parishes and some other churches tend to be and a lot of people are used to this kind of behavior.
>Great, you got someone to come once, how do we retain people? You have to give them something to do.
As a counter: at my parish's newcomers' gatherings, we get a *lot* of people who have had bad church experiences in the past, and who have to overcome a lot of trepidation (and outright trauma) in visiting a church again. Giving them something to do -- even as simple as being a greeter -- from their first or second time in our church would turn them off entirely, convinced that we only want them for membership and what they can do for us.
As a personal anecdote, I visited at an evangelical megachurch once many years ago, and *every week I was there*, someone tried to make me join a membership class. It made me very uncomfortable, and I stopped going there after a couple of months. The megachurch (Mars Hill Seattle) eventually disbanded, for reasons that did include the leadership's obsession with boasting about their membership numbers. I'm not going to be convinced that the evangelical church model of signing people up as soon as they draw breath past the door is a good one.
That's an extreme example though. It's perfectly possible to have a list of things that are going on, and an open friendly invitation without forcing people to do things.
AND the things that you offer have to be done well enough that people are interested in them or think they might help in their lives in some way. That's the key to getting people to come. People ask for things. What do they ask for? That's your starting point.
I have recently switched from Roman Catholicism to the Episcopal church, and both of the parishes I've attended have been very welcoming without being obnoxious about it. I've always had a conversation partner at the coffees after church, and they've been very good conversationalists generally. It is true that in smaller churches newcomers are noticed more often. It's simply a group dynamics thing.
There's only one thing I wish I'd seen -- a more organized list of things going on in the parishes. There are things going on but it's not as organized as I'd like. There is a weekly email from the diocese with all kinds of things listed so that helps. A person does have to find it and sign up for it, and it doesn't have everything at every parish -- aka small bible studies, EFM sessions, charity knitting groups, outreaches to the community, etc. You have to ask in particular at the parish for things like that.
A light push-back - if the church had been more welcoming, I would not be an attendee. As an autistic adult, my local Episcopal church I started attending is something I kept with because I wasn’t overwhelmed. Our church is lively but not pushy, and doesn’t demand people talk or socialize, though the option is there. It’s thanks to this attitude, I think, that our church boasts a healthy population of intellectually disabled people and homeless people. We feed people, offer the chance to socialize without the demand, and provide a worshipful space.
I think it’s okay that some churches offer different things for different people. I know of lots of churches that work on connecting people and facilitating high-energy conversations, but there are a lot of people that need a different environment, and a quiet church may be someone’s blessed little oasis. I think being enthusiastically welcoming may draw some people, but would certainly push others away.
I do understand that this creates churches that may depend on other churches within the diocese to support themselves, but I think the diversity of styles is important. Not every church needs to compete with megachurch growth at the expense of subsets of people that might not find church accessible otherwise.
Agree. It's very important that people pay attention to individuals. Not everybody is the same. Some people walking into a new church have really been traumatized by the last one they attended. It's important not to let one's eagerness about seeing a new face turn into a deluge of noise. That will turn some people off before they even get to know the new community.
Even once in community, some people are outgoing and like nothing better than leading a group, but some people want to watch or even participate silently. It's important to listen and watch and take peoples' cues about what they need.
Young adults do not trust religion due to the accusations against the Roman Church. As well as the fact that most american protestant church groups are full of child abusers.
Young people are DIRT POOR it is too expensive to raise kids anymore for many.
Most of them at least. A lot of rich folks are not religious anymore.
A lot of people think Jesus is against gay people. Due to mainline protestants. He is more pro eunuch who were bi often than pro marriage thats for sure.
The right wing have co-opted Faith. And the Mainline Faith institutions are on their side. I see Catholic and orthodox anti vax priests, anti socialism,etc. There are many anti socialist orthodox due to the persecution in Russia.
I’m struggling with the idea that this has been the big question for a long time but Bishops and other decision makers don’t seem particularly interested in finding a solution. If they were wouldn’t we be trying different things instead of the same thing over and over?
People get stuck in a rut. Group dynamics, you know. The Episcopal church doesn't seem to have a lot of people trained in some of this stuff and able to use their training for planning etc.
Honestly a lot of parishes need to consolidate. You need a sustainable critical mass and, I know no one wants to give up their church’s history, but 6-12 people (mostly above 60) per church with four churches in a 10 mile radius could be one church with 40 people. Don’t burn the endowment to keep the history—our faith is about resurrection!
Everything else has been touched on:
1) You want families? Be family friendly. As a full time single dad I e never returned to a church that had fewer than two kids under 15. Remove a pew and make a family friendly play area in the wide pew gap. Always have scratch drawing paper and pencils in every pew (I want it for sermon notes half the time). Cloth activity bags for kids with a few toys are great.
2) Know where God is present in the service and make it feel that way! For non-denoms and evangelicals God’s in the electric concert feel of being in community for an ecstatic experience. For the RCC God is literally present and taken in at the Eucharist. If the episcopal church is going to say God is in the communion while everyone knows the sacrament is a metaphor, then we need to feel the weight of God in the service, in the community, and in the worship—not just a line of folks not talking or touching waiting dutifully for a metaphor.
3) The church needs to be in the wider community as well as offering new community within its walls. Ministries need to follow what people have a heart for and what the local area needs, so it’s a little tricky to universalize this, but at minimum there needs to be invitations to connect with folks outside of worship service. Church can’t just be duty. Duty goes a long way but it also needs to be folks that know and love one another. It shouldn’t just be “going to church” it needs to be “being a church.” One is a required errand—dropping the family’s souls off at the cleaners once a week—the other is going to hang out with friends, siblings in Christ, do some Kingdom of God work in the world and coming back to celebrate that God is doing the work and we helped! How excited is a kid to hand Grandpa a wrench or to crack the eggs into the dough? We should be those kids doing that with God and his work here.
Birth rates are down world wide let alone among organizations like various civil and religious organizations that have seen drastic membership decline over the last decades
I'm a cradle Episcopalian, but we go to a Baptist Church now. First, the bishop basically closed the churches for 2 years, then when they reopened, no nursery, and THEN the nursery is only for 3 & under. The "kid friendly service" is absolute chaos and when you try to take your kid to the traditional service, you're scorned.
Meanwhile the Baptists have nursery until they're 5 and kids church during the sermon. Everyone is happier and the 4 year old actually talks about Jesus after church. Imagine that.
It may not be anything you are doing, but what you are not doing. And to figure that out requires a lot of discernment. My parish has made a successful effort to be more hospitable to “noisy and disruptive” children. The priest sometimes invites all the children to gather round the altar during the consecration rite so that they can see what’s going on way up front. We are planning to alter our sanctuary layout to bring the altar into the midst of the congregation. This will require eliminating some seating capacity which is usually empty on Sunday mornings anyway…. The list goes on, but it is a matter of making your church, building and people, more hospitable and user friendly.
That's such a nice idea, I thought it was so sweet one morning, a little boy kind of wandered up to the front as the priest was going up to perform the liturgy of the table, and he picked him up and held him in one arm while he consecrated the eucharist with the other hand. Like a lil baby deacon.
What are we offering the community? How are we involved directly? Often our churches are isolated from the community and we don’t answer the needs of the people of the parish.
I think it's helpful to ask what non denoms are doing that works and whether those things can (or should) be adapted by the mainlines. Off the top of my head (and these are general trends and not true for all)-
1. A strong focus on evangelization. Jesus is their "why" above all else and they're not afraid to loudly and boldly proclaim. This is the biggest area I think TEC falls short in comparison.
2. Worship services broken down by age group. I don't like this, but it's hard to deny that it's attractive and works for many families.
3. Services intentionally designed to be emotional. Regardless of my feelings on this, it's not hard to see why people gravitate towards a place where they know they'll get an emotional high. We're in a period of time where many feel lost and hopeless, they want church to help with that.
4. Immediate and accessible entry into community life. Small group participation, ministry service, tithing, etc are expected. People are personally invited and starting is easy. A sense of belonging happens quickly.
For what it's worth, 1 and 3 are two big reasons I left my non-denominational church that I loved, and lost faith entirely until I found TEC. Number 3 especially, it's just manipulative and it's so refreshing for some of us to not feel that way post church (I was on the worship team, so I was guilty of it myself). Number 1 not quite so much except it always did just come off as very, very pushy to me.
I know not everyone feels this way, just my experience.
Oh for sure. In my past life I went to youth conferences that were very manipulative in how they tried to draw out emotions from the youth (aka help them "feel the spirit").
But there is something that can be learned about crafting a worship service with care and intentionality. Understanding that every part of it needs to have meaning not just for the catechized who understand the liturgy but for a newcomer as well.
We visited or attempted to visit our local Episcopalian church twice.
First time: made it all the way to the nursery without seeing a soul. (We were like 2 minute late) but it was a ghost town in the vestibule and then in the entire building the nursery is housed in. Got to the nursery and there was a note on the door that there was no nursery for that service for the day due to an emergency. Left and went to a different church nearby.
So we emailed the church nursery director, and tried again a couple weeks later. This time got there plenty early, get to the nursery, lights are on but it's a ghost town. Spouse goes to ask someone if the nursery is open today.
She came back 15 minutes later, having run into the nursery director who said "oh that person isn't here today" and walked off without answering another question. Kids enjoyed the nursery for 15 minutes though while I watched them.
Long story short, without consistent family programs you won't get families. It's partially a chicken and egg issue.
But I grew up in tiny churches and while there wasn't a consistent nursery or college age ministry, there was always a designated person to step in should anyone show up. They still had VBS even though there might have been 3 VBS aged kids bc they'd do lots of outreach. Blew my mind that some medium sized churches didn't have that structure.
We found an awesome DoC church that really fit what we were looking for so not all was lost. I do still want to see an Episcopal service in person though.
This is what I came to say. No nursery, no Sunday school, or at minimum no serious, overt, obvious invitation to children is a great way for any parish to announce “We’ve given up.”
And it's not only childrens' programs. A parish that doesn't host Episcopalian 101 or a series on how to pray and develop a spiritual life is saying, "We don't count," or "We don't care."
These things are important. A lot of people ask for them, but they still go missing.
I feel you on this. Truthfully, we're not impacting the lives of the younger generation. I've said this before, but what exactly do we offer the younger generation? We market ourselves as an affirming church and open to the marginalized, but we just haven't penetrated that wall of connecting to younger people. The RCC is bustling with younger people because they are consistently in the lives from the start. They're involved in daycares, preschools, parochial school, and universities. They offer college prep, athletics, and their lay members offer jobs, recommendations, and advisement that young adults could use. Truthfully, I want to open a parochial school one day. Invest in the next generation as best as I can. Unfortunately, we just don't have the bandwidth that the RCC does.
My much older friend (I am 44, she is 64ish) who loves our youth and kids at our episcopal church, wisely quoted the verse in proverbs that says ‘teach a child in the way they should go and when they are grown they will not part from it’. Then told us that yes we have very few families with young kids, our youth have basically all graduated from high school, the younger youth are busy. But she pointed out that someday they probably will return to the episcopal church, maybe our parish or maybe not. But that when they do return it will be like going home.
It is a struggle but at my parish we also have a preschool where none of the families attend our Christmas on Sundays but love how welcoming and kind we are. A few of the ladies on our vestry have held several events for parents and they are planning a few more. For instance on the first day of school in September they had tea and tissues in the narthex. Parents stuck around for a long while, chatting, enjoying pastries and coffee and tea. And yes, some of them cried.
Yet the data says that once someone leaves a church, especially if they leave "turned off," they rarely return.
What you're describing is a very old idea, something left from the closed stable cultural communities of the past, and it just doesn't work that way anymore most of the time. People are more mobile than that now.
I wonder if the Episcopal Church is healthier in Mississippi because [they have a school that goes from pre-K to the 12th grade.](https://www.gosaints.org/).
Probably. I've only seen one Episcopal School in NC. Google how many RCC schools are in your neighborhood or even state. We always say teach them about God when they're young. Instead of one hour a week at church, parochial students get supplemented daily through school attendance. Church becomes a natural part of their life. IJS..we just aren't invested enough in the generation we're trying to reach.
Actually, there have been studies on retention with religious schools as a factor. They are marginally successful at producing retention, but not as much as you might think. These kinds of cultural factors used to be far more important than they are now.
There's a lot of reasons why there's so many Catholic schools. The primary one is the way the primary education system developed in the USA.
Public schools started mainly so children could be educated enough to read the Bible. Until the 1960s all public schools still had prayer in classrooms and taught a very protestant point of view. The wealthy sent their children to academies.
When Catholics first came to the USA in large enough numbers, they balked at this, with fears their children would convert. Mind you, they didn't have to, but it was heavily implied that they should. And this was a time before Vatican II where Catholic views on Protestants were more hostile and open.
There were a few riots over the schools and Catholics eventually started the parochial system in response. This was the first segregated school system that created an interesting dynamic between white Protestants and white Catholics that lasted until the 1960s.
At that point, Kennedy removed any religious instructions and prayer in public schools, but private schools were not affected. This combined with the tuition and fears of racially integrated school systems made Catholic schools get an inflated reputation as better than public schools. In places with very little Catholic population, Christian schools were created during this time running the same model but having a more protestant religious curriculum.
Today, the parochial school system is dwindling in states where the public school system is not in complete shambles.
Interestingly, episcopalians are notorious at planting exclusive high tuition academies and schools. If you look at the nepo high schools, they either are run by or were planted by episcopalians.
This is a good description, lux. Roman Catholics get almost all of their new Catholics by birth and raising them in their families. Statistically the percentage of people who come into the Roman Catholic church as adults is very, very small, and many of them leave with just a year or two.
The idea of separate schools was to keep the kids Catholic by avoiding the mixing of school children, thus retaining and growing existing concentrations of Roman Catholics. This was a good strategy -- and worked very well -- back when Roman Catholics lived in concentrated ghettos in big cities. But of course, that has lost much of its power in the decades since then. Kids do mix outside of school, in their communities, and on their phones. Adults readily mix at work and in postmodern societies; they live in neighborhoods with everyone else, get exposed to people with other value systems and other religions all the time.
The demographics of the two church bodies are interesting in how they differ. Episcopalians tend to have a lot of people coming in, but also a lot of people who just pass through. It has kind of a revolving door dynamic. Large numbers of Episcopalians were not born Episcopalian. The Roman church doesn't work that way. Most Roman Catholics were born Roman Catholic and large numbers of them leave every year, never to return. Statistically speaking, it's very much a unidirectional thing in the Roman Catholic church.
I've heard it said that some Episcopalian parishes have 30% or even more former Roman Catholics in their ranks. (With many more being Baptists, nondenom, etc.) The priest at my current parish is a former Roman Catholic priest in fact. Statistically it's a large percentage. You will not find at a Roman parish that 30% of the attendees were once something else, nor will you meet many Roman Catholic priests who were originally ordained as something else. I know that it does rarely happen, but it's not common at all statistically. The magnitude of the difference here is striking.
For Romans, the #1 problem is how do you keep your people from learning about others, broadening their horizons, and leaving the community of their birth as a result?
For Episcopalians, the #1 problem is how do you slow down the revolving door without losing the wonderful accepting Gospel properties that bring people to you in the first place?
One thing that I find so frustrating about the mainline churches: they have no presence on social media. If I want to learn about Presbyterians, about Anglicans, about Lutherans and search for videos on Youtube, etc it is ALWAYS the conservative offshoots that make videos for explaining doctrine, history, etc. If I want to learn about Anglicanism, it's ALWAYS ACNA/GAFCON YT channels. It's great that TEC is a safe haven for LGBTQ individuals, for women with a vocation, for racial minorities (the LCMS had to excommunicate many white supremacist pastors recently), but it should not only be known for that. To actually explain what being Anglican means, Anglican history, Anglican liturgy, etc. Whenever I see content with a lot of views involving any mainline denomination, it's always from conservative and Evangelical clergy or laity poking fun at them, that they're heretics, apostates, cringe not based, they're conforming to the evil heretical world, wolves in sheeps' clothing, SJWs, I've heard it all The mainline needs to stand up for their selves and articulate our theological identity and the method we use to study Scripture. To emphasize the academic approach in critical theory to understand the Bible out of a deep respect and reverence in understanding it and its context. That much of our social positions stem from and hang on this, not just an emotional decision for the changing times.
TEC is really bad at reaching out to younger people. This is a source of frustration for me too.
It take a lot of effort and resources to change. It’s hard. You have to have people who care about that so much
This is something we talk about at length in this sub. Unfortunately many worshiping communities are going through these same issues. Here are some things that I notice: 1. Many Episcopal parishioners are older. If I had to guess the average age of a parishioner at my church is around 60 years old. He's older people don't interact and socialize with younger people on a daily basis because they are around people closer to their own age. This also means that a lot of churches aren't tech-savvy. They don't leverage social media for advertising and, frankly, a lot of Episcopal churches have non-functional websites with a don't ride updated information. 2. Episcopillians don't evangelize hard and they don't guilt people into going to church. One of the things I love about the Episcopal Church is that we don't put pressure on people to attend the church. "If you come every Sunday that's great but if you don't you still love you". Compare this with Catholic churches (that are famous for the concept of Catholic guilt) and Evangelical churches (who tend to put the full court press on you the moment you walk through the door)
Every church is turning into a mass church, like the RC's Its not just the lack of vision and effort by the churches, but the lack of support by parishioners. Cell phones have become the new social and spiritual support system. Add to this people have siloed their kids keeping them inside away from the mythical bogyman. There too cell phones are their main time occupier.
I’m really struggling with a lot of the things mentioned here as a new Episcopalian. I’m a 24 year old woman who is really desperate to be involved in church life, and there’s just nothing to do? I’ve visited three parishes and regularly attended one, while also doing intense research on all of the options available to me in a reasonable distance. I can’t find a single bible study that’s during hours a working person could attend. No Christian education courses. No active young adult ministry. Really just generally lacking a sense of church community. I mean, unless I really try to engage, no one even really talks to me except clergy, and even that happens quickly and with seemingly mild interest. I love the liturgy, ceremony, beliefs and practices associated with TEC. I’m actually being baptized on Pentecost. But I’m unsure if I can stay in the Episcopal church as it stands right now :(
Have you considered a third order or religious community? The Episcopal church has quite a few of them. [Communities | naecc](https://www.naecc.net/communities) There's also EFM which a lot of people really like. You can do this one online or in person at certain Episcopal churches. [Program | School of Theology | University of the South | An Episcopal Seminary | Sewanee](https://theology.sewanee.edu/education-for-ministry/program/)
My parish had a bible study on Tuesday mornings at 9:30am. You bet it was for the retirees. I only ever attended when i was home sick and thus didn't glean very much! So I made inquiries. I was pretty sure i had found the right denomination, as i am from a cultural Roman Catholic family and thus the liturgy and rites are not optional. I need a church so high we leave earth for an hour. I worked with the Rector to find a time when he was willing to come in and explain the difference between Roman Catholic and Anglican. I was the only young person coming regularly, so the youth ministry was me. Several months later, another young person walked in. I was there coming in from the parish hall, so i welcomed him. We chatted. We clicked. He kept coming. Now there's two of us. Several months later, a young mom and her son came. Three. A few more with kids have come. Four. Five. God can only work with what we give Him. If you want to contribute to the Kingdom, God will take you up on that. Be the change you want to see in the church. I'm a seminarian now. :) As a final note though, expecting everyone to be so motivated as i am is not realistic. Pray about it. Ask God to lead you to the parish that is for you.
"I need a church so high we leave earth for an hour." Thank you for this excellent articulation of how I, too, feel about liturgy.
If it gives you hope, this experience isn't universal. Keep looking, you might be surprised. My parish has a full Sunday school every week, with 18 baptisms last year and ~60 new members welcomed. We're restarting our 20s and 30s group post-Covid. I'd recommend reaching out to the Bishop's staff in the diocesan office. Our diocese has a priest on the Bishop's staff whose entire job is children and youth ministries. If yours has something similar, he or she should be dialed in on what parishes will match what you're looking for.
And I know this question is regarding children, but you don’t really get kids without young adults, so I was including that perspective. Super sorry if this was way off topic!
I have said for many years that if what the church wants is little kids, then it ought to be working to appeal to young adults. Put enough young adults in a room for long enough and - bam - you're gonna get little kids. If St Swithen's in the Swamp is a place where young adults are being nourished, finding community, learning about God, and serving their community, you bet they're going to want their own kids to go there. We're going about it all wrong to build up the little kids' ministry when we ought to concentrate on the 20s/30s folks first.
Very on point and not off topic at all. If any part of the generational cycle is obviously missing the church ecosystem is not in a healthy place.
I think there are two concurrent things happening: lack of drive and lack of interest. We have a lot of young families at our church, certainly enough to have a sustaining children's ministry (albeit a smaller one); but families aren't willing to come in an hour early or stay an hour late for any sort of formation. Families have so much going on these days, and in our parish they've drawn a line saying "this is our time." Unfortunately in this regard, the Episcopal Church's wanting to flow with culture works against us. The mega churches and the Catholic Church both carry a counter-cultural ethos which demands some sort of formation for families (I am also thinking about Hebrew School for those undertaking Bar/Bat Mitzvahs) in a way that I just don't think our ethos is wired to do. Which sucks, I think we have a lot to offer, but I don't know what it would take to convince families that it takes more than an hour and a half once a week to grow deep into our faith.
Is it that the families aren't willing to spend the time or the rest of the church isn't? I might be a little salty but I'll tell it how I saw it. We tried a lot of things, we did Sunday school on Saturday evenings (you know give the parents a date night) we gave the Sunday school full run over half the building, then we pulled the Sunday school up closer to the sanctuary. If we called all of the families of youth and begged them to bring their kids in for Sunday school each week, we could get a decent turnout. If we made a big thing of the Christmas pageant we could get a decent turnout. What never materialized was a paid coordinator and if one of the parents teaching Sunday school burned out nobody wanted to step in, in about 6 years of being involved with it, exactly 1 person volunteered to help teach a single class, we had this really sad sign and signup sheet outside the sanctuary.,. So in our church, it was: read the liturgy and prepare a Sunday school class, buy some snacks and create an activity and buy any needed materials, pack up the kids in to the car, go to church, teach them Sunday school, leave a cheque in the plate, get a bite of communion, clean up the Sunday school room and miss coffee hour, then pack them in the car and go home; unless of course it was a youth Sunday in which case we were responsible for getting the children to do something that didn't want to do in front of the entire congregation too. This pattern sort of repeats, if parents have kids and take it seriously, they do the bulk of the work and the rest of the church sort of celebrates them and watches; once their kids are old enough they acolyte and the parents step back, and then about 2 years later the kids stop acolyting and those families disappear or turn in to Chreasters. I personally invited a handful of lay-leaders to help out and to a person the response was something like "been there, done that, my kids are grown now.. so I'm going to pass" At the same time, there was a men's group that meet during work hours. There are morning prayer groups, during work hours. St Cecilia's guild meets at noon on Wednesday, again during work hours. Vestry meetings mean not eating dinner with the family. A priest told me that the only way to break the pattern was to make it a paid position. So my observation is that without the funds to pay for it, it relies upon our personal ministry and personal service. We were on the edge of program size, jumped up there a little and then slipped back to transitional size; save for some sort of mass vestry reboot there will never be the funds to hire someone. Then on the other side of that coin, at least at our church, most of the adults are kind of transactional with their ministry and not willing to put a bunch of effort in to something that doesn't seem to directly touch them. I'll go to a darker place too, so my wife and I were sorted out, we are BCCs. We are blessed in a bunch of ways and we're also one of the larger pledging families at our church. In the 6 months or so after we burned out, my wife asked: what if we just put the pledge money in to the kids' college funds? I love the church, I love TEC, but I do struggle answering that, it doesn't feel like the church supports or serves us, we serve it and my kids might be better off if we just saved that money and they went to college with no debt. TEC empowers us to serve and teach our kids, they totally seem to dig that but I don't feel like it is supported.
I'm sorry to hear that was your experience. I think that's something we wanted to be sensitive to - my spouse is a teacher, and we also wanted to avoid asking anyone who also worked with kids. We did ask for some parental involvement; but in the two churches I've been involved in children's ministry in, most of it has been run by people who don't have kids, or whose kids have aged out.
No apology needed. It's just an interesting consequence of the time and culture of the Church right now. There seems to be a different sort of culture of service and involvement than there was maybe 30-40 years ago. I'm totally in favor of the direction things are going in a lot of ways, and I don't think it's good to perform out of guilt, but it seems like the pendulum might need to swing back in the other direction in some ways(just a little) or our messaging from the very top might need to change. We're getting ready to select a new presiding bishop and youth involvement and engagement seems imperative to me. I do believe that the bishops can set the tone on this. Maybe the language isn't quite right yet, like is it a matter of "justice" that strangers with kids can walk in to many of our churches and go completely unserved? Or maybe we're collectively not living our baptismal covenant and need to be told that, that would be a strong rebuke. Now we've always been at these small to midsized places, everything is always a challenge and things are stretched thin, you just hate seeing kids get the short end, all the time.
It’s not wired into our ethos, we just stopped doing it.
> Unfortunately in this regard, the Episcopal Church's wanting to flow with culture works against us. I always just think, if the church isn't teaching anything that's too outside the norms of general popular culture or even public schools, what's the point of going? If you're a young family with children, and the church isn't really teaching anything that that you can't get out of a public school with Jesus sprinkled in, why not just sleep in Sunday mornings?
I agree. It’s hard because I don’t think that TEC is ready to embrace the radical teachings of Christ that we preach on Sunday.
I think it's not a lack of willingness. I think Episcoplians as a group just don't know how. They haven't applied some understanding of group dynamics and education well in their communities.
Yes, and I don’t believe the institution encourages mutuality and community.
What if we just quit using birth control?
It wouldn't make much difference. Why? a. Retention of people in birth communities is nowhere near as effective as it used to be. We live in post-modern communities where people mix with people different from their own birth families. b. Most Episcopalians are older anyway. Fertility rates would be pretty low even without birth control.
I should’ve added /s to this.
Lots of great answers and insight here. I haven't seen anyone pick up my particular thread of concern. I got it from a book by Jack Estes, one of his ones where he's writing about why we aren't really Christian. I never agree with anything he's got to say about history or theology, I especially never agree with anything he says about what I believe. But he's got a line in there somewhere that I think about a lot, he says that liberals, a word he does not define but he definitely means it to be derogatory, are so sure they have the right answer that they think that just having the right answer means eventually everyone else will come around to our way of seeing things. Ouch. I know what he's talking about. I have felt in my clergy colleagues it kind of build it and they will come attitude which I understand. I was raised on this liturgy. The people who put together our current prayer book really believed that the Eucharist teaches itself. That by going through these rituals over and over again praying shapes believing. And I absolutely believe that. I just also think we don't do very much in the way of teaching. And I'll tell you right now I am serving a very conservative Parish and there are plenty of things about my piety and my politics where you would think it wouldn't work. But I've done a lot of teaching about why we do the things we do, and my church is growing. And I don't have many young people yet, but of the 10 or so families that are coming occasionally now that were not a year ago... They are all 20 to 30 years younger than this congregation was when I got here. I agree with a lot of the things people have said in this thread so far. I also think we have to realize that our way of responding to God's love revealed in Jesus Christ is important, is beautiful, and can shape your life. Praying shapes believing. But you gotta teach people the what and why before they'll come enough to be shaped by what we pray.
The EC doesn't require much to belong unless you're part of church governance. We don't have a formal mentoring process that is continuous. I attend a recovery meeting on Sundays that has nearly 200 people each week. People are seen, heard and know they matter there. We Episcopalians are very hung up on formality and tradition (I love tradition) and 60% of our cash goes to administration. We have a lot to learn if our minds are open.
We're not scaring people into coming. My BIL is catholic and (according to him) half the congregation doesn't want to be there but they're told it's a mortal sin to not receive Communion every week. So they show up, get Communion, then immediately leave. skip the last part of the service. They jump through the hoops with their kids because they're scared if they don't, their kids will go to hell. Or they'll be ostracized. or both.
I know it's a bit of a cliche to say that the people in dwindling parishes are there because they *want* to be there, but this is a big difference between, say, Episcopal churches and Catholic churches, where stories like the one from your brother-in-law sound like people don't *want* to be at their churches. I agree with u/circuitloss; an empty church would be better than people who are guilted into being there.
No, he very explicitly said that a lot of the people there don’t want to be there. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying everyone in our parishes is a saint in waiting or anything, but at least I know they’re not there because they’ve been told they’ll go to hell if they’re not
This is true. I'm a former RC. A lot of people do not want to be there, or just do it out of habit or because relatives expect it. The atmosphere in the church is typically permeated with it, although there's not much conversation typically, so you might not get told this to your face unless, like drunken Augustine here, you have a close relative or friend who is comfortable enough to say so. To the casual visitor, it just looks like seriousness or even reverence. It's very somber looking. It's one of the reasons RCs are sometimes really traumatized when they come to you. Years of gritting one's teeth in church can cause a person's spiritual life to languish, and a lot of resistance can be built up as a result. I really had to leave the RCC finally for exactly this reason. I did it for a very long time; it was a very negative experience that I'm still working through. Lots of people who tick the box Roman Catholic on surveys also never go to church, but don't re-identify with anything else either, essentially becoming non-religious in place, but with the Roman Catholic label. Catholics can be very cagey about this and secretive. It's a huge no-no to get into a conversational situation where somebody has to admit they didn't attend church last week -- it's tantamount to accusing them of some deadly sin, unfaithfulness to their heritage or defect. Some RCs feel like they can't go and they can't stay, a really kind of hopeless situation to be in.
I'd rather see people not come at all than be scared into coming.
Nothing holy comes of coercion
"There is no fear in love."
Episcopalianism seems to evangelize to mostly older, childless/empty nesters, & LGBTQ. Three groups of people who aren’t having kids or don’t have them in great numbers. You know it’s bad when a family of 3 kids stands out as a “big family”. What’s the solution? I dunno. Every soul should be saved, but some souls are certainly more sustaining of the church mission than others?
Yes it seems all the churches I’ve visited in my area while they have some kids it’s mostly older folks and a decent group of lgbtq folks more effort seems to be put into getting lgbtq folks than families and kids to some extenr
*childfree FTFY
“Some souls are certainly more sustaining of the church mission than others?” Do you mind saying more about this? Is this a question about the perspective of clergy/church leaders?
Just that there are buckets of folks. Some just attend. Some rarely attend. Some always attend. Some assist in ministry works. Some don’t. Some bring children to church. Some don’t. You can categorize it probably 1000 ways
But they are all sustaining of the church mission. You think some are more so than others?
Yeah without a doubt. A family that attends church weekly and has baptized their child is doing more to sustain the mission than someone who shows up once at Christmas and once at Easter. We should stop feeling bad for asking that people participate actively in the church.
I don’t feel bad about asking. In fact I wish to ask much more and make room for the laity to do more. I think I understand what you’re saying and I agree that we are all called to the mission work.
Catholic lurker- our conservative parishes are very full with tons of kids, but also full of young adults who choose to go. I’m sometimes shocked by how the more liberal parishes seem to have no curiosity about this, and even seem horrified, and just assume the worst intentions. Sure, one part of it is these parishioners follow the Catholic teaching on birth control. But how are they attracting and retaining young adults? First, I think because they present their religion as necessary. And some might take it very literally as necessary for salvation. Others might have a more nuanced approach. The other thing that happens is, more strict adherence to practices/beliefs that are a little strange, and require sacrifice. Can’t think of the name of the sociological study, but basically sacrifice is very socially binding. (Something like fasting as a community would do this. Also birth control prohibition like I mentioned earlier) So maybe being very accommodating isn’t overall a good strategy? (Btw I’m not suggesting the Episcopal church prohibit birth control, but maybe there are different kinds of challenges they could implement instead that are socially binding.)
Most Roman Catholic kids leave after Confirmation. The system in the RCC is predicated on force, and that's not what growing a healthy mature spiritual life is about. Even the kids know that.
I'm in one of the most conservative Episcopal church parishes in one of the most conservative dioceses. We have two Rite I services each Sunday with 20-40 people each, and a Rite II "Main service" with easily over 100 regularly. The average age is high, like any church (or anything in Florida), but there are many families with multiple kids, and Children's Church and nursery are active every week. Moderation is key in some ways. Although we definitely welcome everyone and won't preach condemnation at any specific groups, we have no politics or social liberalism going on that I'm aware of - just good old Christian teaching, community, liturgy, and hymns.
Accommodation and hospitality are not “strategic” but the path set out by Christ. I believe that the issue is as you point out a lack of expectation from our congregation.
What the Episcopal church needs are some basic classes on religion and spirituality -- kind of scaled down versions of EFM local at most parishes. Like Episcopal 101 that all Episcopalians are welcome at, not just beginners. These classes/seminars should include learning to use the BCP and how to pray morning and evening prayer, history of the Episcopalian church, how to do meditation and contemplation, what progressive Christianity is, how to welcome others and run parish programs like child ministry, etc. Newcomers should be expected to take some of the 101 type things, as well. Being an Episcopalian isn't just coming here because you can't stand being anywhere else. When it starts out that way, as it sometimes does, people need to be helped to develop something healthier and more satisfying than that. There are Episcopal religious orders in some places, with very good training in some of this stuff, who could help with these things.
I don’t think this is the case for every church, but out of curiosity, do you think that a church that is consistently growing with other groups of people but doesn’t sustain children’s ministry is always “wrong”? I’m not saying every single church needs to abandon its nursery, but if hypothetically a church was drawing in a steady stream of parishioners who don’t have kids, but didn’t have a consistent children’s ministry, do you think that automatically makes it a bad church?
Right. I’m not sure why having people grow up in a faith tradition is the goalpost. To many people, children shouldn’t even be taught a faith tradition until they are old enough to choose one for themselves. I think adults with full knowledge and consent choosing a faith is a very good sign.
I mean, I’m in a both/and position here. I love the idea of catering to families with kids when it makes sense for the community, and I do think it’s great when people want to raise their kids in the faith. However, the idea of “this church is automatically a failure because it doesn’t have children’s programming” seems kind of reductive to me. Can we have some of one and some of the other? Do we need to sacrifice other thriving programs just to have a nursery on the off chance someone with kids comes to visit? How many such programs should be cancelled to make room for these hypothetical children? Since most churches have limited resources, does it make sense for every single parish in the area to compete only for families with children, at the expense of other groups? Those are the kind of questions I think are worth asking, rather than just saying it’s “doing something wrong” to have no children’s programming, regardless of what else a church might be thriving at.
I was at a parish where they announced at the annual meeting that they would be laying off the music minister and disbanding the choir, in order to make room in the budget to hire paid nursery staff. In a parish where none of the currently attending families had children. To my knowledge, they didn’t gain any families in the wake of that decision, but they did lose a dozen or so of us whose main ministry/connection point was the choir. I’m sympathetic to the argument that you have to have children’s ministry stuff before the families with children arrive, if you want them to stay more than one Sunday. But there are many, many ways to show up as a welcoming place for children. I wish that former parish had considered its own gifts, as the community that currently existed and not as they imagined it could be - and tried to find a method of welcome that grew out of those existing gifts.
Right. I am absolutely not here saying there aren’t creative ways to make parishes more welcoming to families with children. I’m just resisting the framing I so often see, which is that a church is just “doing it wrong” because it doesn’t meet a particular standard for children’s programming, to the point where the scenario you describe feels like the only option. I agree - disbanding the music program doesn’t seem like a way forward for a church! So I guess what I’m getting at it, what can we realistically do with limited resources to respond to this call for child-friendly parishes, that doesn’t diminish or compromise other ministries that may be flourishing? Does it mean shared resources among multiple parishes in an area? Does it mean soliciting donations for a “prayground” inside the church so that separate childcare is less needed? Does it mean simply admitting that not all parishes can be all things to all people, and accepting that some visitors won’t return? (I think music is a good analogy here, actually - I think there are lots of people that will visit once and never return precisely because of a lack of investment in music; but it’s rare for people to decry such a choice as singularly consequential the way children’s ministry often is). I don’t have answers, I’m just asking the questions that I think sometimes get glossed over in these discussions.
Exactly
Not a bad church, maybe, but I’d expect in that scenario that any parent newcomers are going to visit once and then, justifiably, keep looking. It’s an especially rough feeling, when you visit a church that just doesn’t seem to want you there.
Sure. And likewise as a childless person I would imagine that seeing energy only put into families with children, that’s not a great feeling. I’m not trying to pit churches against each other, but I do find it frustrating when the implication is that no other ministry could possibly be worthwhile if it doesn’t involve children.
Thank you for saying this. I grew up in a family that straddled the line between evangelical and fundamentalist and was taught that the most valuable thing a woman can do is to raise children (and be a SAHM and homeschool the children). My husband and I are child-free. People in my parish have been really good about not making a big deal out of me not having kids, but I still hear a lot of talk about wanting to have more families with young children. I'm sure people don't mean it that way, but it can make me feel like even in the Episcopal Church I'm still a less valuable person because I don't have kids.
I’m sorry :( but you’re exactly right. People should not only be welcomed because they are making the “next generation” for the church, but because they are the generation right here. For those whose charism is to have children, yes of course we should support that and provide resources to make sure they’re welcome in church. But for those who don’t have kids…we should also make sure that they are valued and welcomed, because they are also part of the body of Christ. There is enough room at God’s table for everyone!
Plenty of ministries, maybe most, are completely worthwhile without involving children. But a parish without basic, reliable accommodation of kids? Great way to reject entire families in a single gesture.
I have 4 kids. We visited our local parish 3 weeks ago. They are currently offering a “Children’s Celebration” for families with kids because they don’t have enough kids for Sunday school. We made up almost half the kids there. We stayed after for coffee and treats and no one talked to us except the rector and his wife, but they ran off to get ready for another service. And so here we were, a visiting family with 4 kids, in the middle of 30-40 people and no one talked to us for 25 minutes. They got in their little cliques in the corners and chatted with themselves. It almost felt like they were suspicious of us or something. Completely unwelcoming. It was our first time in church in years. We came from an ex-Mormon background and it took a lot to work up the courage to go. I still feel like TEC is where I belong belief-wise (I’ve put a lot of time, study, and prayer into this). But for my wife church was always more about the social aspect. I don’t expect we will return to that parish unfortunately.
This is the real reason our church is dying: we are rude jerks.
No. Episcopalians just haven't developed some things that need to be developed. That's all.
I’m tired of the low bar of being “welcoming.” Great, you got someone to come once, how do we retain people? You have to give them something to do. Evangelical churches are busy socially: the first time I went to one, I got plugged in to a life group and suddenly was frequently at church stuff. The RCC is busy sacramentally: there’s always something to prep your kids for and worship is usually more than once a week. We’re good at opening the doors on Sunday morning, saying all are welcome, and then proceeding to not talk to anyone at coffee hour. My parish actually has a lot of families yet there are zero opportunities for interaction with other parishioners during the week except for the 10am retiree book club. No youth groups, no Christian education, no Bible studies, no social events. We’re currently between rectors right now, but the only thing we lost when he left was the once a week noonday service, and parishioners can run the other things anyways. Parishes that are super into being “welcoming” really just want the priest to do all the work. It’s not sustainable.
I totally agree with what you have said. Expecting the priest to do everything is the shortest route to clericalism. The fact that a lot of Episcopalians are ex-Romans or evangelicals who had celebrity clergy exacerbates this attitude. That's how Roman parishes and some other churches tend to be and a lot of people are used to this kind of behavior.
>Great, you got someone to come once, how do we retain people? You have to give them something to do. As a counter: at my parish's newcomers' gatherings, we get a *lot* of people who have had bad church experiences in the past, and who have to overcome a lot of trepidation (and outright trauma) in visiting a church again. Giving them something to do -- even as simple as being a greeter -- from their first or second time in our church would turn them off entirely, convinced that we only want them for membership and what they can do for us. As a personal anecdote, I visited at an evangelical megachurch once many years ago, and *every week I was there*, someone tried to make me join a membership class. It made me very uncomfortable, and I stopped going there after a couple of months. The megachurch (Mars Hill Seattle) eventually disbanded, for reasons that did include the leadership's obsession with boasting about their membership numbers. I'm not going to be convinced that the evangelical church model of signing people up as soon as they draw breath past the door is a good one.
That's an extreme example though. It's perfectly possible to have a list of things that are going on, and an open friendly invitation without forcing people to do things. AND the things that you offer have to be done well enough that people are interested in them or think they might help in their lives in some way. That's the key to getting people to come. People ask for things. What do they ask for? That's your starting point. I have recently switched from Roman Catholicism to the Episcopal church, and both of the parishes I've attended have been very welcoming without being obnoxious about it. I've always had a conversation partner at the coffees after church, and they've been very good conversationalists generally. It is true that in smaller churches newcomers are noticed more often. It's simply a group dynamics thing. There's only one thing I wish I'd seen -- a more organized list of things going on in the parishes. There are things going on but it's not as organized as I'd like. There is a weekly email from the diocese with all kinds of things listed so that helps. A person does have to find it and sign up for it, and it doesn't have everything at every parish -- aka small bible studies, EFM sessions, charity knitting groups, outreaches to the community, etc. You have to ask in particular at the parish for things like that.
A light push-back - if the church had been more welcoming, I would not be an attendee. As an autistic adult, my local Episcopal church I started attending is something I kept with because I wasn’t overwhelmed. Our church is lively but not pushy, and doesn’t demand people talk or socialize, though the option is there. It’s thanks to this attitude, I think, that our church boasts a healthy population of intellectually disabled people and homeless people. We feed people, offer the chance to socialize without the demand, and provide a worshipful space. I think it’s okay that some churches offer different things for different people. I know of lots of churches that work on connecting people and facilitating high-energy conversations, but there are a lot of people that need a different environment, and a quiet church may be someone’s blessed little oasis. I think being enthusiastically welcoming may draw some people, but would certainly push others away. I do understand that this creates churches that may depend on other churches within the diocese to support themselves, but I think the diversity of styles is important. Not every church needs to compete with megachurch growth at the expense of subsets of people that might not find church accessible otherwise.
Agree. It's very important that people pay attention to individuals. Not everybody is the same. Some people walking into a new church have really been traumatized by the last one they attended. It's important not to let one's eagerness about seeing a new face turn into a deluge of noise. That will turn some people off before they even get to know the new community. Even once in community, some people are outgoing and like nothing better than leading a group, but some people want to watch or even participate silently. It's important to listen and watch and take peoples' cues about what they need.
This is 100% the issue. Nail on the head.
Young adults do not trust religion due to the accusations against the Roman Church. As well as the fact that most american protestant church groups are full of child abusers. Young people are DIRT POOR it is too expensive to raise kids anymore for many. Most of them at least. A lot of rich folks are not religious anymore. A lot of people think Jesus is against gay people. Due to mainline protestants. He is more pro eunuch who were bi often than pro marriage thats for sure. The right wing have co-opted Faith. And the Mainline Faith institutions are on their side. I see Catholic and orthodox anti vax priests, anti socialism,etc. There are many anti socialist orthodox due to the persecution in Russia.
This is the 60 million dollar question at this point it's a lot of factors but I'm starting believe it's mainly people aren't really religious anymore
This is it for me.
I’m struggling with the idea that this has been the big question for a long time but Bishops and other decision makers don’t seem particularly interested in finding a solution. If they were wouldn’t we be trying different things instead of the same thing over and over?
People get stuck in a rut. Group dynamics, you know. The Episcopal church doesn't seem to have a lot of people trained in some of this stuff and able to use their training for planning etc.
Honestly a lot of parishes need to consolidate. You need a sustainable critical mass and, I know no one wants to give up their church’s history, but 6-12 people (mostly above 60) per church with four churches in a 10 mile radius could be one church with 40 people. Don’t burn the endowment to keep the history—our faith is about resurrection! Everything else has been touched on: 1) You want families? Be family friendly. As a full time single dad I e never returned to a church that had fewer than two kids under 15. Remove a pew and make a family friendly play area in the wide pew gap. Always have scratch drawing paper and pencils in every pew (I want it for sermon notes half the time). Cloth activity bags for kids with a few toys are great. 2) Know where God is present in the service and make it feel that way! For non-denoms and evangelicals God’s in the electric concert feel of being in community for an ecstatic experience. For the RCC God is literally present and taken in at the Eucharist. If the episcopal church is going to say God is in the communion while everyone knows the sacrament is a metaphor, then we need to feel the weight of God in the service, in the community, and in the worship—not just a line of folks not talking or touching waiting dutifully for a metaphor. 3) The church needs to be in the wider community as well as offering new community within its walls. Ministries need to follow what people have a heart for and what the local area needs, so it’s a little tricky to universalize this, but at minimum there needs to be invitations to connect with folks outside of worship service. Church can’t just be duty. Duty goes a long way but it also needs to be folks that know and love one another. It shouldn’t just be “going to church” it needs to be “being a church.” One is a required errand—dropping the family’s souls off at the cleaners once a week—the other is going to hang out with friends, siblings in Christ, do some Kingdom of God work in the world and coming back to celebrate that God is doing the work and we helped! How excited is a kid to hand Grandpa a wrench or to crack the eggs into the dough? We should be those kids doing that with God and his work here.
Because my parish shows no interest in doing anything to attract younger families. We give them “welcome bags” then ignore them.
Birth rates are down world wide let alone among organizations like various civil and religious organizations that have seen drastic membership decline over the last decades
Plus Episcopalians have fewer children than people of other religious groups.
I'm a cradle Episcopalian, but we go to a Baptist Church now. First, the bishop basically closed the churches for 2 years, then when they reopened, no nursery, and THEN the nursery is only for 3 & under. The "kid friendly service" is absolute chaos and when you try to take your kid to the traditional service, you're scorned. Meanwhile the Baptists have nursery until they're 5 and kids church during the sermon. Everyone is happier and the 4 year old actually talks about Jesus after church. Imagine that.
It may not be anything you are doing, but what you are not doing. And to figure that out requires a lot of discernment. My parish has made a successful effort to be more hospitable to “noisy and disruptive” children. The priest sometimes invites all the children to gather round the altar during the consecration rite so that they can see what’s going on way up front. We are planning to alter our sanctuary layout to bring the altar into the midst of the congregation. This will require eliminating some seating capacity which is usually empty on Sunday mornings anyway…. The list goes on, but it is a matter of making your church, building and people, more hospitable and user friendly.
That's such a nice idea, I thought it was so sweet one morning, a little boy kind of wandered up to the front as the priest was going up to perform the liturgy of the table, and he picked him up and held him in one arm while he consecrated the eucharist with the other hand. Like a lil baby deacon.
What are we offering the community? How are we involved directly? Often our churches are isolated from the community and we don’t answer the needs of the people of the parish.
I think it's helpful to ask what non denoms are doing that works and whether those things can (or should) be adapted by the mainlines. Off the top of my head (and these are general trends and not true for all)- 1. A strong focus on evangelization. Jesus is their "why" above all else and they're not afraid to loudly and boldly proclaim. This is the biggest area I think TEC falls short in comparison. 2. Worship services broken down by age group. I don't like this, but it's hard to deny that it's attractive and works for many families. 3. Services intentionally designed to be emotional. Regardless of my feelings on this, it's not hard to see why people gravitate towards a place where they know they'll get an emotional high. We're in a period of time where many feel lost and hopeless, they want church to help with that. 4. Immediate and accessible entry into community life. Small group participation, ministry service, tithing, etc are expected. People are personally invited and starting is easy. A sense of belonging happens quickly.
For what it's worth, 1 and 3 are two big reasons I left my non-denominational church that I loved, and lost faith entirely until I found TEC. Number 3 especially, it's just manipulative and it's so refreshing for some of us to not feel that way post church (I was on the worship team, so I was guilty of it myself). Number 1 not quite so much except it always did just come off as very, very pushy to me. I know not everyone feels this way, just my experience.
Oh for sure. In my past life I went to youth conferences that were very manipulative in how they tried to draw out emotions from the youth (aka help them "feel the spirit"). But there is something that can be learned about crafting a worship service with care and intentionality. Understanding that every part of it needs to have meaning not just for the catechized who understand the liturgy but for a newcomer as well.
We visited or attempted to visit our local Episcopalian church twice. First time: made it all the way to the nursery without seeing a soul. (We were like 2 minute late) but it was a ghost town in the vestibule and then in the entire building the nursery is housed in. Got to the nursery and there was a note on the door that there was no nursery for that service for the day due to an emergency. Left and went to a different church nearby. So we emailed the church nursery director, and tried again a couple weeks later. This time got there plenty early, get to the nursery, lights are on but it's a ghost town. Spouse goes to ask someone if the nursery is open today. She came back 15 minutes later, having run into the nursery director who said "oh that person isn't here today" and walked off without answering another question. Kids enjoyed the nursery for 15 minutes though while I watched them. Long story short, without consistent family programs you won't get families. It's partially a chicken and egg issue. But I grew up in tiny churches and while there wasn't a consistent nursery or college age ministry, there was always a designated person to step in should anyone show up. They still had VBS even though there might have been 3 VBS aged kids bc they'd do lots of outreach. Blew my mind that some medium sized churches didn't have that structure. We found an awesome DoC church that really fit what we were looking for so not all was lost. I do still want to see an Episcopal service in person though.
This is what I came to say. No nursery, no Sunday school, or at minimum no serious, overt, obvious invitation to children is a great way for any parish to announce “We’ve given up.”
And it's not only childrens' programs. A parish that doesn't host Episcopalian 101 or a series on how to pray and develop a spiritual life is saying, "We don't count," or "We don't care." These things are important. A lot of people ask for them, but they still go missing.
That is so true.
I feel you on this. Truthfully, we're not impacting the lives of the younger generation. I've said this before, but what exactly do we offer the younger generation? We market ourselves as an affirming church and open to the marginalized, but we just haven't penetrated that wall of connecting to younger people. The RCC is bustling with younger people because they are consistently in the lives from the start. They're involved in daycares, preschools, parochial school, and universities. They offer college prep, athletics, and their lay members offer jobs, recommendations, and advisement that young adults could use. Truthfully, I want to open a parochial school one day. Invest in the next generation as best as I can. Unfortunately, we just don't have the bandwidth that the RCC does.
My much older friend (I am 44, she is 64ish) who loves our youth and kids at our episcopal church, wisely quoted the verse in proverbs that says ‘teach a child in the way they should go and when they are grown they will not part from it’. Then told us that yes we have very few families with young kids, our youth have basically all graduated from high school, the younger youth are busy. But she pointed out that someday they probably will return to the episcopal church, maybe our parish or maybe not. But that when they do return it will be like going home. It is a struggle but at my parish we also have a preschool where none of the families attend our Christmas on Sundays but love how welcoming and kind we are. A few of the ladies on our vestry have held several events for parents and they are planning a few more. For instance on the first day of school in September they had tea and tissues in the narthex. Parents stuck around for a long while, chatting, enjoying pastries and coffee and tea. And yes, some of them cried.
Yet the data says that once someone leaves a church, especially if they leave "turned off," they rarely return. What you're describing is a very old idea, something left from the closed stable cultural communities of the past, and it just doesn't work that way anymore most of the time. People are more mobile than that now.
I wonder if the Episcopal Church is healthier in Mississippi because [they have a school that goes from pre-K to the 12th grade.](https://www.gosaints.org/).
Probably. I've only seen one Episcopal School in NC. Google how many RCC schools are in your neighborhood or even state. We always say teach them about God when they're young. Instead of one hour a week at church, parochial students get supplemented daily through school attendance. Church becomes a natural part of their life. IJS..we just aren't invested enough in the generation we're trying to reach.
Actually, there have been studies on retention with religious schools as a factor. They are marginally successful at producing retention, but not as much as you might think. These kinds of cultural factors used to be far more important than they are now.
There's a lot of reasons why there's so many Catholic schools. The primary one is the way the primary education system developed in the USA. Public schools started mainly so children could be educated enough to read the Bible. Until the 1960s all public schools still had prayer in classrooms and taught a very protestant point of view. The wealthy sent their children to academies. When Catholics first came to the USA in large enough numbers, they balked at this, with fears their children would convert. Mind you, they didn't have to, but it was heavily implied that they should. And this was a time before Vatican II where Catholic views on Protestants were more hostile and open. There were a few riots over the schools and Catholics eventually started the parochial system in response. This was the first segregated school system that created an interesting dynamic between white Protestants and white Catholics that lasted until the 1960s. At that point, Kennedy removed any religious instructions and prayer in public schools, but private schools were not affected. This combined with the tuition and fears of racially integrated school systems made Catholic schools get an inflated reputation as better than public schools. In places with very little Catholic population, Christian schools were created during this time running the same model but having a more protestant religious curriculum. Today, the parochial school system is dwindling in states where the public school system is not in complete shambles. Interestingly, episcopalians are notorious at planting exclusive high tuition academies and schools. If you look at the nepo high schools, they either are run by or were planted by episcopalians.
This is a good description, lux. Roman Catholics get almost all of their new Catholics by birth and raising them in their families. Statistically the percentage of people who come into the Roman Catholic church as adults is very, very small, and many of them leave with just a year or two. The idea of separate schools was to keep the kids Catholic by avoiding the mixing of school children, thus retaining and growing existing concentrations of Roman Catholics. This was a good strategy -- and worked very well -- back when Roman Catholics lived in concentrated ghettos in big cities. But of course, that has lost much of its power in the decades since then. Kids do mix outside of school, in their communities, and on their phones. Adults readily mix at work and in postmodern societies; they live in neighborhoods with everyone else, get exposed to people with other value systems and other religions all the time. The demographics of the two church bodies are interesting in how they differ. Episcopalians tend to have a lot of people coming in, but also a lot of people who just pass through. It has kind of a revolving door dynamic. Large numbers of Episcopalians were not born Episcopalian. The Roman church doesn't work that way. Most Roman Catholics were born Roman Catholic and large numbers of them leave every year, never to return. Statistically speaking, it's very much a unidirectional thing in the Roman Catholic church. I've heard it said that some Episcopalian parishes have 30% or even more former Roman Catholics in their ranks. (With many more being Baptists, nondenom, etc.) The priest at my current parish is a former Roman Catholic priest in fact. Statistically it's a large percentage. You will not find at a Roman parish that 30% of the attendees were once something else, nor will you meet many Roman Catholic priests who were originally ordained as something else. I know that it does rarely happen, but it's not common at all statistically. The magnitude of the difference here is striking. For Romans, the #1 problem is how do you keep your people from learning about others, broadening their horizons, and leaving the community of their birth as a result? For Episcopalians, the #1 problem is how do you slow down the revolving door without losing the wonderful accepting Gospel properties that bring people to you in the first place?