I can still remember reading Pierre Berton’s The Comfortable Pew. I was about 14 or 15 I suppose and was starting to pull theological paperbacks from my dad’s bookshelf.
The slim volume, published in 1965, was an incisive, some might say devastating, analysis of the Canadian church. Commissioned by the Anglican Church, its sweep—and the reaction it caused—encompassed Anglo-Canadian Christianity.
Berton’s book caused considerable discomfort. I both recognized the truth of much of what he said and then felt defensive in reaction to what felt like an attack on my church. Defensiveness, of course, is just a way of denying the truth one has just perceived but is too much to bear.
Ultimately, such reaction turns truth into a lie. In the larger setting of a tribe or community, it temporarily creates a stronger bond among members because they have a common enemy. Sadly, if the perceived enemy is speaking prophetically, the prophecy will be ignored.
Berton was nothing if not prophetic. Perhaps not in all the details, but he did have a sense that organized Christianity, at least among Protestants and Anglicans, had lost its way. And he accurately forecast that, uncorrected, it would result in the churches’ demise.
Just look at the numbers. In 1961, in a country of about 18 million, there were about 8.4 million Protestants and Anglicans and 8.3 million Roman Catholics. Forty years later, with a population of 31 million, the number of Protestants and Anglicans was about the same—8.7 million—while Roman Catholics had increased to almost 13 million.
More significantly, however, people of no religion had gone from under 100,000 to 4.8 million! Membership in the Presbyterian Church post-1925 peaked in 1964 at over 202,000. In 2011, it was pretty much half that, at just under 103,000.
The United Church’s General Council last year and the Anglican’s triennial General Synod this year, fill their agendas with the similar decline of the church and its finances.
So what are church leaders to do today? Well, one thing would be to take a step back and reflect on another shift that happened in the 1960s and ‘70s.
For whatever reason, and there are probably several, churches in the 1960s began adopting a decidedly left-wing, anti-corporate stance.
Corporate became a swear word.
This trend was unfortunate for many reasons. Corporations and free markets are not going to save the world. But I know of no Christian denomination in Canada that comes close to matching the best corporate practices, from environmental issues to how employees are treated.
And then there’s marketing.
Again, no doubt for a variety of reasons, there has been reluctance to adopt the best marketing techniques, both towards members (in order to keep them) and to non-members (to attract them).
Absorbing, sifting and collating this has overwhelmed denominations. Having neglected or spurned the skills and structures to analyze themselves, denominations have looked to sociologists to tell them what has happened.
But burdened by committees or ill-equipped leadership, no denomination has been able to capitalize on this information to any degree.
Self-analysis tools like Natural Church Development reveal across denominational lines that Canadian Christians have a concept of God that is essentially a theistic view of a divine clockmaker who created the cosmos and then went on vacation.
A relationship with Jesus the Messiah? Not so much. Even among self-identified evangelicals, Jesus is more of a rule-maker than close friend.
So I encourage you to read our cover story by Rev. Dr. John-Peter Smit. “Best Practices” is corporate-speak the church needs to hear.
Smit’s analysis of the church is as penetrating as Berton’s, if a little more pastoral. But he also provides some clear guidelines based on consumer analysis and marketing for how the church can emerge from the current crisis, survive and grow. Embrace it!
