THE HIGH-TURNOVER SMALL CHURCH
Sometimes it feels like this isn't a congregation but a bus depot.
Earl Creps
January 1, 1993
Sometimes it feels like this isn't a congregation but a bus depot.
"How big is your church?"
My standard reply: "It's a church of 1,000, in successive groups of 100." In my small, New England flock, every three years the membership turned over.
The normal attrition rate for church members is 10 percent per year. Ours was 35 percent. Each time a church directory company offered their services, I refused. In our case it would be church history by the time it reached us.
We struggled with two sources of instability:
First, due to the large Naval Air Station nearby, one third of our congregation, located in Bath, Maine, was comprised of active and former military personnel. Many of these military families had only two or three years to belong to our church.
Second, during the 1980s a large shipyard in our town boomed economically, which brought skilled workers to our area. We rejoiced when several of these families attended our church. However, when this boom ended in the 1990s, the flow of people reversed, and we watched the economic tides carry many dear friends away.
This entrance and exit of church attendees, while acute in our instance, affects every local church. The average American changes careers four times during his or her lifetime and moves every five years. This can make pastors feel like we're running a bus depot rather than leading a community of believers.
Dizzied by the revolving door
The migration of our members, we discovered, impacted our congregation in several ways:
Organization. Putting together consistent programming was difficult. Most vulnerable were ministries such as Sunday school that required week-in, week-out commitment.
The problem was not so much a lack of warm bodies to fill positions as a lack of qualified ...
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