Featured Methodist Church Kicks out it's Senior Citizens

I came across this article, via a Facebook post. It seems a Methodist Church is telling the congregants that in order to reach a younger population the older population needs to stop meeting in June and leave for at least 2 years while the church is reimaged for young people, starting in the fall. The older people can then reapply to attend, if they submit to the new order of church function.
I have never heard of such an open hostility to older Christians. Read the article and respond.
Cottage Grove church to usher out gray-haired members in effort to attract more young parishioners – Twin Cities

 

If I read the article correctly, the denomination is giving a quarter million dollars in startup seed money to reset this church. They are looking at the community and thinking this church is failing to be relevant to the community as it now stands.
It seems that people in higher positions see the church as an outreach ministry and the current church doesn't view itself as an outreach ministry.
The article begs us to ask what is the function and purpose of the church.

 

Look, if the Methodist conference considered asking the black people in the church to leave, because they were scaring away new people, would that proposal have gotten out of the conference room? Of course not. But old people — hey, no problem. They’re getting in the way of progress. Their walkers are in the way of people getting out to the coffee bar in the lobby, I guess.

I don’t get it. Honestly, I don’t. I totally get telling people to stay away because they are unrepentant sinners. But being old is not a sin. Is it?

As a theological conservative in a liberal mainline denomination, I would suggest that there is probably a lot more to this story than what is presented in the article. and I would not assume that it is a case of godless liberal bureaucrats vs. poor, faithful elderly parishioners.

There are a lot – a LOT – of seriously declining mainline congregations out there, and for most of these congregations there is only a limited time left before the work and expense of keeping the doors open become too much for the few people left. In almost every situation, the small band of elderly parishioners have no desire, motivation or idea how to grow their congregation, and are typically fully on board with their denomination’s liberal drift. They will refuse to change anything, but expect the minister to magically bring in a bunch of new folk who will bring with them invisible children, contribute large amounts to the church, but be content with having no say in how it is run. These folk will retain a death grip on the church governance.

I am in a mainline denomination and I see this ALL THE TIME. Most liberal denominational leaders are happy to let the congregation die out, then sell the building. Truth be told, most of these aging dying congregations are quite liberal and so the liberal leadership won’t challenge them. Most liberal leaders have no clue how to plant or grow a new church. Occasionally there are people (usually more orthodox/conservative) who are interested in renewing the church, but they are powerless to do anything because the elderly, liberal parishioners hold a death grip on power in the parish.

That leaves only two options to revitalize a church. One is to plant a new congregation in an existing parish (i.e., leave the dying congregation in place and plant a completely new congregation to use the same building). Two is to close the parish down, albeit earlier than you would have (but probably only +/- 5 years earlier than it would have closed anyway), let the building sit vacant for half a year and then plant a new congregation.

There are pros and cons to both models. In the first model, the aging existing congregation is typically very needy to their pastors, and they will often work to sabotage the plant. Furthermore, the aging congregation is typically liberal, while you need a conservative to successfully plant a new congregation. In the second model, the con is very obvious as described in this article — the optics are bad as a church is shut down a bit early. My strong suspicion is that anyone from the old congregation who is willing to be constructive in contributing to a new church plant would be very welcome to take part.

One last point — consider the wider issue of the dying older mainline denominations (e.g. Episcopal Church) vs. the young upstart conservative offshoot denominations (e.g. ACNA). The dying old denomination maintained a death grip on the denomination and refused to change. The folks interested in growing an orthodox church had to leave and start their congregations from scratch. It’s kind of the same dynamics.

This is really interesting. Thanks for it. I hadn’t thought that left-right ideology had anything to do with this Minnesota situation. Based on what has been reported, it looks like that congregation couldn’t survive, and probably needs to wind down. I can’t blame the Methodist conference for wanting to do something different to revive that parish. But man, to tell old people to go away and only come back if they have permission — that is just awful.

Out With The Olds | The American Conservative