Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada

For most churches, it's annual report time.

Ministers spend hours trying to be pithy, reflective and inspirational as they cobble together words that most of their community will not read. Folks want to get on to the meat of the report - the numbers and graphs. Red ink and black. This is the time when find ourselves weighed, measured, and often found wanting.

Did we make money?

Did membership go up? (There was someone I didn't know sitting in my pew last week.)

Is that welcoming and listening to people really worthwhile?

Is this emerging church thing really working? (I think that H1N1 might have put a stop to it.)

We have one particular problem that needs to be addressed. (Actually, I have many, but you probably don't have the medical credentials to deal with them.) In the past decade, 25-45 year olds have not sought out "membership" in religious institutions. This is not only true of The United Church of Canada, but all churches from evangelical through Anglican and Roman Catholic (don't ask for a footnotes, ask around). It is not limited to churches, but also true for fan clubs, consumer clubs (Costco, Sam's Club, etc.) and other identifiable groups. We don't want to be a single thing, we don't want to limit ourselves with labels and darn it, we just don't trust joining stuff!

No, really, it was an Italian restaurant - this is not some obscure Billy Joel reference. I was having dinner in the early evening by myself in a little Italian eatery with some aspirations to "fine dining." The food was fine, nothing spectacular, but the people were a study.

To my right, over by the bar, sat seven professional business men, gathering after work; they drank a lot of beer, ordered most of the menu and carried on in loud, if jovial, manner that made it clear that this was "their place." As much as I enjoyed their laughter, I was also excluded from it. I didn't know the jokes; I didn't get the references and frankly, they were just too loud.

I began to wonder if we don't often do the same thing in our churches. Jovial folk, well meant, but very clearly in charge, in the know, in the in-crowd. Often, it seems that for new comers, there is no room at the "in" (bad pun, but I trust you take my point). As long as this is "your church" it's never really going to feel like "my church."

Much has been made of the decline of moderate and liberal churches in North America. The prevailing wisdom is that conservative churches, on the other hand, are on the rise. Is this really the case? In a brief article at Ekklesia.co.uk, Martin E. Marty (columnist for the Christian Century, professor and pastor) asks whether the U.S. is following the pattern of Western Europe - a decline in church membership and attendance across all denominations, both liberal and conservative. Both the U.S. and Canada are both generally seen as secular societies. The U.S. in particular, however, has had a much stronger religious 'streak.' Could this now be changing?