Is it just my imagination, or have there been a lot of articles about the dying church on the Lead lately?

Not your imagination. Lots of articles lately. I would love to find one on the living growing church.

I reacted to the last one with a blog post. Ann, maybe you can find something useful here:

http://joshtom.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/online-ministry-dos-and-donts/

This does seem to be a popular meme right now. I think we may be in a "darkest before the dawn" period though. I have been a part of four episcopal congregations, one in NY, two in OR and one in OH. All of them are multi-generational, growing dynamic places. These are the kinds of churches that will create the leaders of tomorrow's church. and these leaders won't be content to be just a social institution or private club, but people who have experienced the work of the Spirit and who will want to share that with others. There's still some trimming to be done, but I believe the mainstream church vine has a lot of life left yet.

It’s possible, however, to be led into new life by having both the courage not to turn away from these realities and the wisdom to change our governance structures in order to sustain them over the long haul. I keep hearing over and over again that we are uniquely poised in the Episcopal Church to take advantage of emerging shifts in our culture, but I fear that we are overconfident in our abilities and somehow believe that we don’t need to learn best practices from others. The facts on the ground suggest that a little humility is in order.

For example, the reality that a person can’t find “Book of Common Prayer” via the search box of the Episcopal Church’s website doesn’t engender much confidence in those who already know a little about our tradition and want to dig deeper into it. So I found the post by Josh Thomas that’s linked in his comment above to be refreshing and agree with his observation that we are sensitive about the degree to which we’ve brought this on ourselves.

It would be reassuring if someone at the meeting of the House of Bishops would break the rules and tweet – yes, tweet – that they are discussing these things right now. Cue the chirping not of tweets but of crickets.

Dying and Living are part and parcel of life, no? Perhaps the fact that aspects of the church are dying may mean that new things come to life out of them. Perhaps denominations "dying," or more accurately, transforming, are exactly what needs to happen for the church to be the church...

As for "going to church" and "being the church" ... I think this is a question that the leaders of the Episcopal Church has to wrestle with. There is an assumption that people can and will carve out a day, or most of a day to gather on Sunday morning for church. If "church" is centered on enduring mediocre church/preaching/liturgy nobody is going to be inspired to transform a world in need.

What WILL church look like in 20-30 years? Where are the signs of what will be? Perhaps it will be something entirely different, and, perhaps not...

Rambling here...what will be reborn in the ashes...

And, I agree with Ann, where are the stories of the growing, dynamic churches...we need to write those stories!

Peter Carey+

I have heard for the last eighty or so years that the Church is dying and, while it sure looks sick at times, it hasn't died yet.

We do have a lot of older people but older parishioners are not all alike. Some are young at heart.

I believe that the Church must change as the world and the culture surrounding us changes. We must reach out and be heard and act on our world's many problems.

The parish church, as we have known it, will only survive when it is filled with the Spirit and carries that Spirit out into the world around it. Recognizing this is difficult for some senior members of our parishes, but most can be convinced with real effort. Many young people I talk to find it difficult to believe that there is any such thing as a Christian Church that really cares about the world, but if we tell our story well, they do believe.

Herb Gray