The congregation that I was baptized and confirmed, and to which my parents still belong, was founded in 1930. It experienced remarkable growth in the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1963 the University of Missouri St. Louis was founded a quarter mile down the road. In that same year I was born, and my father was called to be its part-time assistant pastor, while keeping his full-time day job as a teacher at the Lutheran high school three miles away. As it happens, my father was ordained on the same day I was baptized. His ordination took place at the early service, and then he baptized me at the late service. And here’s a Grace connection that I only just discovered 2 years ago: The organist for both of those services was our own Mike Marty! But I digress.

            In the 1970s membership and attendance began a long slow decline, attributed in part to demographic shifts in the neighborhood. Many members moved out to the more distant suburbs. Today, weekly attendance averages well below 50. At the same time, those who do attend are remarkably dedicated. The choir there is about the size of our choir here at Grace, which means that on some Sundays there are nearly as many people in the choir as in the rest of the congregation. Still, there are very few children in the congregation these days, and it is not clear to me how long they can continue to remain viable.

            My home congregation is like many congregations in the U.S., and it reflects a broader trend both in our country and in the larger developed world. Over the past 50 years there has been a measurable and significant decline in church attendance and church affiliation. And that trend has accelerated in the past two decades. The reasons are complex, but linked to broader social and cultural changes. Despite the recent recession and a persistent pessimism about the economy, the overall trend for many people – especially those in Grace’s demographic – has been positive. We have become more affluent. And for many people, as their expendable income increases, their connection to church decreases. They travel more. They are able to enroll their children in club sports, but those clubs play their games on Sunday mornings. Another reality is an increase in blended and single parent families that live with shared custody arrangements. Practically speaking that means that children simply aren’t available to be in church half of the time. Yet another factor is the information revolution and a trend toward do-it-yourself spirituality, combined with an increasing distrust of institutions of all kinds, and a growing secularization in the broader culture. For these and other reasons, it will become increasingly difficult to organize the church the way we did 50 years ago.

            Now I want to be as clear as I can that I don’t think that that is necessarily a bad thing, even though it creates difficulties for professional church people like me. And as much as I might dislike the idea of Sunday morning sports clubs competing with the church for attention, it’s the way it is. The church is losing the privileged status it once held in our society. We are no longer the social hub of communities the way were at times in our history. But this too is not necessarily a bad thing. Let us remember that the church had its most explosive growth under the Roman Empire, which outlawed and sporadically persecuted Christians during the first three centuries of the church’s existence.

            The way I see it, we can choose to approach our present reality in one of two ways. We can look to the past and focus on what we have lost in terms of social influence and privilege, and then attempt to recapture what the church once was. Or we can embrace the reality of our new context and see the opportunity that an increasingly secular culture presents for making the gospel known to those who have never heard it, or who have not heard rightly it as the good news it is meant to be. In my mind, only the latter is a real option. However that shakes out, and whatever institutional form that takes, the church will continue to be the church only by focusing on the central things: the message of God’s reconciling love for us and for all people in Jesus Christ, proclaimed first in the gathered community through word and sacrament, and then proclaimed in the world around us through our lives, in acts of love and service on behalf of others, especially those most in need.

            The future is upon us. May we face it with boldness and courage, trusting that God is with us and at work in our midst.

+ Pastor Repp