BY REV. HUGH WIRE         A Special Issue                   VOL. 2 NO. 3 JUNE 1997
 

A REVIEW: CONGREGATION AND COMMUNITY

Ammerman, Nancy Tatom. 1997. Congregation and Community.
New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. $25.50 . .
With plot, character, and hints of tragedy and comedy, Congregation and Community offers an absorbing collection of short stories about congregations. Nancy Ammerman, a deeply ecumenical Southern Baptist, currently professor of sociology of religion at Hartford Seminary, reports on her collaborative study funded by the Lily Foundation.

Twenty-three stories are told of 23 congregations dealing with change in their surroundings.

Each was studied with clear purpose. We wanted to know how they fare, by what processes they adapt (when they do), even what the process of decline and death looks like (346).
 

The congregations' communities were being changed by:
different people
drastic economics
new social structures

Congregations responded by:
standing pat and declining,
establishing a niche or relocating to keep their identity,
adapting by integrating a new culture with the old or learning new ways,
finding rebirth, or
making a fresh start.
 

Tragedy haunts stories like that of Brighton Avenue Baptist, Boston, with its faithful core of 15 worshippers in a grand building condemned by their very faithfulness to walk a narrow path toward their own and the congregation's death.

Comedy brightens the account of the hard road of the lesbians who form the core of First Existentialist community (loosely Unitarian-Universalist) in Atlanta served wondrously by a male pastor. And comedy also marks the rise from obscurity of First Congregational in Long Beach under its female pastor whose irrepressibility delights the writers.

Underpinning all the story-telling is confidence in the secure place of churches in modern life. The writers
believe that people's needs for a community of trust and meaning will cause congregations to rise up or adapt. This reflects the confidence of Jesus that if these were silent, the stones would shout out (Matt 19:40).

Or as Ammerman writes in a more neutral language,
as one set of congregations, born to mobilize the religious and social energies of one population, declines and dies, another set is being born in its stead, mobilizing the new religious and social energies of a new population.... The voluntary and particularistic character of religion in the United States makes the process of religious births and adaptations both possible and likely (348).
 

Readers with church experience will find their story here. Congregations range from tiny and obscure, like Brighton Evangelical Congregational in a neighborhood truncated by one of Boston's redevelopments, to large and consequential, like Holman United Methodist in Los Angeles that gathers much of L.A.'s black leadership under a nationally known pastor. Other traditions included are Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Baptist (different streams), Quaker, Unitarian, Seventh Day Adventist, Christian, and Church of God. Other locations were in Atlanta, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Anderson, Indiana.
 

INSIGHTS LURK for pastors, lay leaders, and denominational workers.

The researchers focused on three aspects of corporate life: resources, structure of authority, and culture. Some patterns emerge.

· RESOURCES: As important as money is, it seems a highly dependent variable. Poor Brighton Evangelical Congregational in Boston, affording only a part-time pastor, is a dynamic, serving congregation. Members are so well connected they draw money and volunteers from outside in the wider community.

Focused pastoral leadership is often a key. The aging and dwindling membership of Good Shepherd Lutheran in Oak Park, Illinois, finally decided they wanted to try to grow. With denominational help they secured a pastor who regrounded them in the opportunities to serve that were present in the community: its new families with children. They grew.

Busy buildings seem another key. Congregations who were managing well had facilities in use all week.

· STRUCTURES OF AUTHORITY: Changing the ways internal life is managed is where heavy lifting takes place. In order to include some of the new people moving out from Atlanta, Hinton Memorial United Methodist, an old-time rural congregation in Gwinnett County, Georgia, where everyone used to know everyone else, became more impersonal and bureaucratic in its decision-making

An urban African American congregation in Atlanta, Hope Baptist, relocated to a new neighborhood by the construction of the Georgia Dome, became more pastor-centered and authoritarian while engaging a population who were poorer, younger and had not grown up in church.

No single way of managing emerges as the right way. Conflict accompanied both these changes. Tolerance for conflict marks many adapting congregations.

Denominational leadership was not usually determinative, but had influence. A strong pastoral commitment of the Los Angeles Archdiocese to gay and lesbian persons was picked up and followed by a core of laity at St. Matthew's Parish in Long Beach. A lively new ministry integrated gay men into the parish so thoroughly that they now provide one of the three major sources of its life, alongside the old-time European-American families and new Hispanic families.

· CULTURE: Neither a conservative nor liberal theology predict a capacity to adapt successfully. But a consistent message that connects congregation and community - in preaching, teaching, and the symbols of mission - was always present.

Liberal social activism, though not highly prevelant among these congregations, helped focus congregations like Atlanta's First Existentialist, L.A.'s Holman United Methodist, and Long Beach's First Congregational on paying close attention to what was going on around them. This was a necessary first step. Each then had to apply their particular resouces in ways that would serve.

Conservative fundamentalism does not always define success, but does accompany the most radical social engagements reported. Genuine racial and economic integration was achieved by City Baptist in Oak Park because the leaders and members were confident that the Bible commands them to share the gospel "without distinction." Effective resistance to corporate power was mounted by members of another fundamentalist congregation, Grace Baptist in Anderson, Indiana, when they reminded each other that "GM does not spell God."
 

THE PURPOSE of this work is to understand sympathetically how congregations evolve, to experience and describe their life, and only then to try to analyze and prescribe. The lesson is the importance of observing, letting each congregation be the teacher of its own destiny.

Ammerman and her 17 collaborators took time to experience and savor the worship and fellowship in these congregations, and to hear and reflect on their people's stories. Their accounts reflect delight in the variety of ways these congregations respond to life, much as a grandparent delights in watching a grandchild deal with whatever life is bringing it.