Growth is necessary but uncomfortable

Reflections on the church

The Rev. Bill Tully, rector of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, New York, was one of the speakers during Ministers Week at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology this month.
St. Barth’s is located at 50th Street and Park Avenue, and though its facility reaches 10 stories high, it is dwarfed by the high-powered office buildings that surround it on all sides. Some time ago, an offer of $100 million was made to purchase a large portion of the land on which the church building sits to create more office space.
The church split eventually over whether to take the offer and more or less run while the courts deliberated on whether it was even possible for this historic building to sell some of its property. 
By the time Tully came as rector, the courts had denied the sale of property at this historic site. Membership had dwindled considerably, including one three-year period in which 3,000 members left the church.
On Tully’s first Sunday, the 1,300- seat sanctuary contained 250 worshipers, which seemed quite bleak to the new rector until the follow-ing Sunday, when there were 125 worshipers, the normal attendance for a Sunday.
Of course, there were significant money problems, too. A huge endowment, which undergirded the budget, had been spent down to what amounted to two years’ worth of budgetary income. Stewardship by the members had been sorely neglected for years. Tully spoke of the “Rip Van Winkle effect,” that is, of sleeping through or not paying attention to how church was done over a period of decades.  
By now, I hope you are getting the picture that the situation into which the new rector stepped was desperate. Before arriving, Tully was required to furnish the selection committee with a mission statement with goals and objectives for transforming this church. Tully presented an unassuming one point program: GROW.
After his arrival, he said, he was ruthless about hammering in that one-point program on all occasions. In forums he created where people could hear and discuss his pro-gram, he made statements like this: “We will grow, and you won’t like it.”  
What Tully wanted to accom-plish was changing St. Barth’s from a sect to a church. In name, it wasn’t a sect, of course, but in fact, it was. Only certain kinds of folks were actually welcome to cross the threshold. That’s a sect. A church is a motley collection of all kinds of folks.
In Tully’s words, St. Barth’s needed to become tight at its center, projecting clarity about its mission, and loose around the edges, accommodating and adjusting style and programs to be truly open and inclusive of all.
I was intrigued by other things this rector of a now-thriving congregation had to say, but while I listened, it occurred to me that St. Barth’s situation was not unlike the desperate situations of many of our churches in Southwest Texas.
Though none sit on a street as famous as Park Avenue in New York City, the issues of seriously dwindling numbers and a lack of stewardship by members are very familiar in our area. I wondered what it might mean in this district if we focused on the one-point program of GROW and became deep at the center and loose around the edges to accommodate the folks whom we might serve. 
Let’s face it. In our annual conference, we have plenty of small and large church buildings that house sects. Those sects have made it perfectly clear to visitors and new members what they did and did not like, sometimes driving others away.
What would happen if we also began speaking the truth in love? “We will grow, and you won’t like it.”  
Sounds like something Jesus—who really did make room for everyone in his ministry—wouldn’t have been afraid to say!