Church of the Brethren Leadership & Decline

The Church of the Brethren recently celebrated the 300 years since the first members with possible pain of death waded into the waters of baptism out of sheer obedience to the command of Jesus to be baptized. Eight people were baptized, eight people desired to live in radical obedience to the commands of Jesus.

The Church of the Brethren has shared much with the world, a unique gift of Anabaptism and Radical Pietism, but will the Church of the Brethren be here in another fifty years? I ask this question not as a criticism but as an honest one, ponder what will happen if the trends of the past four decades continue into the future. An 2001 Church of the Brethren News line article states: “The decrease, about 0.8 percent, brings the denomination’s total membership to 134,828. It is the smallest one-year decline in both number and percentage since 1997, when a net loss of 411 members was reported. The Church of the Brethren has not shown a net gain in membership since 1974, when it grew by 54 members. The overall downward trend, however, extends to the early 1960s.” The trends in the Church of the Brethren continue today in 2005, the membership of the church was reported at 129,340. So what is being done to counter these trends? There have been numerous Annual Conference decisions, statements and studies, but all have had little if any impact on these declining membership numbers. It would seem that one could find a person or persons on staff at the denominational level to address these issues. The Congregational Life Teams Webpage does include a few books on evangelism on their listing of congregational resources, but only a few. The Congregational Life Team members page does not indicate that anyone there is skilled, gifted or resourced to help churches with Evangelism or Church planting. The evangelism section of the General Board’s webpage does indicate a number of books, some rather current, others a bit dated, but it does not list persons in the denomination, on staff or otherwise with skills or gifts in this area. The New Church Development portion of the General Board webpage does display a committee, but does not indicate a denominational staff person who relates to this concern. There is also a listing for an upcoming training event for church planters. This is a bright spot! Yet, I am pressed to ask, how important is this to the denomination if there is no staff person set apart to work at a project of this magnitude? At the same time, it would seem another way to work at this would be to see that the training for pastoral leadership in the denomination would be if not versed, at least educated in the basic ideas of evangelism, church renewal or church planting. Yet, when on considers the teaching faculty at Bethany Theological Seminary, the church of the Brethren Seminary, there is no faculty member who directly relates directly to these issues of evangelism and church planting. Now, this is by no means intended to diminish the esteemed faculty who do teach at Bethany, just indicating that there is no indicated to have expertise or training in this area. t seems to me that if this nearly four decade decline were a concern to the leadership of the denomination, we would see staff, faculty and money being used to support, staff, teach, encourage and train people to do the work of evangelism, church renewal and church planting. Rather it seems what we are doing is circling the wagons, working with issues of identity and history. And while these are clearly important and necessary areas of concern, does it matter if we are well versed in our history as we close the doors of our last church, in fact it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, that we devote ourselves to history and identity only to become history ourselves.