Why are Christian congregations important today?

We believe congregations are important, both to those involved in them and to their neighbors, and we want people to know that about our work. It is part of the reason we changed the name of our ministry from Leadership Education to Forum for Congregational Life. 

With that new emphasis and in a season of rapid societal change, we are also considering the impact of AI, cultural polarization and numerous other factors on the work and meaning of congregations.

When Dave started in ministry more than four decades ago, many denominations acted as if one of the primary roles of a congregation was to be an outpost of denominationally developed programs. Today, the activities of a congregation are often determined by its people and shaped by the opportunities and challenges in its particular context.

Given all that is shifting, Alaina believed that our team needed to consider why congregations matter both historically and in our day. We needed to speak the questions on our minds as we launch the Forum.

Christian congregations are the primary social and institutional manifestation of Christian faith today. In Christian congregations, individuals and families gather to receive, affirm and celebrate the transformation they have experienced through faith in the Triune God. In congregations, persons of all ages are formed together in seeking God’s purpose for their shared lives across many years.

This communal expression and experience of faith grounds individuals in God’s redemptive story. The shared work of communal worship gives congregation members renewed imaginations to see God at work in their homes, neighborhoods, workplaces and beyond.

A thriving congregation is firmly grounded in the story of God, continually retold through communal, family and individual practices such as worship, study of Scripture, prayer and discernment. A thriving congregation has integrated its sense of mission and calling into all aspects of its organizational life, including its formational programming and decision-making processes. A thriving congregation is deeply rooted in its place — invested in the culture and history of its neighborhood, faithfully interpreting its theological tradition and commitments within the life of the community beyond the congregation.

Finally, a thriving congregation has a thoroughly Christ-shaped and Spirit-led life, sharing an inextricable connection to the Triune God while remaining fully present to the needs, joys, sorrows and opportunities of the community. Healthy congregational leadership is not limited to pastoral and professional leadership; it includes laity and clergy working collectively to live as Christ lives.

Over the years, we have witnessed many congregations develop a mission or vision statement. In the end, those statements are remarkably alike. Often, the gift of such a process is for the participants to go back to the fundamentals of the faith life and the role of the congregation in that life.

It can be difficult to hold onto these foundational ideals in this season of rapid social and cultural change. All of us are trying to adapt to this environment. Technological advances have made remote work, virtual health care and online education possible. Artificial intelligence is transforming almost every sector of life. Geopolitical and environmental instability raise anxieties and fears for many.

It is not surprising that people may feel overwhelmed. Some attempt to turn back the clock, while others choose to trust in the latest innovation. Some may be paralyzed by the situation. In the midst of these changes, trust in institutions of all types is eroding.

Congregations, naturally, need to adapt to the changing circumstances. In a 2024 survey for the Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations (EPIC) project conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, 46% of respondents reported that they regularly participate — in-person or virtually — in congregations beyond their primary one, and 7% identified as having more than one “home church.” What does this information mean in terms of church membership? What should any of these respondents’ congregations expect in terms of participation?

Leaders of congregations are considering a host of distinct and interrelated questions: How do we lead others to live a life of faith that matters? What is the role of technology in facilitating worship? How do we support Christian discipleship for families who seldom attend services and frequently access content on their phones? How do we measure the impact of our engagement with the community?

These shifts raise basic organizational questions about what a church staff and building should do: How do we determine the adequate size of a church staff? What is the role of a church building? What does it mean if a church is in a neighborhood? Some leaders are not sure where to find information and ideas beyond their friends, colleagues, peers and perhaps their denomination.

One way to see the new situation for congregations is to remember the effectiveness of the mid-20th century’s most commonly used metric for church life: average weekly worship attendance. Lyle Schaller, a highly regarded church consultant of that era, considered a congregation’s size to be the most crucial variable in predicting its culture and work. This measure helped gauge adequate programs, staffing, location, buildings and land use. Attendance still matters today, but it does not predict revenue or requests for support in the way it once did.

We can see another shift in expressions of congregational life through programming. In Schaller’s time, congregations offered a host of programs, ranging from youth groups to Bible studies. Even worship services were often planned like program events. The program-planning model has been slowly shifting, but these changes became much more widespread during the stay-at-home phase of the pandemic. Programs were generally shut down for months or longer. Worship, prayer and fellowship, however, continued in new and old ways that are still evolving.

Another shift is away from the congregation as a “voluntary association.” Since the same period when programing became central, congregations have generally been organized like civic organizations, such as women’s clubs or Lions Clubs. But all of these associational forms are shifting as we approach the mid-21st century. At the moment, few groups of this kind are attracting younger adults, who often connect instead through social media and are more likely to affiliate with a movement than a formal association. Yet the bonds of a movement are often not as long-lasting or consistent as those created in many voluntary associations, particularly congregations.

These shifts and changes invite us to wonder: How should congregations evolve to offer their gifts in new ways? The mission of congregations is not changing, but the expressions of congregational life are evolving. This transition can be difficult to track and notice across various Christian traditions. There are places for a congregation to go for help — like a denomination, a school or a consulting firm — but those places may not have the time and energy to develop networks so congregations can learn from each other.

We want the Forum for Congregational Life to be a place that supports the exploration of today’s pressing questions and any new questions that may emerge for congregations. We believe that the variety of Christian traditions and their congregations will likely respond to the times in many different ways, and we aspire to facilitate ways to learn from each other.

Participation in congregational life has been significant to Christian persons and families throughout the church’s history. In different seasons, congregational life has evolved to include many expressions: house churches, small rural congregations, megachurches, cathedrals and more. Alongside all who care about congregations, we are excited to discover how these forms are evolving and the impact congregations are having in this age.

Touch the pews with your hands, the Rev. Troy K. Venning told the crowd of grassroots activists gathered at Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church on a November evening.

“It has been said that the oils of our ancestors are on these pews,” Venning said, quoting the chief architect working on the church restoration. “You never know who was sitting where you’re sitting.”

It’s an illustrious roster: Quinn Chapel has hosted figures such as Ida B. Wells, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass, in addition to all the faithful who have been part of its long history. It is the oldest African American congregation in Chicago, dating back to seven people who gathered for prayer in 1844.

Under the leadership of Venning and his predecessor, the congregation has undertaken a restoration of its historic building and its connection to the neighborhood, revitalizing itself in the process. Quinn Chapel is not only a place to learn about the past but also a place where people can find connection in the present.

“There’s a West African teaching that urges us to reclaim what the past offers so that we can walk into the future with clarity and courage,” Venning said to those gathered for the November meeting about the city of Chicago’s budget.

The meeting was convened by United Working Families, an independent political organization funded by labor unions. Several members of the city council attended, as did Mayor Brandon Johnson. For all of them, UWF is a source of grassroots political support.

“This church is no stranger to the fight for the moral good,” Johnson said, recounting Quinn Chapel’s role as a stop on the Underground Railroad. “Thank you for understanding the collective assignment of liberation.”

Operation Midway Blitz

In the weeks before the meeting, federal agents were swarming the city and detaining thousands of Chicago-area residents in immigration-enforcement raids as part of Operation Midway Blitz.

Groups formed across the city and suburbs seeking to prevent their neighbors from being taken, actions that recall the role of Quinn Chapel members in resisting the Fugitive Slave Act in the 1850s. The congregation was part of a group of Chicagoans who formed patrols to thwart catchers trying to return people to slavery.

“There was a group of people from this church who started a vigilance society,” Venning said, “to keep people free.”

During the Great Migration in the first half of the 20th century, the church building was a welcoming center for people leaving the segregated South. The late Timuel Black, a historian born in Alabama and raised in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, said when his family arrived in the city, their first stop after Union Station was Quinn Chapel. They had been told that people at Quinn would tell them where to go next, Venning said.

Venning emphasizes that Quinn Chapel’s story is not only Black Chicago history but U.S. history. Susan B. Anthony spoke at Quinn about giving women the right to vote. A two-seater pew from the sanctuary is at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“Quinn Chapel has always been more than a church: It’s been a landing place, a launching place, a liberating place for generations seeking freedom, safety and belonging,” Venning said.

Vision for restoration

Even with its historical significance, by the late 1990s Quinn Chapel was in danger of closing.

Not only had the congregation shrunk, but the grand building in the South Loop neighborhood near downtown urgently needed repairs. Rain and snow were seeping in and damaging the interior, among other problems.

The Rev. James Moody became pastor in 2002 with a vision for restoration. Under his leadership the congregation grew not only in numbers — from 35 to 400 — but in energy. With concerted effort from his wife, First Lady Corlis Moody, and the restoration team, the congregation began to repair the historic building.

Corlis Moody oversaw grant writing and connected with historic preservation groups. James Moody, who is now a presiding elder for the AME denomination in the Chicago North District, stressed that it was not only the leadership of the church who aided in their success but “specific members with connections and courage.”

Charlotte Flickinger, a church trustee, guided the Moodys through making connections with the state legislature.

“She worked tirelessly and walked those halls and knocked on those legislators’ doors,” James Moody said. Flickinger’s efforts helped Quinn Chapel have $9.4 million earmarked from the state of Illinois for the historic restorations.

Many of the grants received over the years could not go to religious institutions, so Quinn Chapel set up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit specifically for restoration, Moody said.

And the Rev. Sheryll Brown-Venning, first lady and a minister of Quinn Chapel, sees a constellation of stars when she looks at the bright spheres dotting the stained-glass windows that have graced the building since it was constructed in 1892. It reminds her of those who fled north following the drinking gourd, also called the Big Dipper.

Hearing the creak of the wood and touching the pews “is majestic to me,” Brown-Venning said. When her husband encouraged her to preach, she felt honored “being able to stand behind the same pulpit that Martin Luther King stood behind.”

Architectural and aesthetic value isn’t the only reason to restore historic church buildings, said Robert Jaeger, president of Partners for Sacred Places, a Philadelphia-based organization. It also has economic and social benefits.

The average urban historic congregation generates $1.7 million annually in value, with 87% benefitting the community beyond its members, according to a 2016 study by Partners for Sacred Spaces collaborating with the University of Pennsylvania. (For rural congregations, the figure was $735,000 annually, a separate study showed.)

That includes employment of staff and drawing visitors who may also patronize local businesses. There is ecological and recreational value in the green space around churches, Jaeger said. Overall, the study looked at more than 40 factors.

Preserving historic sanctuaries also allows them “to do new things for those who are in need,” he said. He believes most congregations want to do that, but repairs can feel like an obstacle to starting programs.

“If you can help invest in that building, invest in accessibility,” as well as in repairs and maintenance, he said, “it benefits outreach.”

Without its restoration efforts, Quinn Chapel could have closed, Jaeger said. “Now it’s a strong congregation that has done a lot of good for that neighborhood.”

Leadership for the future

When Moody began preparing for a leadership transition, he thought of Venning, who had grown up at Quinn Chapel and was an intern there while a student at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. Venning then served as a pastor of three congregations in Florida.

Moody kept in touch and heard about Venning’s style of pastoral leadership, including at spoken-word poetry events and other venues beyond traditional church settings.

Moody also looked around at Quinn Chapel’s leadership and saw they were mostly people older than 50, he said. Leaders began the transition process with the steward board by inviting more laypeople in their 30s and 40s into leadership roles.

“Those leaders, those baby boomers, actually embraced the idea because they could see Quinn existing years later, decades later,” Moody said.

After a five-year transition process, the congregation asked Venning to come back to be executive pastor in 2019. Venning and Brown-Venning trusted God’s call through a difficult transition for their family, amid a period of deep personal loss and the start of the COVID pandemic. The AME district’s bishop appointed Venning to be senior pastor in 2021. There are still 400 members on the rolls, with 80 to 120 people at Sunday worship.

Building on the work the Moodys had done, Venning helped the finance team make necessary updates, including moving to online banking, with checks and balances in place. This was especially important for receiving and managing grant funds they had been awarded.

Venning sees the congregation as being like a train station. People arrive from different places and need a moment to rest before going to their next destination.

“Whether this is your final destination or you’re headed somewhere else, at least you should be able to find the things that you need to keep moving,” Venning said.

Train stations are also places where different people cross paths, bringing everything they’ve carried.

“We’ve always been a place to bring the haves and have-nots together,” Venning said. “I’m a firm believer that when people get to Quinn, they’re here because Quinn needs something that they brought with them, and they need something that we have now.”

The joy of a historic church

Plans involve looking to the past and the future.

The surrounding neighborhood was once the location of a large number of railroad depots and stations. There were also several public-housing developments located nearby. In recent decades, developers have built a lot of high-end housing, along with retail.

In addition to the church, Quinn Chapel owns a lot across the street and five adjacent lots on a nearby major corridor, State Street. In a dense area of the city where there is not much parking, those lots have been generating revenue for the congregation.

Another source of income has come from being a filming location for television and movies. Chicago has a multimillion-dollar TV and film industry, and studios pay restaurants, hospitals and other buildings to film scenes there. Recently, Quinn Chapel’s fellowship hall was used as the setting of Al-Anon meetings in the television series “The Bear.”

The congregation plans to turn property it owns diagonally across from the church building into a mixed-use development with housing, office space and parking. In the church, the first floor will have a bookstore that will sell books that are banned or “someone said you shouldn’t read,” Venning said.

Blocks away from the historic Chess Records studio where some of the greatest blues and R&B artists recorded their music, Quinn Chapel will have a recording studio for artists such as Adrian Dunn, Quinn Chapel’s director of music, worship and arts.

Christopher Wilson, associate music director and administrative assistant, studied audio design and engineering and does audio editing. Now a trustee as well as a staff member, he joined in 2015 as a college student.

“We’ve stood the test of time and continue to do ministry,” Wilson said. “To grow from a seven-person prayer band into a church that has birthed other congregations — I think that’s pretty remarkable.”

The congregation’s role in the Underground Railroad and the Great Migration will be a highlight of a new museum in the building. Excavating the basement will add 4,500 square feet of additional space. It will have an archives room, another meeting and arts space, and a museum that they hope to open to the public in 2027. It will include artifacts and stories from how the congregation has intersected with broader history.

“For folks who have the joy of being able to pastor in historic spaces, it’s about finding your story and being able to tell it,” Venning said.

The meeting about the city budget in November was one of the many Quinn Chapel hosts. Their main-level event space hosts art installations, movie screenings, educational events and more. Larger events, such as a mayoral forum in the last election, have taken place in the historic auditorium. Some weeks there are events most weeknights and Saturday as well; Venning said that it’s a mistake to focus on Sunday only.

Connecting Quinn Chapel’s legacy and present, Venning recalled the West African teaching of embracing the past’s lessons to move into the future.

“The Sankofa bird looks back while its feet face forward,” Venning told the crowd that evening in November: “We embody what our ancestors practiced: faith in action.”

Invitation to a Changed Life

As the visioning of the congregation continued, [Arlington Presbyterian Church] members connected the crisis of their own congregational life to the life of the surrounding community. In 2012, APC realized they needed to set their priorities within their call from God to the neighborhood.

We really needed to stop asking ourselves questions and start knocking on our neighbors’ doors in a sincere, committed, and organized effort.

It wasn’t enough to do the intellectual discernment processes or for the congregation to assume they knew the needs of the neighborhood.

We were challenged to pay attention not to what we thought needed to happen, what we imagined the community needed, but to listen to what our neighbors had to say — to get to know and be in relationship with our neighbors and hear them.

Congregants rode buses up and down Columbia Pike [in Arlington, Virginia]. They talked with local business owners, teachers, domestic workers, any and all who make up the infrastructure of Arlington County. On Saturday mornings, church members set up tables in the church’s parking lot, located right next to a bus stop. They used the community-organizing strategies of listening sessions and one-on-one meetings to listen to the deep wisdom of the neighborhood.

One day in one of the villages there was a man covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him in prayer and said, “If you want to, you can cleanse me.” Jesus put out his hand, touched him, and said, “I want to. Be clean.” Then and there his skin was smooth, the leprosy gone. (Luke 5:12-13)

APC listened. They heard of people covered in debt and exorbitant rent. They heard of people longing to be healed from weary commutes, financial uncertainty, and living away from family and kinship. They listened as neighbors shared hopes, dreams, and ideas for their future, a future they wanted to be in Arlington County.

This relational work allowed a guiding question to emerge for APC: What is breaking our hearts in our neighborhood?

The stories of the neighbors broke the heart of APC, binding the well-being of APC up in the well-being of the neighborhood. Jesus pulled the congregation into the neighborhood streets, and they practically tripped over the need for affordable housing as they listened to story after story.

The stories signified the emerging incompatibility with the old and the new: as we began to think about jettisoning our 1950s building, we also started to rid ourselves of the 1950s version of Christianity that had captured our thinking. Our ministry shifted from “if we build it, they will come” to “we will go to the neighbors and build.”

It wasn’t about what we could do for our neighbors; it became about how we heard God’s invitation in their stories. How their stories became our stories together. …

For More of the Story, Go Around the Corner

There is a plaque on the outside of Gilliam Place [apartment building], created by an unknown entity, that says “Here stood the Arlington Presbyterian Church.” The plaque names how APC played a significant role in the life of the South Arlington community. The end of the plaque reads, “The Church property was sold in 2016, and the buildings were demolished in 2017.”

The end. It reads like a church obituary.

Not to be outdone by a building plaque, several APC folks want to put up a sign at the bottom of the plaque that reads, “for more of the story, go around the corner …”

Creating new wine for a new wineskin hasn’t been easy, and God isn’t finished with us. Right now, APC stands in the tension between our previous stories and the ones we hope will guide us forward. As we claim these new stories, we see ourselves sharing life and evolving with those in Gilliam Place.

I now realize how our new space has allowed us to begin living a new future together with our neighbors that would have been inconceivable in the old building.

We are still dynamically breaking open those old models of church. We stand in the community, asking questions about new ways and new directions.

We commissioned a new hymn to honor this new era of APC at Gilliam Place. We sing these words often in worship:

We have been called to listen and called to act, we have been called to tear down and called to build, and we’re still people on a journey, our work isn’t done. Keep us faithful in the way of love.

This hymn is a reminder that God is not done with APC even after this miraculous story. We’re still people on a journey, drinking new wine in a new wineskin. For all of this — for the old wine and old wineskin, for the new wine and new wineskin — we give God never-ending thanks.

Excerpted from “Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition,” edited by Mark Elsdon © 2024 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

The formerly enslaved artisans who constructed First African Baptist Church in Beaufort, South Carolina, sometime after the Civil War didn’t use nails. Metal was expensive and often hard to come by for Black builders less than a generation from bondage.

The Rev. Alexander McBride, First African’s senior pastor, explained how the laborers built the church in Gothic Revival style, noted for its signature pointed arches and windows. The current building replaced an antebellum praise house, an open one-room clapboard space with little furniture so the enslaved could engage in a more mobile, joyful service removed from white surveillance and sit-quiet worship styles.

“They used the mortise-and-tenon method, where they interlock the wood. And this church has withstood every hurricane” that has rolled through the coastal city, said McBride, the 16th pastor at First African in its more than 150 years of existence.

And there have been many storms. An 1893 hurricane drowned many of the town’s Black residents, stranded in low-lying areas or swept to their deaths. But even that massive storm didn’t cause significant damage to the church, thanks to the unnamed craftsmen who may have lacked nails but had possessed the skill and wisdom to use the strongest joint known to woodworkers.

The church’s biggest current enemies are time, termites (which have eaten their way through some of the structure’s undercarriage) and moisture — largely unavoidable menaces for a century-old building in a humid seaside town.

Earlier this year, First African was among dozens of historically Black churches to win grants from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. Those monies, through the Preserving Black Churches initiative — $4 million in this funding cycle — will support projects that recast their sites’ history through new interpretation or exhibits, grow capacity through staff hires and community outreach, and repair aging or damaged buildings.

Diversity of spaces

The grantees highlight the diversity of Black worship spaces and the history of how Black Americans have fought for religious freedom and built their own institutions amid racism and violence. They include institutions such as 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which just marked 60 years since the Ku Klux Klan bombing that killed four girls and damaged the church; the elegant Black-majority Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Norfolk, Virginia; one-room churches built by hand and heart; and churches in places with historically small Black populations, such as Alaska and West Virginia.

“Black churches are living testaments to the achievements and resiliency of generations in the face of a racialized, inequitable society,” said Tiffany Tolbert, the Action Fund’s senior director for preservation. “They’re foundational to our Black religious, political, economic and social life.”

In some places, a church is the only building that remains as an artifact of a Black community that no longer exists. Scotland AME Zion Church in Potomac, Maryland, not far from the nation’s capital, is one such example from a community swallowed by encroaching development and urban sprawl.

Religion scholar C. Eric Lincoln once described the Black church as the unchallenged “cultural womb of the Black community.” Fellowship halls and sanctuaries in Black churches have long functioned as multipurpose rooms, where worship and politics meet. Churches like Beaufort’s First African have been incubators for Black social enterprise; during Reconstruction, First African was the site of a school for freed people, hungry for the literacy denied them during slavery.

Numerous historically Black colleges, civil rights protests and social movements trace their origins to Black pulpits and pews. Preserving church spaces can thus have a multiplying effect, documenting as well the stories of Black communities at large and the work of Black architects, artisans and mutual aid.

Worthy of preservation

Powderpost beetles had chomped on the pews, spreading ruin with every bite. One of the church’s three stained-glass windows was missing altogether, and the others needed restoration. One is a poignant tribute to Edna, a church member’s child who had died in infancy. Such design features — with references to congregation members who fundraised for such elements — are tangible history, traces of people long gone and their efforts to build beloved community.

“It’s impossible to talk about American craftsmanship without talking about the Black and Indigenous hands that constructed it even before 1776,” said Brandon Bibby, a senior preservation architect with the Action Fund. “It’s important to preserve that aspect so that we as a society don’t forget. By preserving, we are saying, ‘This place matters in the whole context of the American landscape.’”

“What I want most is that through this project, Black congregations and communities will see the value and beauty in their places and see they are worthy of preservation,” he said.

Recognizable elements of church design can be particularly vulnerable to deterioration. Steeples are both symbolic and pragmatic communicators; their towering presence in a landscape announces where people can worship or seek shelter. Yet sitting aloft, largely inaccessible, placing strain on dramatic, heaven-pointed roofs and often channeling rainwater to places it shouldn’t go, steeples can be a source of problems that go unnoticed until a leak sprouts or cracks appear.

Many of the Preserving Black Churches grant recipients need steeple repair. When congregations are forced to choose among costly repairs, a steeple can sometimes take a back seat to high-traffic areas with more visible problems, such as the sanctuary itself.

Funding a range of needs

Declining church attendance has meant less coin in the collection plate and, in turn, fewer resources for maintenance and repairs. Black American church membership has dropped in recent years, from 78% in 1998-2000 to 59% in 2018-2020, though Black Americans remain one of the top populations most likely to be church members (along with conservatives and Republicans), according to a multiyear Gallup poll released in 2021.

A 2012 Kellogg Foundation report also found that Black people give more of their income to community-based causes than whites, in part because of a culture of mutual aid, lack of access to white-dominated institutional funding and traditions such as tithing. Even so, when an evangelical research firm surveyed church financial well-being, more Black pastors said their congregations had less than seven weeks of cash reserves — perhaps because they are dependent on a community with lower wealth in the first place. Getting money to repair churches can be particularly difficult.

Following the first grants that went to 35 churches across the country, recipients of another $4 million will be announced in January, Tolbert said, as part of a plan to distribute between $8 and $10 million, with support from Lilly Endowment Inc. In total, $20 million will be invested through Preserving Black Churches across all of its program goals.

“It is essential that these places are activated,” Tolbert said. “They are centers of worship, but also, they continue to serve the community.”

Action Fund executive director Brent Leggs told The Washington Post in an interview that Black churches are exceptional lenses through which to view Black and American history. “It’s amazing to see centuries of Black history told at historic Black churches. Some of the stories include formerly enslaved Africans moving through emancipation, beginning to form communities, … and some of the earliest buildings founded by African Americans in the United States [include] a Black church. These places are of exceptional significance. Their stories matter, and they are worthy of being preserved.”