The numbers game...

Invariably when a Priest is asked about his parish people say "And how many members does your parish have?"

Now people aren't looking for nuance in this, thoughts about faithfulness, the stage of life a parish is in, or the historical development of things. They want a number and the higher the better. Everything hangs on the number.

If the number is low it must be about the Priest not measuring up or the parish being dysfunctional or some other dark secret that keeps it from being higher. When Priests talk to Priests the issue is the same and even when we offer the nuances and they are listened to with the appropriate and well practiced techniques the one speaking and those listening know that only the number matters. The rest is small talk.

And there is a certain truth in numbers. Numerical growth is normal in the church and when it is not happening there really does need to be an analysis of the situation. Sometimes the answer is simple and there are conflicts or attitudes that have driven people away or closed the doors to people coming in. Language still is one of the largest and it remains an amazing fact that so many Orthodox parishes, even those that have been in this country for decades, still cling to languages and customs that they never use outside the walls of the Church. But there are more and sometimes its not about desire or struggles or ethnicity but about lack of support and direction for growth, the failure to plan that means the Parish has planned, sometimes without knowing it, to fail. Some parishes, too, need to die but no one has the desire to say that let alone act on it. Its never as simple, despite our wish, as the number.

Numerical success, too, has to be examined. Is it an accident of immigration where a large community of people was already present and the church simply filled? Has it been about the movement of converts from other Christian communities into the life of the Church? Is it a generational thing, a burst of fertility from years past that has now come to fruition? Success numbers are complex too and may not actually reflect a vital congregation but one that fate, rather than ministry, has favored with the numbers that shape our idea of success.

A few points here, for a digression regarding the growth of Orthodoxy.

First certain areas of Orthodoxy in the United States have experienced growth but the context has to be examined. Orthodoxy, when placed against its own context of ethnic isolation in this country is experiencing a growth and flowering, but when placed in the larger Christian context of this culture is still a minor player. We speak, for example, of the growth of 200 plus new parishes in the Antiochian Archdiocese in the past few decades which is admirable given the ethos of American Orthodoxy but miniscule in comparison to say, the Assemblies of God, who will probably put up 200 new parishes this year alone. Our will to evangelize and build is still in its infancy.

Second we have to understand that we still are not doing a substantial job of reaching the unchurched. So much of our "growth" is really a reshuffling of the deck as other Christians leave thier churches for ours. While that, from our point of view (and thiers) is a movement from something less to something more it hardly marks an actual growth in the Kingdom. We're just swapping folks around and frankly there are Orthodox who have left the Church for other Christian communities as well. There are few, to my knowledge, models where hard core unchurched are being brought in from the streets into the communicant life of the Church.

And although we have taken great strides, for us, in relearning and remphasizing evangelism and growth in our parishes and clergy we are still a long ways from recovering the Orthodox vision of proclaiming the Gospel in word and deed as an integral part of what it means to be a normal Parish and parishoner. Imagine where our churches would be if half the energy spent on festivals was spent on evangelism?

Where should this lead?

Perhaps the hope should be that one day numbers will matter as they truly should, within the actual history and life of the parish and as a tool to help us direct the life and ministry of our churches. Not numbers for the raw impact and idea that a lot means things are going well, but numbers that tell us where we are strong, where we are not so strong, and where God still wants us to change and become what He desires us to be.

In the end, after all, its the "why" of the numbers, that middle place between worshipping them as indicators of success and ignoring them in the pretense of piety, that matters most of all.