Transcript
And they kept silent, and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. Please be seated.
We’re going to do a little bit of audience participation real quick. Ready? We’re going to do it by a show of hands. And I don’t mean a show of hands, I mean a show of hands. And it’s all about coming to Saint Johns, so it’s not like a big confession or anything. Here we go. Raise your hand if you started coming to Saint John’s less than a year ago.
So to make it easy, since Ash Wednesday was last year on Valentine’s Day, have you started coming since then? Wonderful. On the other hand, raise your hand if you’ve been coming to Saint John’s since you were born. Good. Some of our littler ones are raising their hands.
Raise your hands if your parents came to Saint John’s. Good. Your grandparents, your great grandparents. Our little ones are still raising their hands. Very good.
Raise your hand if you were or still are something other than Episcopalian. Good to know. Raise your hand if you came here because someone invited you or brought you here. Parents totally count in this case. Awesome.
Now we’re going to get a little tougher. Raise your hand if you have ever brought someone to church with you who didn’t already attend Saint John’s. Raise your hand if you’ve invited people to join you at Saint John’s and keep your hands raised. If it was in the last six months. Very good.
Thank you. Now go ahead. Stretch your shoulders. We’re done with that part. Very good.
Instead, we’re going to move on to some statistics. Hard numbers. Those of you who don’t like numbers, I’m sorry. Just tune this part out. It’s going to start sounding not so good, but I promise if you keep listening, it will get better. All of these statistics are from either the Pew Research Center or the Episcopal Church. I differentiate in the sermon, and the Pew Research Center started doing the religious landscape study in 2007. It’s the largest single survey the center conducts, and it provides authoritative figures on the size of U.S. religious groups. In case you were wondering, the US census no longer keeps information about religion.
So in 2007, when the study began, 78% of U.S. adults self-identified as Christian. That number slowly dropped. And the second study done in 2014, seven years later, only had 71%. And the latest study, which occurred during 2023 and 24, showed only 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christian. It seems kind of glum, but the good news is that number in recent months and years has actually gone static. In fact, post-Covid, as churches are coming out of social distancing and lockdowns, more people seem to be returning to the pews.
But if attendance dwindled, beliefs have not. According to the same survey results, 92% of U.S. adults believe at least one of the following. Go ahead and then take them off on your finger if you believe them too. One, people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body. Two, God or some other universal spirit exists. Three, beyond the natural world, there is something there. Even if we can’t see it. And four, there is an afterlife. If 92% of people believe at least one of those things, but only 62% identify as Christian, well, maybe there is some opportunity there.
So a switch to the Episcopal Church. We make up 1% of that Christian population in the United States. Evangelicals and Catholics have the biggest slice, with 23% and 19% of that 62%. Respectfully. Our hard numbers are a little bit older, but not by much.
In 2023, the Episcopal Church had 1,394,769 active baptized members. That means people who are baptized, known to the treasurer as in, give money, and come at least three times a year. Across the country, on an average Sunday in 2023, about 386,468 people were in an Episcopal pew. That’s a 10% increase from 2022, which saw a 20% increase from the prior year 2021. Granted, again, 2021 was a wacky year, but still, Saint John’s has also seen growth. In 2022, we had 276 active members with an average Sunday attendance of 91 people.
These are reports we have to submit to the dioceses and the national church every year in 2023, we had 368 active members, with an average Sunday attendance of 107 people, almost 100 more active members from 2022 to 2023. Yeah. So going back to our hand-raising exercise, those of you who started attending in the past three years, thank you and welcome. And now if we’re talking about church growth, there is one thing we can do above all other things we can possibly do that will encourage church growth. You knew that’s where I was going with these numbers. Come on now, before I get to the big reveal, though, real quick, I’m going to step up on my soapbox.
Church growth is a goal or an object-, not, excuse me. Church growth is not a goal or an objective. It’s a side effect. It’s what happens when we are living into our authentic selves as a worshiping community, as Saint John’s Church, and also church growth can be a bit ambiguous because what are we growing? The number of people who know that we are the oldest continuously worshiping English language church in North America?
Well, I’m pretty sure the news headlines did that for us real well recently. The number of people who know where we are located, the number of people who know someone buried in our graveyard, I could keep going, but you probably get the idea. So back to the point. If we’re talking about church growth and we want Saint John’s to grow as and have more people here on a Sunday morning, there is one thing above everything else that we could possibly do that would make Saint John’s Church grow. Yes, it’s being authentically ourselves.
Yes, it’s focusing on what we do well and working on those growing edges. And the biggest way to grow. Invite people. Tell people about us, about your faith, and not just your faith, your faith community. You want more people sitting in the pews, so much so that you have to crawl over them to get to that spot you’ve been sitting in since you were baptized as a baby.
Bring them with you to sit there. Bring your neighbors, bring your friends. Your second cousin twice removed that woman at the checkout line in Food Lion. And don’t just invite them. Tell them about all of the amazing things that you all, we all Saint John’s is doing.
Tell them about the special events and the sacred moments. About the community, the friendships and support system. Tell them about the spiritual experiences of feeling closer to God. Tell them about those moments that I call God. Sightings. When we get to see a hint of what God’s glorious kingdom will be like when it comes.
We’re not as lucky as Moses. Our faces don’t glow when we witness God. We have to use our words. And today’s gospel reading Peter, John, and James are invited to join Jesus in prayer and they go up to the top of a mountain. It always seems to happen on a mountain.
And while Peter and John and James are barely able to stay awake, they are awake enough to see something magical, something sacred. They see God and they hear God. They experience God. And yet when they all return to the rest of the crowd, they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they have seen. Why?
Why keep it to themselves? Why keep all of this to ourselves? Saint John’s Church is a magical place, a sacred place. Why wouldn’t she want to brag about it? About us? To the people around you?
Don’t be like those disciples. Or like the women on Easter morning who found the tomb empty and ran away scared and told no one anything, or even the wise men on Epiphany who go home a different route so they don’t have to share the news with anyone. Do not keep it a secret. Instead, go and tell.
Tell everyone friends and neighbors and random strangers on the street and take it one more step. And don’t just brag about your faith and community, the Saint John’s Church. Invite them to come and see for themselves. Invite them to see what we are doing and to become a part of it.
It sounds easy enough to say, I will totally admit, as you all probably already know, it’s not easy to do. And that’s okay. Take some time to practice. It took me a while to figure out how to say my invite, and now I say the same thing to everyone, especially when they ask about church, which I will admit is probably more often for me than you because they ask me where I work.
But I promise it’ll come up for you to. And my line is whenever you want. There’s always a spot for you here at Saint John’s, whether you’re whenever you’re ready will be waiting for you. So this is my challenge to all of you.
Don’t be like Peter and John and James. Instead, tell people. And here’s the homework assignment. Between now and the end of the year. That’s ten months. You got some time.
Bring someone to church with you and not your spouse or your kid or your parent. That’s too easy. Bring a friend or a neighbor. Brag about Saint John’s Church. It’s okay to brag about how awesome we are because we are, and then invite someone to be part of it to witness the sacredness of Saint John’s Church and all that we are and all that we offer.
Go tell, invite and come back with someone new. Maybe they’ll have their own transfiguring experience here. Amen.