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Church and Denominational Growth: What Does (or Does Not) Cause Growth or Decline
By David A. Roozen and C. Kirk Hadaway
Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1993. 400 pp. $21.95.

In the burgeoning literature about church growth in North America, this recent effort by editors David A. Roozen and C. Kirk Hadaway merits a first-rate ranking, Roozen (Professor of Religion and Society at Hartford Seminary) and Hadaway (a scholar affiliated with the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries in Cleveland) have gathered essays to assess the current scholarship about denominational growth and decline in North America. In the process, these essayists critically evaluate the assumptions inherent in earlier explanations about the "mainline demise," such as those offered by Dean Kelley, Wade Clark Roof, Dean Hoge, Lyle Schaller, and Reginald Bibby. Compared to the earlier work of similar interests and title (D. Hoge and D. Roozen, Understanding Church Growth and Decline: 1950-1978, 1979), the scope of this work is broader and deeper. Especially helpful are the articles about African American, Canadian, and Roman Catholic congregations. Kenneth Inskeep's chapter, "A Short History of Church Growth Research," is an excellent summary of the literature in this growing interdisciplinary topic. Abundant with statistical data and charts, the book is a ready resource for those interested in what Martin Marty has called the "seismic shift" in North American denominational religion. While its utility is hampered by the absence of an index, its twenty page bibliography alone is worth price of the book.

Following the editors' introduction to some of the methodological issues involved in the analysis of church and denominational growth, the book divides into thirds. The first set of essays address denominational growth and decline during the last half century. Here is a sampling of some of the conclusions: (1) the recent decline in "mainline" memberships is rooted in the 1960s; (2) denominational strategies that develop new congregations (NCDs) are more productive of members than denomi-

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national programmatic efforts in evangelism, which are centered in older, established congregations; (3) while conservative denominations maintain "strong symbolic boundaries" between what is religious and what is secular, their recent growth is partly attributable to birth rates and " membership retention"; (4) since multiple denominational priorities compete for finite denominational dollars, evangelism programs are often short-changed in declining denominations; and (5) while the controversy about the theological content of evangelism (the "E" word!) continues unabated, several mainline liberal denominations are seeking to reclaim the word and to reconstitute its traditional meaning.

A second group of essays focuses on congregational realities and Paradoxes. After a helpful discourse on methdological components of congregational-based analysis of growth and decline, the editors present seven articles about why some congregations grow and others drop members. Again, here are some of the insights: (1) members of congregations that are growing exhibit greater institutional commitment than those congregations that are declining; (2) growing congregations emphasize an "outward orientation," and evangelism is a mutual responsibility of all of members; (3) since newer congregations are able to integrate new members more readily, older congregations are less likely to grow than younger ones; (4) the presence of congregation-based conflict correlates positively with congregational membership decline; (5) community context, demography, and socio-economic impact larger suburban congregations (that is, those over 500 members) more than smaller congregations; and (6) after an extensive analysis of 641 congregations in five mainline denominations in Indiana, Daniel V. A. Olson concludes that "outward orientation" and "the will to grow" is a critically distinctive feature of those congregations that grow numerically.

The third section seeks to ascertain why individuals, especially the older and newer "baby boomers," choose to join and participate in congregations, "All the evidence suggests that the boomer's relation to the church is fundamentally different from that of previous generations-that is, . . . more 'voluntaristic,' consumer-oriented, and captive to the subjective, expressive dimensions of cultural individualism." Reginald Bibby's essay surveys the paradoxical relationship between stagnant Canadian congregations on the one hand and the many signs of individual religious vitality and inquisitiveness on the other. Working from the data of Gallup Surveys, Penny Long Marler and David A. Roozen insist that church growth research must seek to distinguish between simply joining congregations and how persons participate in congregations. They maintain that adult Roman Catholics and conservative Protestants "sustain a predisposition toward church membership," while the same predisposition has eroded among liberal Protestants. "In this sense, liberal Protestantism represents the purest stream of consumerism within American denominationalism." In yet another piece, Hart Nelsen and Conrad Kanagy, argue that membership increases or decreases significantly according to the context and environs of black congregations in America. In

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the rural South and the cities of the South, where church and community are firmly intertwined, congregations tend to grow numerically and participation is constant. Black churches in the northern cities, however, are aging and shrinking. "But the future of the black church. in the city is really dependent in the long term on the black church's ability to involve the less educated, younger adults who currently have little disposition-and possible disdain-for the church." Finally, two scholars, working with the data produced in Effective Christian Education: A National Study of Protestant Congregations, published in 1990, found that congregations that fostered quality programming and a "thinking climate" were more likely to grow than those that emphasized Gemütlichkeit. Apparently, "warm and focused" is better than "warm and fuzzy."

In the last article, Kirk Hadaway offers his own conclusions about church growth and decline. First, Hadaway says, contemporary individuals approach the church very differently from their parents or grandparents. Most persons join congregations on their own terms and many soon associate with that "soft underbelly" membership who practice marginal institutional commitments. Consequently, in a religious economy that is so deregulated, the future of churches in America rides on the decisions of the current cohort of young adults. A second generalization is more challenging. Most churches, he maintains, could grow if leaders and members were more responsive to the religious needs of all members and potential members. Harmonizing these two countervailing realities, however, is no small assignment-conceptually or practically. What are the guidelines for negotiating what churches traditionally offer and what potential members want?

This collection of essays whets this reviewer's appetite for more. We need a widening and deepening of the issues implicit in this kind of research. I mention just one issue; many others loom on the horizon. Is there not some statistically significant method to explain the linkage between the content of persons' beliefs and their predisposition to join and actively participate in congregational life and ministries? Scattered throughout this book are hints-more anecdotal than quantitative-that beliefs and membership are symbiotically related. Is there a correlation between membership decline and the vitality of congregation-nurtured commitments? How could scholars pursue the comment by one respondent who left a mainline church because "there was no meat; I got fed a lot of Twinkies?" The research among Presbyterians conducted by Benton Johnson, Dean Hoge, and Donald Luidens insists that the first assignment for attracting new members to mainline denominations is for those congregations to answer the baby-boomers' compelling question, What is so special about Christianity? As the Canadian scholar Reginald Bibby, tracking similar concerns, says, ". . . [T]here appears to be a considerable market for the very things that religion historically, 'has been about.' " One essayist puts my concern succinctly: "A congregation is a collection of believers; does it matter what they believe?" Might not the fledgling guild of scholars who seek to understand church growth find

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a way to help answer this persistent question? Roozen and Hadaway's work makes a worthy beginning.

John W. Stewart
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, NJ