St. Lydia’s Dinner Church, in Brooklyn New York, is a different type of church. They gather on Sundays and Mondays to “cook and share a sacred meal, just as the followers of Jesus did.” From their website: We eat, explore scripture, offer prayers, and sing together. Tied to the Lutheran and Episcopal traditions, our worship…
The Alley News is a very local newspaper, based in the Phillips Neighborhood in Minneapolis. In 2014, they published an account and explanation of St. Paul Lutheran Church’s “Notes of Growth and Change.” This looks a lot like the basic facts people would want to have about their particular churches for a congregational timeline. The…
An article from the York, Pennsylvania Dispatch outlined how two churches used ceremony and ritual to merge. Trinity and Fourth United Methodist churches were set to merge, but instead of a more traditional merging ceremony, the planners opted to bring in a particular ritual common to weddings. From the article, At 10:30 a.m. Sunday, the…
An important part of any congregational study is understanding the history and ecology of the community. These changes can involve racial or cultural changes to the community, like the example from Oak Park Illinois. Other important changes can be the growth or decline of local industries, such as the example in Anderson Indiana. [To read more about…
Mark Chaves’ 2011 book, American Religion: Contemporary Trends, outlines a number of ways in which denominations have less and less control over individual congregations: 1 in 5 religious congregations in the United States are now unaffiliated (Chaves 2011). Moreover, 1 in 5 people who attend church attend congregations that are unaffiliated. This is a change…