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Bulletin 90 Date : 8th Mar 2007
CLC : Introduction

So what does CLC stand for? Answer : Congregational Life Cycles. It’s the study into how church congregations develop and, sometimes, stagnate and die. I will be unpacking something of this thinking over the next few bulletins.

My thanks go to Rev. Dr. Martyn Atkins (Principal of Cliff College) who delivered a talk on this subject at Cliff College a couple of years ago during the World Methodist Evangelism Institute gathering. In case you’re wondering, I have asked his permission to write on this subject.

Being something of a gardener (with the emphasis on ‘something’) I liken the development of congregations to the development of a new plant. This helps me because it gets me away from thinking of the church as something static and lifeless. Instead, by thinking of the church as a living organism, we can understand the reasons why things go wrong and what remedial actions we might take. Also, Jesus used imagery relating to plants in His teaching.

In John 15 He refers to Himself as ‘the True Vine’ and encourages us, as the branches, to remain connected to Him in order to remain fruitful. He also talks about dead branches and the need for pruning. There are other references to trees or plants in Matthew’s Gospel (3:10, 7:17ff, 12:33, 21:19ff, 24:32) and other gospels have similar references like Luke 13:18f and more famously, Matthew 13:4-9 (parallel in Mark 4:3-9 and Luke 8:5-8) with the parable of the sower.

But why do we talk about congregations and not churches? The simple answer is that they are not the same. One church may have two or more congregations. For instance, there may be a church which has a family congregation on Sunday morning and a more traditional and elderly congregation in the evening.

Other churches may hold a number of services throughout their Sunday and each may attract different people although there may be overlap. Some may say it is sad when members of the same church split down into discreet congregations but this can happen and in some cases it is necessary.

What is also true is that if a church has multiple congregations, each one may be at a different stage in its life-cycle. We may wrongly assume that the whole church is at the same stage of its spiritual development and preach as if this were the case. However, most, if not all, churches will have members whose spiritual needs are different.

So, over the next few bulletins we shall explore the life cycle from birth (sowing seeds) through to full maturity (planting out) and then look at the problems which can occur beyond this when a congregation starts to decline (pot-bound or neglected) and finally die off altogether (diseased beyond recovery).