"BUT I WANNA GO TO ST. JOHN'S!"

“And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges;” (Revelation 2:12)

In discussing the Chicago area Catholic priest who made a number of offensive and outrageous statements at the (predominantly) black “Trinity United Church of Christ”, WRKO afternoon “shock jock” Howie Carr recently said, “When I was a kid Catholic priests for the most part were not very good speakers.  In those days, the Catholic Church had a big advantage over Protestant Churches.  Catholics were told that if they didn’t go to church every Sunday, they’d go to Hell.  Protestants had to market their churches to people and give them a reason to want to attend.”

Howie Carr is absolutely right about that.  Local Catholic Churches of the pre-1980 days also often had another big advantage:  People were geographically assigned to the church they were to attend, based upon their residential addresses.  Thus, it was unlikely that a local Catholic Church would truly fail and have to close its doors in those days, and it was also unlikely that a Catholic Church would become a megachurch (the size of something like Joel Osteen’s nondenominational megachurch in Texas, for instance).  Granted, in those days, there were Catholic Churches in suburban Boston who had as many as 2000 people at “mass” every week, and usually those churches would have five or six masses per Sunday.  As Protestants count numbers, those WERE “megachurches”!
The geographic setup badly hurt churches in neighborhoods like Roxbury which went from being 75% Irish Catholic in 1940 to being 65% black (mostly Protestant) by 1970.  Most suburban Catholic churches, however,  thrived under that old geographic system.

There ARE a lot of things to be said about that geographic system of church attendance assignments.  Catholics at “St. Terri the Boring” church could feel very jealous of those in the parish of “St. Ryan the Cool”.  It was not unusual for people to complain to their diocese or archdiocese and say things like,
    “St. Ryan the Cool” church has air conditioning!  “St Ryan the Cool” church has a gym!  “St. Ryan the Cool” church has high school dances with the best rock & roll bands.  How come we have to go to “St. Terri the Boring” with no A/C, no gym, and no cool dances?  
    The diocese would reply, “Well, if you want your church to be like ‘St. Ryan the Cool’ then you’ll have to raise the funds and work to build it up and improve it.  That’s YOUR local parish church.  YOU do something with it.”

    I’ve often wondered what it would be like if the Assemblies of God operated geographically like the pre-1980 U.S. Catholic church did.  When I moved into Framingham in 1987,. there were at least 100 people from Framingham attending Wellesley Park Assembly of God in Wayland.  On a “real good” Sunday we had 40 people in church in those days.  (Today on a “real good” Sunday, it’s “30”!)  Following the Catholic analogy above, we were (and still are) St. Terri the Boring.  (Well, “boring” is a strong word.  I don’t think we’re BORING, but there’s no state-of-the-art gym or anything like that!!)  I used to wish I could have even ten of those Framingham residents in our church and wondered what a difference that might make.  I hope no ecclesiastical executives from the Assemblies of God are reading this, but I often find it curious that we beg and plead for funds to “plant churches” in certain communities that in fact have huge constituencies of people who happen to attend church in the next town, and sometimes I think it’s a bit disingenuous to raise funds that way.  Is it really appropriate to beg and plead and cry for someone to “Come and reach the lost in Jonesville which has no church?” when 300 people from Jonesville attend the big Assemblies of God church in neighboring Smith City every Sunday AND that church does a number of evangelistic outreaches in Jonesville?  That’s the kind of question that a lot of AG preachers THINK but very few will ask.

What got me thinking about the whole old Catholic geographic thing where, for instance, in my hometown of Canton, Massachusetts people who attended the slightly less prestigious St. Gerard’s were told they could not attend the more prestigious St. John’s?  I’m not sure.  Maybe it’s my struggle with low attendance figures and the desire for some quick and easy fix.  

Ultimately, the Catholic Church abandoned the geographic boundary thing somewhere around 25-plus years ago.  Today, Catholic Churches are shrinking and closing and they’re happy to just have ANYBODY attending, whether they drive 5 minutes to church or 55 minutes.  And, as Howie Carr observed, today’s priests can’t depend on people coming to church or they’ll go to Hell.  THAT teaching was thrown out, too.  The priests now have to be good speakers, and they’re competing in the marketplace like all the other churches.

Is that good or is it bad? I’m not sure.  As far as I’m concerned “the jury is still out on this one”...