Evangelism

We had a district preacher's meeting today. One of the issues on the agenda was evangelism. More specifically, the issue is the loss of membership in our district. The bulk of our district is the northern half of Memphis and Shelby County. We are a white, middle-class church. Memphis is an increasingly black, poor city. Our church has black congregations. For the most part, at least in our city, those congregations are very small. With the exception of a couple, their pastor's salaries have to be subsidized by the conference to provide something resembling a living wage. The couple that are larger and self-sufficient worship much more in the style of the white churches than the COGIC churches that dominate Memphis' black community.
With the exception of our one megachurch, our congregations in the city limits are old and shrinking. Most of our pastors, and I was one of them at two different churches, spend the majority of their time visiting hospitals and nursing homes, and holding funerals. Our people are good people. They have tried to live good lives. But the vast majority of them have turned the corner of life. I believe that our lives are shaped like diamonds. We spend a long period from the start with our world getting bigger and bigger. But at some point, we turn the corner, and our world starts to draw down again. As we age, deal with infirmity, and move toward the end, the world gets smaller and smaller. It is just not realistic to expect those whose world has become very small to find a way to change worship styles, change the identity of their church, and lay aside whatever biases have burdened their existence for 70, 80 or 90 years.
We predominantly white United Methodists don't relate well to African-Americans in worship. We don't relate well to hispanics in worship. Hell, we don't even speak their language. And the white people in the city of Memphis are moving out, if they are concerned about the school system or personal safety, or dying out if they feel that they are too old to move and start over. And our churches will continue to decline until all of them except for three or four wind up closed. And it has nothing to do with anyone's desire to do evangelism. It has everything to do with the cultural expressions of worship.
All this is frustrating.
What infuriates me is that I have been the same guy for the last 8 years. For the first six of those I was seen as a failure because my churches shrank and we did not pay our conference and general church apportionments. For the last two years I have been seen as stunningly effective and successful! My church is growing by leaps and bounds, and the finances are growing accordingly. We pay everything, and even turned a profit of $11,000 last year. I'm the same guy. I didn't have any sudden epiphanies that turned my performance around. I was just moved from a city neighborhood where there are very few options for the white church, to a bedroom community outside Shelby County where people-most all of them families with children-are flooding in to avoid putting their kids in the Memphis City Schools. Now I'm an evangelism expert!
One promise: I will never, ever, forget that so much of this is contextual. I have sat in workshops and presentations by colleagues who never did anything but get appointed to the communities that the white folks were running away to. They get so impressed with themselves for all their accomplishments. I was as good in 1999 as I am in 2007. No matter what the numbers said.
And shuffling the white folks from city to county and county to outlying area isn't evangelism.