What can a church do when the demographics of its neighborhood changes

New Church Growth Strategy: Intentional Ethnic Diversity: How some traditionally white churches and denominations are staving off attendance decline through diversification strategies.
by Helen Lee (OnFaith — May 2014)

At First Covenant Church (FCC) in St. Paul, Minnesota, a church with longstanding roots in the city’s East Side neighborhood, you can still find families with ties to the original Swedish immigrants who planted the church 140 years ago. But by 2002, the congregation had arrived at a critical juncture. “It was an aging congregation filled with fear, fear of dying, fear of change,” says pastor Anne Vining. The largely Caucasian church decided that it needed to face those fears and pray for direction on its next steps.

What emerged from the crucible of self-examination for FCC and its leaders was the realization that although its neighborhood had remained blue-collar socioeconomically, the racial and ethnic composition of the East Side had diversified far from its Swedish origins. To keep pace with these changes, the church had to begin doing the same. Steve Benson, a lay leader whose daughter represents the sixth generation of his family to attend FCC, recalls, "The landscape of our community had changed, and we needed to re-envision ourselves given what was already right at our doorstep."

Read the full article at http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2014/05/20/new-church-growth-strategy-intentional-ethnic-diversity/32127

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