I was leafing through my old Chalmers-Wesley annual reports, wondering whether they should be tossed into the recycling bin. Reading them, I couldn't help but notice the changes over the years.
My oldest copy, the 1984 report, listed eight teachers for five Sunday School classes. Enrolment rose the next year but the teaching staff fell to five. The following years saw a gradual decline in enrolment.
The 1990 report had no entry for Christian education. According to the minutes of the 1991 annual meeting, "the Sunday Church School program was floundering due to a lack of coordination, the responsibility for which must be accepted by the Church, not the children's parents". It was decided to put one of the teachers on salary — an experiment that ended four years later. Today, Sunday School is held only once a month.
The 1984 report mentioned that the Chalmers-Wesley Youth Group, comprised of 15 teenagers, came to an end in 1983 when its two leaders left. An inter-church group took its place. The entry in the 1985 report said that "attempts were being made by representatives of Chalmers, Holy Trinity Cathedral, and St. Michael's to revitalize the Inter Church Youth Group (...) It is still too early to report any concrete results but there is reason for optimism." The 1986 entry was less reassuring: "Efforts continued to start a group but were finally abandoned for the present time."
In 1984, the choir was the activity that catered to the student crowd — about a dozen from the university and junior college.
Their numbers began to decline after 1986 when practices were switched from Thursday to Friday night, initially to accommodate the Choir Director's schedule. A new director took over in 1988, but the return to week-night practices was put off from one season to the next. Finally, in 1989, it was announced that the practice night would remain unchanged so that the older choir members — now the majority — could sleep in the day after. Since 1990, the number of students attending Chalmers has averaged between one and three.
The picture today is one of a church that has grown much smaller, older and ingrown. Will the future be any better?
I can already see the heads shaking. Doesn't Peter understand that the English community is shrinking? Doesn't he understand that young people are leaving Quebec? Doesn't he understand that young people are just not interested in church anymore?
No, Peter doesn't understand these "truths". According to Statistics Canada, the English-speaking community in Quebec City has steadily grown over the past ten years. The same period has also seen rising enrolment at St. Lawrence College. Although fewer English-speaking students are entering Laval's Français pour non-francophones program, more and more are studying in other departments. In 1993-94, two of our three student members came from Laval's MBA program.
If any organization cuts out its activities for children, teenagers and young adults, its membership in these age groups will (surprise! surprise!) go down. As the remaining members get older and fewer, they may then assume the same thing is going on in the wider community.
People are always surprised when I tell them that the English community is larger today than it was ten years ago. Inevitably, they have the opposite impression — and this is based on their experience in aging, ingrown community groups and churches, like Chalmers.
Why have we chosen to "grow in" instead of out? Part of the answer was given at our workshop on church growth. The guest speaker told us how a mainstream church had successfully worked at attracting many new members. Nonetheless, the longtime churchgoers felt unhappy, even resentful. They were no longer getting as much attention as before. Their influence within the church had diminished. They saw themselves as being less important.
The guest speaker went on to say that mainstream churches, like Canadians in general, were losing their sense of community: People are now more concerned about their rights and entitlements, and less about their responsibilities to others.
That workshop was a year and a half ago. We have since had a lot of talk about church growth, but little if any concrete action.