Decline & Renewal, 13: Brian Sandine Guest Column

Editor's note: Here’s another in our series of guest columns on church decline. Still to come: articles from church leaders like Stan Granberg, Aaron Metcalf, Tim Spivey, Rick Gibson and more. Articles in April will focus on renewal.

Our eighth guest column is from Brian Sandine, a West Coast native who has preached in San Leandro, California since 2000. Brian brings us the heartfelt and honest story of decline through the lens of the San Leandro Church of Christ. I pray that you’ll be blessed and informed by his words.

The View from Brian Sandine

I am an ethnographer at heart. I like to talk with people about what happened, what life was like, and what their experience has taught them. I like to hear them tell their story and reflect on that story’s importance. So to write this piece, I asked several members of our congregation to tell me about it. I preach for the San Leandro Church of Christ, a church in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a church with a story—several stories as a matter of fact. One of those is the story of decline.

The San Leandro Church began when a few families started meeting together in their homes during late 1941 and early 1942. In a short time, they were able to buy property on the northeast corner of town and build a building. Several members did a lot of the work with their own hands. The first meeting in that building was on January 5, 1947. We still meet there today.

During the first twenty tears, membership soared from 20 to 320. This was due, in part, to the effective preaching and ministry of Roy Osborne. The San Leandro church has long been a theologically progressive place, and many who were unhappy with some of the traditional Church of Christ rigidity moved to our congregation.

The church also grew because many WW2 families came to the Bay Area to work in the Oakland shipyards and to begin their post-war careers with area companies. Our congregation enjoyed the benefits of committed, southern Christians who filled our ranks and a generally receptive spirit on the part of those we tried to reach with the gospel.

At the same time, a favorable mix of cultural factors spurred our growth. There was considerably less cultural mobility. Several of our men worked for the same employer during their entire career. Their wives stayed at home, and this freed them to invest a considerable amount of time and energy in church programs and functions. In those days, it was not uncommon to have two or three generations of the same family in our church because, as children became independent, they were more likely to stay close to home. Today, one couple in their nineties are our last remaining church members from that era.

Our earliest, easily accessible attendance records show that we had 234 members in 1984, and since that time our membership has declined, on average, 2.5% every year. There was one year where membership increased by 6 people. The trend is disheartening to all of us, and as our members tell me, there have been several reasons for the decline.

First, many of those once favorable cultural factors have taken an unfavorable turn. Our members now change jobs with much greater frequency. The cost of living now requires that both husbands and wives work, so women are no longer free to give considerable time to church efforts, and any hiccup in family life can mean that it is easier to move out of the area than to find another affordable place to live. During the recent housing crisis, people left the Bay Area in droves, and several left our congregation. Today, as our children mature, they often move away to attend college or to another city to start their own lives, and they are less likely to stay with the church. Our attempts to share the gospel with others are now more typically met with resistance than receptivity. Our neighborhood has also declined making our congregation less appealing than those in other areas with newer facilities. We have baptized new Christians, and we have had many people come, but more have moved on than have stayed.

Second, congregational dynamics have hampered our efforts. As those original members began to leave, and then to die, we did little to replace them. Most new members transferred from other congregations rather than coming from the community. These were the first hints at the dying spirit of evangelism in our church.

During the early 1990s, a very popular preacher’s wife contracted cancer. During the time of her illness, the congregation experienced great solidarity as we prayed for her healing and trusted God to do so. When she died, a part of the emotional spirit of the church died with her.

Shortly after, another member, who had been with us just a short time, privately confessed to something he had done prior to becoming a Christian. Unfortunately, this information did not remain confidential, and the reactions by many of the members were less than charitable. When the elders chose to support the man, many members left. Some left because they could not forgive what the man had done, and others left because they saw the elders’ decision as a sign of weak leadership. Members continued to trickle away.

During 2001 and 2002, the congregation undertook a rigorous study of women’s participation. A few years earlier, we had made the move to a praise team and introduced other changes in worship. When the elders decided that we would move toward greater gender equality, our longstanding progressive stance as a congregation meant that we did not lose too many members. One elder, however, resigned and moved to a nearby Church of Christ.

A few years later, two elders and their wives experienced a significant personal conflict. Unfortunately, this problem could not be resolved despite much prayer, dialogue, and help from Pepperdine’s Conflict Resolution Center. Both families moved elsewhere. These difficulties continued to sap the church’s emotional spirit. In reflection, I would say that poor responses from our people to the challenges the congregation has encountered over time has been one of the most important factors in our decline. Our unchristian and unchristlike behavior has been damaging.

Like many Churches of Christ, our attempts to address our problems have meant a turn inward at the expense of outreach and community service. As a result, after some thirty years, we no longer know how to share our faith and the thought of doing so makes us uncomfortable, even fearful. Couple that with an unfortunate consequence of embracing the grace of God, over that same thirty year period of time, and you have our present situation in a nutshell. Generally speaking, the move away from the legalism that has characterized much of our heritage to the grace we now celebrate has been a wonderful thing. Some members, however, found in this liberty an excuse to do little. “If I do not have to, then I won’t.” This attitude has crippled the overall commitment of our church to both the principles and causes we claim to hold dear.

This raises the issue of motivation. If we have rightly expelled guilt and fear as motivators for mission and service, what happens when our love for Jesus does not sufficiently move us to action? That is a serious question we must ask ourselves. In response, I would say that we have the potential to turn the corner if we are willing to invest ourselves in God, and at the same time invest in people in order to bring them to God. Doing so may give us a chance to tell a new story in the San Leandro Church.

                
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Bio:
Brian was born in Oregon, and he grew up in the Circle Church of Christ in Corvallis. His experience in the campus ministry to students at Oregon State University stirred in him the call to ministry. He holds a BA and MA in Biblical Studies from Abilene Christian and a PhD in Organizational Communication from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Brian has been the preaching minister for San Leandro since 2000. He and his wife TaLyna have been married twenty-six years. They have two daughters, Britta (15) and Bryn (13).