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• W4385992803 abstract "Reviewed by: Community as Church, Church as Community by Michael Plekon Father Anton C. Vrame Michael Plekon. Community as Church, Church as Community. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021. 258 pp. Community as Church, Church as Community is an important book, one that should be read by church leadership from all communions. It is both sad and hopeful, like the death and Resurrection of Christ, to which the book often points as an image of the future of parish life and pastoral leadership. The book tells the stories of parishes, mainly in the United States, that are experiencing what we might call a great transformation. Like the “great resignation” of people walking away from their jobs in light of the pandemic, parishioners are leaving the buildings of their churches, retreating from parish membership and engagement. This phenomenon, exacerbated by the pandemic, has been occurring for many years. This is causing great stress among church leadership, but also among parishioners, who lament the decline but seemed resigned to it. But with transformation comes possibility, and this book identifies sources and shoots of new life and a realignment of congregational life, as communities discern new ways to live as the Body of Christ. Michael Plekon, professor emeritus of Baruch College, City University of New York, and his co-researchers, named in his acknowledgments, have pored through the media, visited parishes, and interviewed parishioners to document the death and rebirth of parishes, their activities, and their facilities. The perspective is ecumenical, including all Christian communions and communities, because all Christian communions are experiencing this challenge. Plekon shared some of these stories in his 2020 Florovsky Lecture to the Orthodox Theological Society in America, with the same title as the book (https://www.otsamerica.net/2020-annual-meeting/). Plekon states that the book is not a recipe of what to do to fix the problem. It is a reflection, as he writes, “on what ‘church’ and ‘community’ really are”; “on the complicated tangle of factors behind decline and shrinkage of congregations”; “on how many congregations—those surveyed, as well as others—have revived themselves, that they are first and foremost communities and behave that way”; and “on what the church is for, both laity and pastors; that is, what are the reasons for being, for continuing as communities in the locations where they are based?” (18). The book reviews aspects of American religious decline and disaffiliation, including mistrust in institutions, alternative spiritualities, and the loss of multigenerational families connected to a congregation. Without stating it explicitly, these factors demonstrate that American Christianity has lost [End Page 304] its “monopoly” status on both American life and the attention of American Christians. In my own work in Greek Orthodox parishes, the complaint is “sports on Sundays.” Young people and their families would rather attend soccer games and practice (or fill in your favorite sport) than participate in parish life on Sunday mornings, which was once the sole activity of a Sunday. While this is an easy target for blame, the study demonstrates that the reality is far more complicated, yet the effects are the same: congregations are shrinking, facilities sit unused, and full-time pastors are a luxury for these smaller congregations. But the bills must be paid, people must be served, liturgy and sacrament must be offered. Plekon and the team show us how parish communities are transforming themselves to meet these new realities. Some are repurposing their facilities by opening them up to local organizations for a myriad of uses. Others are increasing lay leadership and becoming less reliant on paid staff, especially pastors. Some are relocating and some are even rebranding. As Plekon writes, “Death and resurrection define the community that follows Jesus. Community as church is the focus of this book, and death and resurrection lie at the heart of the community of faith” (60). There are two oft-repeated premises: first, the size of a congregation is irrelevant. Small congregations can be filled with life and bear witness to the kingdom of God just as well as larger ones. A challenge is that church leadership relies on a model of full-time clergy (with salaries and benefits) ministering to a dynamic and..." @default.
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• W4385992803 title "Community as Church, Church as Community by Michael Plekon (review)" @default.
• W4385992803 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/joc.2022.a904752" @default.
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