Mainliners adopting evangelical zeal

Two-plus years ago, when the Rev. Kate Ekrem became rector at Grace Episcopal Church in Norwood, she found a congregation with a case of spiritual anemia. A protracted search for a leader had left the church without a full-time priest for a couple of years, sapping membership. Where 100 people had once turned out for the main Sunday service, little more than half that number showed by the time Ekrem arrived.

Then, seven months ago, the church embarked on a muscular recruiting effort -- ''not the old stereotype of standing on a street corner thumping a Bible," says Ekrem, but a low-key, corporate-style sharing of information.

A splashy color brochure advertised Grace Church as ''a place to worship, raise a family, and form lasting friendships." The pitch was deliberate: Using a company that provides demographic data about surrounding neighborhoods, the church targeted a mailing with the brochure and other information to young families who might want a church for their children. Open houses and another mailing followed. In little more than half a year, Ekrem says, attendance at the main service has risen to between 80 and 90 a week.

Grace Church showcases the possible dividends, two years after the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts committed itself to a new evangelism, with the goal of boosting average Sunday attendance 50 percent by 2013. The diocese now counts about 77,000 members in nearly 200 congregations in eastern Massachusetts.

Episcopalians aren't the only mainline denomination adopting an evangelistic zeal that has been the hallmark of more conservative churches, but they may be the most counterintuitive, given their reputation for reserve born of their roots among America's elite. (Eleven presidents were Episcopalians, the most of any denomination.)

The new emphasis on membership acknowledges the phenomenal rise in recent decades of evangelical churches, and the simultaneous tanking in membership of mainline denominations, says the Rev. Steven C. Bonsey. He holds a relatively new title, canon for evangelism, at Boston's Cathedral Church of St. Paul, the diocesan headquarters overlooking Boston Common. Last year he published a booklet, ''A Shy Person's Guide to the Practice of Evangelism."

The guide offers low-key ways of introducing one's faith to others, while also poking fun at Episcopalians' wariness about proselytizing. A typical passage: ''Let's pretend that you are someone who might be willing, in theory, at some point, possibly, to consider maybe doing something that, while not 'evangelism'-type evangelism, still could be in some way construed as a sort of sharing of hope. Kind of."

''It's been a real cultural change within the Episcopal Church to understand evangelism differently, and in a positive light," says Bonsey, in part because of its pedigree among conservative churches whose theology many mainline churches reject. Another hesitation, he adds, is many Episcopalians' belief that religion is a private matter, not intended for foisting on others.

Those reservations bumped up against an unpleasant reality: The Episcopal Church and its mainline cousins no longer can bank on a steady supply of members. Worship habits once were an heirloom handed down from generation to generation, feeding families into the pews. (Bonsey inherited not just his father's faith but his calling as an Episcopal priest as well.)

At the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, a just-completed program in which lay Episcopalians discussed their faith and careers invited non-Episcopalians from downtown institutions to attend. The program starts up again in the fall.

Grace Church's efforts have produced new Episcopalians like Carol Hobbs. At 38, she has returned to regular worship for the first time since she was a teenager. Hobbs knows something about evangelism, having been raised in a Pentecostal church in her native Canada. But she found it too conservative and judgmental and drifted away as an adult.

But ''my 9-year-old daughter was quite interested in attending a church. She'd had several friends who'd gone through First Communion," she says. She checked out Episcopal websites and found the denomination appealing.

Grace Church's site intrigued her with its emphasis on community activities and family-oriented membership. Attending a service, she was taken by the friendly usher who directed her daughter to the downstairs Sunday school, and by Ekrem, the first woman Hobbs ever saw in a pulpit.

''Before I knew it," she says, ''I was in the choir."

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