By The Rev. Canon Steve Carlson and Kate Bond

The authors both serve on the Bishop’s staff of the Diocese of Oklahoma
Steve is the Canon to the Ordinary
Kate is Director of Faith Formation and Discipleship

In the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma, congregational vitality is our top priority. We are committed to the idea that all of our congregations can be vital. Our role in the diocese is to support and resource congregational vitality in all we do. We chose the Congregational Vitality Assessment (CVA) as our primary congregational assessment tool to help us measure vitality. We invited our Vestries and Bishop’s Committees to take the CVA along with their clergy. We had a strong positive response. Nearly 90% of our congregations participated. 

We are not using the CVA as an evaluative tool, but as information to allow leaders a new lens on their congregational life rather than solely relying on the metrics of giving and attendance. While giving and attendance metrics are valuable and clear, they are limited in telling us much about vitality. Each congregation that took the CVA had an introductory meeting with a member of the Ministry Partners Team, and following the survey received a helpful summary of vitality in twelve areas of vitality, which we sent along with detailed demographic information about the area around the congregation and a decade summary of parochial report data. The goal was that this would help leaders identify areas of strength and challenges using a series of discernment questions we included in the packet. 

In addition, adopting the CVA at a judicatory level gave us a great data set of our own congregations based on the observations of their leaders, especially given strong participation across our diocese. Much of what we learned matched what we read in the literature about congregational vitality. First of all, we can confidently say that congregational vitality in Oklahoma does not correlate with membership, attendance, clergy status, or budget.  Vitality varies across all sizes of congregations, and a range of budgets. We have congregations of higher vitality that are large and small, with full-time clergy and bi-vocational clergy, or those with hundreds or less than 20 in service on Sunday. The stark reality is that what we have historically measured most does not measure vitality. The literature states this, and we had a hunch it was true for us in Oklahoma. Now, we have the data. 

One other interesting finding regards worship. Our congregations love their worship. As we frequently visit our congregations we can agree. We worship well in Oklahoma. However, worship did not correlate with vitality either. This is also what some of the vitality literature indicated. Liturgy, as central as it is to what congregations do, is not sufficient for vitality. Sometimes, Episcopalians are tempted to think the liturgy is the single multi-tool that can do everything. While it is a gift of our Anglican tradition, it is not itself enough. 

So, what makes for congregational vitality in the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma? The areas of highest correlation with vitality are: 

• Discernment, being guided by God’s mission for our congregations and communities, 
• Discipleship, growing in faith at all ages and stages, 
• Spirituality, living lives of prayer seeing God’s action in our daily lives, and
• Community engagement, going into our communities, finding partners, and acting as bearers of the Gospel within our communities 

We are about to launch round two of the CVA in our diocese, to see if we are growing in vitality. We are providing resources that help us listen to God through scripture, deepen spiritual friendship in and among our congregations, build prayer into our lives seven days a week, and get out of our doors –  meeting our neighbors and sharing in the Good News of Jesus Christ.