epiScope: The architecture of vitality

She studies what makes churches thrive
By Ann Rodgers
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
June 12, 2007Diana Butler Bass knows all the gloomy statistics about declining mainline Protestant churches but believes in their future. She studies mainline churches that are thriving to see what sets them apart from those that are dying.

Her findings contradict some popular theories about church growth, and she is sharing them at a three-day conference at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in East Liberty.

Successful congregations cultivate spiritual practices in daily life, promote tradition without using it as a fence to keep people out and offer a quest for wisdom, not pat answers, she said.