Cafferata, Gail: The Last Pastor: Faithfully Steering a Closing Church
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Cafferata, Gail: The Last Pastor: Faithfully Steering a Closing Church First Edition, WJK, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 2020 Timothy K. Snyder1 Received: 8 April 2020 / Accepted: 25 April 2020 © Religious Research Association, Inc. 2020
Academic and denominational researchers alike know well that the American congregational life is changing in complex ways. In The Last Pastor, Gail Cafferata, a former medical sociologist turned Episcopal priest turned religious researcher, sets out to describe the experiences of pastors who close churches. Based on her study of over one hundred Mainline Protestant congregations, she does so with particular attention to the already difficult situations most pastors who close churches begin with, the leadership required to lead congregations to a “good enough” ending, and the lasting impact such experiences have on pastors themselves. Cafferata not only accomplishes this task, but she does so with the unique voice of a pastor who has firsthand experience closing a church she served faithfully. Much of what we know about the ways American congregational life is changing comes from national survey research, denominational trend data, and studies focused on the vitality of congregations. As important as such research efforts are, Cafferata has provided a much-needed window into the complex stories of American Christianity’s transformation on the ground. In 2014, Atul Gwande offered Americans the opportunity to rethink our imagination and practices of hospice and end-of-life care in his best-selling book Being Mortal. Similarly, Cafferata offers religious leaders the opportunity to rethink our imagination and practice of congregational hospice and end-of-life care weaving together survey responses, interview data, and personal narratives. Most importantly, The Last Pastor offers an accounting of the full costs—financial, personal, spiritual, vocational—of church closings in the Mainline Church. Readers will find in Cafferata’s book ample evidence that many churches and their denominational partners are unprepared and unequipped to learn the important insights and lessons closing churches and their pastors have to offer. The Last Pastor * Timothy K. Snyder [email protected] 1
Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC, USA
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Review of Religious Research
exposes the dominant view that church closings are a symptom of Christianity’s demise, rather than a natural part of organizational life cycles, for what it is: a simplistic narrative that neglects the more complicated empirical reality on the ground. This book is grounded in the social and theological situations that mark church closings, but it presents its case through the experiences of the pastors that serve them. This is an uncommon, but interesting approach. Framing the study this way suggests that religious research must account for the structural and social patterns of our shifting religious landscape and how religious people—leaders and churchgoers alike—experience t
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