The Risk of Not Changing
You know the stats. The mainline church in North America has lost significant numbers of members over the last several decades. The ELCA alone suffered a 20% loss over the last fifteen years. This isn’t news. What is news – or what should be – is how little we’re doing about it.
Oh, don’t get me wrong – we have all kinds of programs and meetings and studies and initiatives. Yet when it comes down to calling into question basic assumptions about worship and preaching and congregational life and leadership, we continue to do what we’ve been doing for much of the last century.
Last night, after making a presentation on some of the cultural changes that are affecting patterns of church attendance, I was reminded of Einstein’s definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” As one participant said, “If we were a corporation, we’d be panicked, frantically experimenting with all kinds of ways to increase our market share.” And yet we’re not a corporation, as many church leaders I know will proudly remind me, so we don’t need to be concerned about anything as base as profit.
True enough. But we’re at the point where we do need to worry about survival. Yet we continue to act as if the situation is not particularly critical, let alone dire.
It’s not that we’re not worried. Goodness gracious, but a pall of anxiety, sadness, and nostalgia hangs over many of the congregations I’ve visited. But while we may be worried and sad, we’ve not yet become motivated enough to change. At least not really change.
This isn’t a problem only in our churches and denominations, of course. I teach at a seminary that commissioned a faculty study of the basic patterns by which we organize ourselves, covering fundamental issues like tenure, workload, sabbaticals, and the rest. The result of months of careful study, extended and impassioned conversations, and lots of hard work? An elegant defense of the status quo where everything is tweaked but nothing changed. And this at a school that doesn’t project a balanced budget for the foreseeable future.
Change is hard, I realize, even frightening. For change means leaving what we know for what we do not know, and that entails risk. And even if what we know isn’t working all that well, it’s at least familiar, safer. But sometimes we forget that there’s risk involved in not changing, too. In fact, in a world and culture that is changing rapidly, perhaps the greater risk is to remain static and, potentially, to become stagnant.
Here’s the thing: if we want a future, we need to abandon the safety of past practices and imagine a different future. Not easy, of course; but then nobody ever said real leadership was supposed to be easy.
David… great article as usual and really nothing new, but all this to say I believe rather than trying to change the current state of the church, wouldn’t it be more prudent and better use of resources to start new ones? I currently serve as an Intentional Interim/Transitional pastor and while the the church I’m currently serving at is considering (actually tomorrow) making some changes in its worship and learning life they are but small changes. Oh… it’s great that they are considering these and I hope they will make the changes, in fact I think they will, but there is still lots of anxiety. The point I guess for me is that (and I’ve shared this point with the church I serve) 90-95% of the church will never make the amount of change that’s needed. I believe it’s impossible. Well of course anything is possible with God, but much of the church is not about God. I do believe the church will never die, but the institution we’ve constructed around it is and will die as we know it. I believe the future is bright, but with new wine skins.
I’m curious…what changes are envisioned? What are the best ideas that have been suggested? By whom? What are the obstacles to making the changes besides “we’ve always done it this way? attitudes? Is the laity involved? What are the “buy-in” incentives?
I am in full agreement with this article. It is crystal clear that we need to re-imagine what the church looks like in this time and place. We cannot keep doing things the way we have always done them (we have not always been doing those things anyway). I’m thankful for leaders and churches who are experimenting with different models of church. Maybe we can find ways to more easily connect, share ideas, support each other and pray for each other as we walk down a new path together. One church near me plans to open a brewery as part of their ministry and funding efforts. (http://blackcloister.com/) Another great movement of churches and leaders looking to re-think what it means to be the church and place discipleship back as the primary focus of our ministries is 3DM. (http://weare3dm.com/)
David,
As one who “sits in the front pew” eagerly seeking anything you write, I appreciate your wisdom and insights. I also wish we could find ways to embrace our fellowship within the enormous range of belief and praxis we experience. Or are we really multiple faiths in the same denominational houses?
Diana Butler Bass raises issues that go beyond organization to embrace a new, much different paradigm for the church and post-religion Christianity. Barry Blood (“giving Voice to the Silent Pulpit”) blows the whistle on the imbalance (collusion? contradiction?) between academic and publicly practiced Christian theology.
Are these to big a bite for us to take? Or are these instead blueprints to follow? The “change” we call for is much different and extreme than is usually implied. We tend to watch over our shoulders fearing a megachurch will move to our neighborhood. For the most part mega churches seem to be old wine in new wine skins, dragging us backwards while God seems to be more interested in the future than the past. The new wine we need is exhilarating, honest and has both wisdom and common sense. I wonder if we can adapt or must we start over?
Yes and higher education is facing the same thing. And it’s curious to see our responses. There is a disconnect that has haunted us in the church as well as in education…read this….
A whopping 96% of chief academic officers at higher education institutions say their institution is “very or somewhat” effective at preparing students for the world of work. That’s an awful lot of confidence, considering how U.S. business leaders and the American public judge higher education institutions on this same measure. Gallup found that a mere 14% of Americans strongly agree that college graduates are well prepared for success in the workplace. And barely one in 10 (11%) business leaders strongly agree that college graduates have the skills and competencies that their workplaces need. There is clearly a massive disconnect between higher education and the marketplace in terms of what it means to be prepared for work.
http://thegallupblog.gallup.com/2014/02/higher-educations-work-preparation.html
I would occasionally enjoy reading examples of congregations that have made major transformations or how new churches are doing things differently. Maybe it would inspire others to follow.
Me, too!
So I’m listening to the locally produced garden show on WHYY yesterday and the subject turns to a Seed Library. The man who called in to talk about it is a community member who has funded the program because he thought it was the right thing to do and the person at the library is, in his words, “always looking for ways to build community and make the library a resource for the community.” What if as a pastor my thinking is all wrong about “building up the Church.” While a long for the changes that would make Church Life relevant and vital to a larger community, I have mostly left the big changes up to divine intervention (and therefore much waiting). What if there was a distinction in my thinking between bringing people in the experience the gospel and building community? I have thought my essential mission is to proclaim the gospel – and maybe it is. But what if building community is really a distinct calling, one that uses and supports the resources we already have, building and professional staff, and from that community gather a worshipping subset?