GETTING OUR BEARINGS IN
THE 21ST CENTURY
CHURCH
CHALLENGES, CHANGES, AND COURSE CORRECTIONS
For each statement below, please check whether A or B best describes your church at the present time:
1. The demographic profile of our congregation is:
_____ A. Homogenous
(most members are from similar backgrounds
and share similar
personal characteristics)
_____ B.
Diverse (members are quite varied in background
and personal
characteristics)
2.The primary
outlook in our congregation is:
_____ A.
Fairly satisfied and comfortable
_____ B.
Burdened and striving for change
3. Ministry in
our church focuses most on:
_____ A.
Inreach (ministry mainly to people already in your congregation)
_____ B.
Outreach (ministry to the unsaved outside your congregation)
4. The
spiritual maturity level of our congregation is:
_____ A.
Mostly mature Christians
_____ B. Mix
of mature and immature Christians
5. The
inclusiveness of our congregation is best described as:
_____ A.
Closed attitude toward troubled and dysfunctional
people in the
community
_____ B.
Openness toward helping lives in crisis
6. The sense of
God’s call in your congregation can be described as:
_____ A, Our
church is fairly similar to most other churches in our denomination.
_____ B. Our
church has a unique sense of ministry focus and
congregational
priorities.
7. The degree
of congregational sacrifice in our church is best described as:
_____ A
Congregation members are fairly comfortable and satisfied.
_____ B.
Members push themselves to achieve significant
ministry
breakthroughs.
8. Most new
members to our congregation were attracted by:
_____ A. Our
facilities and well-organized programs
_____ B. The
vital spiritual lives of congregation members.
9. The
self-sufficiency of our church is best described as:
_____ A. We
take care of our own needs and don’t have to interact
with many outside
groups.
_____ B. We
depend on partnerships with other churches
and Christian
organizations.
10. The primary role of the staff in our
church is to:
_____ A. Make
things happen in the church
_____ B. Set
the table” for congregation members to minister
Totals of
responses checked:
_____ A.
responses
_____ B.
responses
How did your church do on the survey?
The greater your total of B
responses, the more auspicious your future looks. Please read on!
CHALLENGES FOR THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH
Challenging our post-Christian secular
society.
Believe it or not, the local church today, even in the “Bible
Belt,” is no longer in the real mainstream of society. As we
transition to the year 2000, the church is being shoved aside by a surging
storm front constituted by the media (television, movies, the Internet), the entertainment
establishment ( sports, popular music, outdoor recreation, shopping malls,
travel), secular humanism in virtually all of our institutions, and by rampant
materialism and consumerism. Once
Challenging cultural Christianity (comfortable, conforming,
compartmentalized, consumerist Christianity). The church has been a
cultural fixture for so long, most church goers in
But whatever
happened to the sacrificing church? The non-materialistic church?
The outreaching church? The social activist church? The racially
integrated church? The uncomfortable, uncompromising church? As
secular humanism and materialism continue their insidious course in our
post-Christian society, how far will we have to go into the 21st century to
encounter the apathetic church? The persecuted church?
Challenging social and institutional crises. At the 21st century unfolds, American society is breaking down. Everywhere we look, institutions are in turmoil: public education, the federal government, the legal system, health care, party politics, even the welfare system. At the core of these institutional fissures is a crack in the bedrock institution of society, the family. The biblical ideal for the family has been assaulted by divorce, domestic violence, geographical rootlessness, dual career marriages, latch-key kids, crisis pregnancies, blended families, abortion, and drugs. There is an epidemic of dysfunctional lives in crisis, from unwed mothers to teenage runaways; from abandoned mothers and children to incarcerated parents; from abused children to crack babies; from abandoned senior citizens to the homeless and the impoverished.
But how many local churches view these social problems as a fertile harvest field for charity, for evangelism, and for social activism? How many congregations are committed enough to venture from the comfortable, safe haven of the suburbs to stake out a visible presence in the troubled inner city? How many churches proactively make room for the dysfunctional and hurting members of their community, or pursue racial diversity, or minister in prisons?
Challenging spiritual apathy and aversion to organized religion in our society. Cultural Christianity is a turn off to whole segments of American society. But unchurched Americans are not necessarily turned off by Jesus Christ and the Bible. In fact, the current generation is starving for something that is spiritually relevant. Somehow, our 21st century churches are going to have to figure a way to deliver Jesus Christ and biblical truth to Generation Xers, career-addicted professionals, secular humanists, and to the growing ranks of culturally-diverse immigrants.
CHALLENGE DEMANDS CHANGE
Without a doubt, the biggest challenge facing the millennial church is that of institutional change. Comfortable churches don’t want to change because change requires energy, vision, and above all, sacrifice. The comfortable church gets used to, even addicted to, the plush facilities, friendly Sunday morning fellowship, accommodating staff, Sunday school fellowship, free babysitting, and the church softball league. Who wants to abandon the non-threatening confines of the church building and venture over to the wrong side of the tracks or the county jail? What church board wants to budget money for missions and crisis outreach at the expense of facilities and staff salaries? How many pastors want to commission their most faithful volunteers to minister “out of pocket”? How many volunteers want to reach out to the vice-addicted sinner, or to the wandering homeless, or to the inner city gang member?
Let’s examine the fundamental prerequisites for change in the local church:
Call. It’s exciting to be called where God is at work. Where is He busy in your church? Look around at the ministries bearing the most fruit (changed lives, spiritual growth, outreach to those truly in need) and you can sense God’s true calling for your local congregation. When called Christians follow God, they discover that change is simply the doorway to exciting ministry opportunity.
Sacrifice. How much does your church sacrifice? Do
you settle for adequate, but less than sumptuous, facilities? Do you
reach out to the tough neighborhoods in town? Do you ask your youth group
to go on challenging mission trips? How much do you debt finance? A
sacrificing church is accustomed to daily discomfort, so it doesn’t
settle into a comfort zone that resists change. “He who does not take his
cross and follow after Me is not worthy of
Dependence. What does your church depend on? Do you rely on committed tithing members or on the budget committee? On the movement of the Holy Spirit or on show biz worship? Do you rely on great vision or debt-financed facilities? Do you rely on prayers or programs? Churches that depend on God’s day-by-day provision, rather than human management and slick marketing, have less invested in the status quo of budgets, committees, job descriptions, business meetings, and denominational bureaucracy. They are in much better shape to change.
Openness. How open is your church? Are you open to people of different backgrounds and lifestyles? To unwed mothers? To the vice-addicted? Are you open to partnerships with other Christian organizations (parachurch agencies, other denominations, the Salvation Army, etc.) that need help ministering to those in crisis? Churches closed by suburban isolation, legalism, and denominational bureaucracy are easily overwhelmed by change. Spiritual stagnation is the price they pay.
Empowerment. Are the members of your church empowered to minister where God has called them? Does the church have organized outreach programs (city-wide visitation, prison ministry, neighborhood children’s Bible clubs, partnerships with other Christian organizations) to make it easy for members to join in? Does the church staff encourage, rather than discourage, members to minister outside the walls, even when inreach ministries may not be fully staffed? Empowered church members are the main change agents of any local church. They pave the way for the church’s growth and progress.
Diversity. Homogeneous churches are slow to change because members see things pretty much the same way. That’s the problem--lack of membership diversity creates an ingrown status quo mindset that resists change. Membership diversity creates wonderful opportunities for church ministry and outreach because it opens the congregation to people of different ethnic, socioeconomic, educational, and professional backgrounds. The ministry opportunities nurtured by congregational diversity become a catalyst for healthy church change.
MILLENNIAL COURSE CORRECTIONS
Is your church confidently forging its way into the future or meekly hiding from the future? The status quo is no place for the church to reside today. In this millennial environment of treacherous challenge and change, the local church urgently needs to take its bearings. Without a significant course correction, many churches are in danger of losing their salt and light. Let’s not ignore this stark warning of Jesus Christ: You say, I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing, and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire. (Revelation 3:17-18).
It’s time to change and get back on track. Here are some suggested course corrections for the new church era:
Course Correction #1: Run your church on supernatural power, not human effort. It’s a constant temptation to trust in man’s frail and faulty capacity to keep the church afloat. We lean on man made management and marketing over prayer and consecration, on materialism over sacrifice, and on growth statistics over spiritual fruitfulness. The local church isn’t just another human institution to be run by administrative wile. It’s the body of Christ nurtured by intimate congregational communion with God through the Holy Spirit.
When the church is run like a business (with success measured by the “trinity” of budgets, buildings, and baptisms), it can expect the same negative fallout typical of the corporate world: politics, burnout, cut-throat competitiveness, and an end-justifies-the-means mentality. Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and a house divided against itself falls. (Luke 11:17) Christians aren’t consumers in the marketplace who must be catered to by the church looking to win a healthy share of the market. The senior pastor isn’t a CEO, and the deacons aren’t a Board of Directors.
Course Change #2: Don’t ask your church to compete with the world via materialism and entertainment. The church is called to be in the world, but the world shouldn’t be in the church. Christians are to transform the world, not emulate its secular way of doing things. The world doesn’t offer holiness, purity, forgiveness, unconditional love, hope, and Truth. Unless the local church does, it will become increasingly marginalized and irrelevant. “So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:16)
Course Correction #3: Work where the harvest fields are already ripe unto harvest. We must work in the very same harvest field as our Master did, striving to reclaim and regenerate lives imperiled by sin and spiritual ignorance. The 21st century is no time for the church to retreat into serving itself. The unsaved and dysfunctional won't come to us, so we must proactively go to them in the difficult harvest fields (the inner city, the jails, the family crisis centers, the AIDS clinic). “For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you come to Me. (Matthew 25:35-36)
Most congregations
compete for the same shrinking set of stable, relatively affluent, fairly
comfortable middle class people, because they fit right into the traditional
scheme of things in the institutional church. They make church programs
and routines run like clockwork. But all too often new members come in
the front door only to exit through the back door. These same members, seeking a
better deal in the market place,” are recycled from congregation to
congregation. No church growth has occurred because no new souls have
entered God’s Kingdom.
Course Correction #4: Don’t imitate or envy other churches. God has a unique purpose and call for each local church. He doesn’t intend for every congregation to become a “super church” or for every pastor to work his way up the denominational hierarchy from large church to larger church. Not every church is called to start an electronic ministry, or to have the "coolest" youth group in town, or the most sensational Christmas and Easter pageants. If you want to imitate or envy another church, pick the one that prays the most, outreaches the most, and sacrifices the most. Emulate the church with the culturally diverse congregation, the greatest number of new converts, the one with long tenured, well treated staff, and the one that sends out its own missionaries.
Course Correction #5: Form ministry partnerships with other churches and organizations. Let them “set the table” for new ministry activities in your church--that’s what they’re best at doing. For example, let Prison Fellowship open prison doors for your enterprising volunteers; let Campus Crusade for Christ connect you to spiritually alive college students; let your local Salvation Army help you minister to the homeless. Churches and denominations don’t need to perpetually reinvent the wheel. And don’t worry about getting all of the credit for ministry success--that all belongs to Christ anyway!
Course Correction #6: Shift the staff’s role away from running the church to empowering the church. Spiritual growth is a hands-on, interactive process of going and growing. When we go into the world to minister, we quickly experience the inner joy of making an eternal impact on the lives of others. Rather than paying the staff to be the only ones in the ball game, church members must be willing to carry the ball themselves through active, personalized ministry. The church staff must strive to create outreach ministry opportunities (perhaps through networking with other Christian organizations) and encourage members to gain on-the-job ministry experience.
NOW IS THE TIME TO CHANGE
So how did your church fare on the change-readiness survey at the start of this article? If your A responses (status quo-oriented) outnumbered the B responses (changed-oriented), encourage the leadership of your church to develop a course correction strategy for the beckoning millennium. God has awesome challenges, but wonderful blessings, in store for Christians willing to follow Him into the future. “I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” (Luke 22:23).
The Church Environment in Transition
Transitioning away from
Transitioning toward
Transitioning away
from mainstream organized
religion
Transitioning toward marginalized organized religion
Transitioning away
from middle class membership growth base
Transitioning toward growth from people in crisis
Transitioning away
from church numerical growth
Transitioning toward church spiritual growth
Transitioning away
from the comfortable church
Transitioning toward the sacrificing church
Opportunities for Spiritual Growth and Vitality in
the 21st Century Church
· Active participation in Kingdom growth (congregational growth via new converts rather than membership recycling among churches)
· The joy of members who actively share their faith in outreach ministries
· Greater opportunity of members to make a significant difference in the lives of people in their community
· Lessened need for aggressive marketing of church programs and upgrading of facilities as a primary way of attracting new members
· Greater percentage of volunteers who participate in church ministry
· Revitalized prayer associated with crisis ministry
· Fresh ideas and perspective from diverse congregation members
The Diminishing Returns of Business As Usual
·
Rapidly diminishing pool of traditional, stable middle class families to
supplement church growth
· Anemic outreach
· Escalating expectations of “consumerist Christians” for bigger and better programs, facilities, and entertainment experiences
· Increased isolation and irrelevance of churches housed in safe, comfortable suburbs
· Inbred thinking and dormant spiritual growth of homogeneous congregations
· Escalation of church and denominational politics, staff and volunteer burnout, and membership turnover
· Rise in cultural (non-sacrificing) Christianity
·
Increased congregational indifference to social problems and lives in
crisis