Everyone in the Christian Church seems to agree that the way we in the church have been doing business for the past fifty years is no longer working.
The numbers are clear. The church is in decline. Congregations are aging. Young people are slipping away. Finances are challenging. Energy is diminishing. The church in the western world appears to be an organization on life support. We are told that, if present trends continue, the picture is clear. Fifty years from now there will be no church in the developed, technologically advanced part of the world.
We are encouraged to respond to the crisis by finding new ways of being church. We are summoned to change our way of doing corporate religion. We must discover new relevant creative ways to meet a world that increasingly finds church deeply irrelevant. To continue putting our energies into simply preserving the status quo and keeping the tired old machinery of the institution ticking over is a certain recipe for institutional death.
Yet, alongside the clarion call for change, creativity and innovation, we who function in leadership in the church are constantly pressured to continue meeting the traditional demands of ministry that have prevailed in the church for the past century.
Clergy are pressed to continue providing the customary hours of worship, satisfying the traditional demands of the dwindling number of parishioners who have remained faithful to our corporate expression of devotion over the years. Clergy are encouraged to visit shut-ins, hold services in local care facilities, keep regular hospital visiting hours, offer spiritual council and direction to people in need, and to be instantly available to people in crisis. Many clergy must continue to oversee bazaars, rummage sales, Christmas teas, spring teas, fall suppers, and a variety of pot-luck parties and seasonal social celebrations. They must find time to chair church committees and ensure that church buildings are kept in good repair. They musty attend to the annual budget and make sure that they operate as team players by taking an active role in the wider church, while at the same time producing a scintillating sermon every week, leading stimulating Bible studies, and attending to parishioners’ spiritual education. Clergy are frequently expected to be the public face of the church, visible at community events and responsible for reaching out to the world beyond the church.
It is hard to know how to keep the machinery of tradition running smoothly while at the same time moving forward with bright, bold, creative, exciting new initiatives in church life.
We are a generation of church leaders who find ourselves operating in-between what we have been and what we must become. We live in the awkward space between that which we know we need to let go of, and that which has yet to emerge. We know what is not working but serve in a church that is not yet ready to let go of old patterns to embrace something that is truly new.
How are we to operate as leaders in this uneasy middle space?
Part of the difficulty in answering this question lies in the fact that we have lost sight of the purpose for which the church exists. Our vision has become blurred. For the past three decades we have wandered in the midst of a confusing array of expectations and visions of what church might be.
We have been told church exists to be a centre of excellence in worship, to be an instrument for the pastoral care of people who are in pain, to be an agent of social change in the world, to be the focus of community life and activity for the lonely, to be an agent of healing in peoples’ lives, to be an evangelistic army reaching out to the lost of the world with the saving news of Christ.
It will only be possible to begin to find our way forward in the midst of the bewildering clamour of these conflicting demands and expectations as church leaders remain focused on the main thing. The main thing is to insure that our lives are deeply rooted in God. If leaders in our churches are not grounded in a living relationship with the invisible reality of God’s Spirit at work in their lives and communities, it is unlikely they will be able to lead those who attend their churches into a dynamic encounter with God.
The first question for the church that desires to find its way forward is are we making it possible for our leaders to nurture their own spiritual lives. Do our church leaders have the time and the space to be people of prayer? Are they going on retreat as a regular part of their spiritual practice? Do they have time to read the classics of Christian spirituality and to reflect deeply upon the sacred text of Scripture? Are they entering into the silence of God’s presence on a regular basis?
As church leaders who must function in this uneasy in-between time, we must know our true identity. We must experience the reality that we are defined not by what we do or by the success of our ministry, but by the reality of God’s love in our lives. Everything we do must start from and be immersed in the compassionate grace of the God whose presence we desire to make known to all people. Only then will we begin to find our way forward in these uncertain times.
4 comments
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July 2, 2012 at 8:42 am
Jessie
Christopher thank you for weighing in on this tough question with your thoughtfulness. When I think about the clergy evaluation form you shared , I see items that would reward the behaviours you are suggesting buried by the mass of very traditional items. Much of the form is focused on the traditional components of ministry as you have defined them and for my money accomplishing these would leave little or any real time for making it possible for our leaders to nurture their own spiritual lives .
Processes such as evaluation that the diocese has put in place will influence (may even dictate) clergy behaviour . This has led me to thinking that the current evaluation process needs examination. As you say (and this makes so much sense to me) clergy should be ” defined not by what we do or by the success of our ministry, but by the reality of God’s love in our lives.” I am wondering if one way to accomplish change would be by changing the activities of evaluation and the accompanying forms to reflect items that measure how clergy lives are deeply rooted in God. I know getting structures changed are tough but if there is the will, there are people in the diocese who know about evaluation and I think there are some (maybe many) who share your ideas.
July 2, 2012 at 8:43 am
Gillian F
This is great! another big chunk of our book. soon we’ll be done. or at least. . . you’ll be done your half =:))
July 2, 2012 at 11:52 am
jaqueline
It is all true…
“….hurch exists to be a centre of …..( I have an argument with the excellence ) worship, to be an instrument for the pastoral care of people who are in pain, to be an agent of social change in the world, to be the focus of community life and activity for the lonely, to be an agent of healing in peoples’ lives, to be an evangelistic army reaching out to the lost of the world with the saving news of Christ.”
It is very needed:
“… hours of worship, satisfying the traditional demands of the dwindling number of parishioners …… visit shut-ins, hold services in local care facilities, keep regular hospital visiting hours, offer spiritual council and direction to people in need, and to be instantly available to people in crisis. .. while at the same time producing a scintillating sermon every week, leading stimulating Bible studies, and attending to parishioners’ spiritual education. ”
“Many clergy must continue to oversee bazaars, rummage sales, Christmas teas, spring teas, fall suppers, and a variety of pot-luck parties and seasonal social celebrations.” Like why? There are lots of people who love this stuff…if it is not your cup of tea …why should you…as long as you don’t discourage others form loving it
“They must find time to chair church committees and ensure that church buildings are kept in good repair. They musty attend to the annual budget and make sure that they operate as team players by taking an active role in the wider church,” Like why? You could have someone fill you in and say if they ever feel you are needed couldn’t they?
“Clergy are frequently expected to be the public face of the church, visible at community events and responsible for reaching out to the world beyond the church.” Realistically this is true..but it doesn’t have to be your exclusive role.
Where I think it is unrealistic is to expect all of these things from every person of clergy all of the time and in every setting. It ignores the strengths and weaknesses of individuals, it ignores the role of the laity in leadership.You are good at certain things, we need to let you be. We are better at certain things, leadership needs to let us be.
It would be better to ask….of these needs, who in our church are best able to meet them? Can we build up a team for visitation for instance? But then it comes down to……the time and energy of the laity, but it could work if there were vision and a will and a plan. What is the temper of our church, what are the gifts….can’t we assume that God would gift according to which needs He is wanting to be met? Maybe it might be fun to have an afternoon to vision about this….to encourage us.
Our world has changed and the resources of church are such that it cannot adequately meet the all the needs mentioned all the time in the same way.
But honestly as a lay person, while complaining that there is too much to do, you cannot at the same time, as has been happening with the Diocese changes, be top down when you actually need energy coming from bottom up.
All our great institutions are built on empowering the people but our whole world is suffering from a trickle down mentality and it has exhausted the people.
Clergy need to be the head, the leadership….but for goodness sake there is no leadership without a body…and if it is about the clergy pulling the Body along instead of teaching/ allowing it to walk we may as well get a wheel chair for the church.
Which, when I put in those terms may be exactly why the church has been left behind while the world has moved on.
( PS I went to fill out the form but I got so fed up with it I ripped it up…helpful I am sure )
July 4, 2012 at 11:43 am
Steve
I have been writing this comment on and off for two days, as I often do. I have written about 4 or 5 pages and I can’t seem to bring it to a close, get my thoughts organized. I have chores to do so I am just going to cut and run, here are a few of my thoughts, maybe not as well thought out as they should be but I just want to get it out.
I am a lay person, untrained in theology and matters of the church so it is with great humility that I offer these thoughts since in my own mind I am preaching to the preacher. It seems to me you are looking at the problem in the wrong way, the wrong light. You are asking the wrong questions.
A few statements you made struck me because they may be part of the root cause of the declining church.
I don’t know if this is your personal conviction or just what is expected of you and church leaders but in defining the problem you hit on one of the root causes of the problem. You said we are told the church exists to be “an agent of social change in the world”. I don’t know specifically what you are referring to but if one interprets it as meaning political activism then it the is one thing the church, here in the U.S. at least, is doing well it is that. Admittedly we are loosing the battle but if the church has been mobilized, if we have a passion it is in this area. This one thing is killing the church faster than any other.
Can somebody please tell me where Jesus ever gave us any such charge? It is true Jesus said we are the salt of the earth but He didn’t say “be” the salt. What we are is salt that has lost its saltiness. Our devotion is to a person, not to a cause and that is one of the areas we have gone astray. We have become devoted to principles, to causes, to church doctrine, and in some cases to political ideologies. They are all false idols. Jesus never proclaimed a cause; He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself.” I can see a parallel between the modern church and the Israelites of the Old Testament. We have fallen into idolatry no less than they, we don’t see it because our idols are much more sophisticated, much more deceptive because they all seem like they are for the good. But I’m sure we’ve all heard the good is the enemy of the best.
Another statement you made is “We are summoned to…discover new relevant creative ways to meet a world that increasingly finds church deeply irrelevant.” To change our way of doing corporate religion and finding new creative ways to meet the world in and of themselves would do no more than would changing the church décor. The liturgy I am familiar with, that of the Episcopal Church I find to be spiritual and worshipful and it exhibits a much higher spiritual IQ than that of most of the participants or spectators. It wouldn’t hurt anything to change it but to changing it simply to make it more appealing is the wrong reason and would not help.
To try to make the church more relevant, more appealing, is not where the answer is and in my estimation amounts to idolatry. Our efforts are almost guaranteed to meet with failure. The answer lies less in what we should “do” and more in what we should stop doing. We need look no further than the teaching of Jesus for guidance, He gave us a road map, we have deviated from it and the church is in decline because of it.
As I read the teaching of Jesus, what I see is that He basically gave us three things to do “if” we would enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Love God, love neighbor, spread the gospel message of Christ. Inherent in loving God and neighbor is feeding His children; We have made ourselves known to the world in many ways through our crusading. We have made many enemies, secular humanism, gay activism, and multiculturalism among them but we have made few friends. Love is the last thing we are known for, the last place we look for the enemy is within.
We must give up all our other pursuits and seek to change one thing, the only thing we have in our control to change. We have to change ourselves, individually, personally. We have to go to our closet and be alone, be still before God. We need to wait and to watch for God to move as He surely will. He will move us; He will move others in divine concert. Only God can revitalize the church. All we have to do is turn from our idols, be obedient and let Him. It all starts with prayer and meditation. This and the gospel of Jesus are what our ministers should be preaching and nothing else.
Jaqueline said “the Clergy need to be the head, the leadership”. Jesus Christ is the leader of the Church that bears His name. He is the High Priest and we are His followers. As followers we are disciples, ministers, saints, apostles, preachers. I respectfully suggest were we who call ourselves disciples do the above, the resistance will come from church “leaders” just as it did with Jesus. We do not need leaders, we need workers.
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37-40
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:3
“As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.”
Luke 9:29
“”Go into all the world. Preach the good news to everyone.”
Mark 16:15