Around the world, in churches big and small, ministry leaders are challenged by the growing reality that their churches are losing influence in their communities and losing the interest of their congregants.
Over coffee or around conference tables these leaders are asking questions like –
What are we missing?
Who are we missing?
What needs to change?
How can we change?
What will it cost?
While no two churches are the same, responses to these questions generally fall into one of four categories – renovate, reject, recover or receive.
Renovate
Renovation approaches respond to the questions “what we are doing and how we can do it better?” Renovation begins with the assumption that much of what the church is “doing” is good and right and seeks ways to do those things better. We are “doing” good ministry – how can we improve the quality and increase promotion? Similar to a home renovation, while the improvements can be significant with the finished product feeling like something brand new, the foundation and much of the framework remain unaltered.
Those who aspire to renovate explore best practices for ministry and pay close attention to what other churches are doing in their neighborhoods and around their broader networks. There is a latent (sometimes overt) spirit of competition with other churches because the assumption is they are all doing the same thing, some just do it better than others and therefore attract more people. Specific metrics are applied to measure success in order to guide the ongoing improvements and identify areas of weakness that need renovation. Renovation can happen through new staff, new programs, new facilities or new expressions of worship.
Reject
Rejection responses are critical of everything the church is currently doing. This position judges current ministry expressions as less than or opposed to some ideal of what the church ought to be. Here it is easy to be cynical. Judging imperfect institutions operated by imperfect people is as easy as getting wet in the rain. In the rejection mode it is easy to discard many of the metrics the renovation folk use to measure their success. The church isn’t about programs, attendance, offerings, building projects, etc. While the critiques may be well-founded and revelatory, few positive solutions are provided. Sometimes the rejection response is presented in the form of a rhetorical question. “What would it look like…?” These questions can be helpful to invite exploration into new places and disrupt the status quo. However questions rarely communicate vision or clear direction.
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Recover
Recover answers respond to questions about who the church is and who the church is supposed to be. Similar to the rejection response, they are expanding their imaginations in order to pursue an ideal vision of the church. However, they are more positive in their approach. They explore the history and DNA of the congregation for answers to questions about the church’s identity and seek to embody that identity in a new context for a new generation.
Minister and theologian Jason Clark, in the book Church in the Present Tense, calls this project of recovery, rather than rejection, an effort to focus on “deep church”. He writes, “Deep church would recover confidence in the gospel and Scripture, and it would access the spiritual resources of the historical church in nonsuperficial ways, such that we align ourselves with the work of the Holy Spirit in forming vibrant communities, living faithfully in the discipleship to Jesus in our contemporary cultural context.”
The above three responses share one important quality in common, all three position the church as offering something to the community. The church is the giver and the individuals and families in the surrounding community are the receivers. They seek to identify a need the community has and present the church as a compelling solution to that need. A solution that should be sincerely considered and embraced.
There is however a fourth way which asks not “How do we improve what we are offering to the community?” but instead asks “What is the community offering to us and how do we receive those gifts more openly in order to be the church of this community?” To put it another way, “Instead of being a church for the community, how can we be a church of the community?”
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Receive
Receive responses are of a different nature than the other three (Renovate, Reject and Recover). While receive responses can even employ elements from the other categories, the fundamental difference is orientation. Churches whose primary orientation is toward receiving recognize the sacramental nature of hospitality through which Jesus visits us as the stranger and annihilates the social barriers that so cleanly categorize the one who gives from the one who receives. These churches don’t just view receiving in terms of welcoming guests into their church buildings, although this is a good start. Receiving is more a way of life, where the doors to our homes, our offices, our friendships and certainly our churches remain open to others.
In her book Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, Christine Pohl describes the sacramental nature of hospitality in this way: “If, when we open the door, we are oriented toward seeing Jesus in the guest, then we welcome that person with some sense that God is already at work in his or her life. This can fundamentally change our perspective and our sense of the dimensions of the relationship. We are more sensitive to what the guest is bringing to us, to what God might be saying or doing through her or him.”
Receiving churches are made up of receiving people. Folks who open their lives each day to encounter openly the person of Jesus in the neighbors and strangers they meet. While receiving people love to talk about Jesus and share their lives of faith with others, they also fully expect to be taught and influenced by Jesus revealed through others. This abundance of open doors will provide a wide array of opportunities for the church to see Jesus revealed through the community. So, while renovation, rejection and recovery all have their appropriate place in pursuit of the ideal church, the primary question should be “How are we receiving?”
How are we recognizing and embracing the image of God and the work of the Spirit in the life of the stranger as they share their lives with us? How are we loved by them, taught by them, challenged by them, as we seek to love, teach and challenge in return?
“Learn more at The Praxis Gathering!”
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