Blueprinting A New Local Church Future
Photo by Sven Mieke on Unsplash
“Evangelism is to the Christian faith what fire is to burning.” - Emil Brunner
Of the one hundred most rapidly growing churches in America today, only one is a United Methodist Church. According to a George Barna survey, only 32% of all stripes of regular church congregants have ever had a “God experience” during worship. He opines that if his survey had been limited to mainline Protestants, the percentage would have been still lower.
Since March 2020, many Christians for the first time in their entire lives have lived six months without hearing the organ, singing a hymn, hugging a friend, seeing a baptism, or hearing a live sermon. Some have worshipped virtually, worshipped in cars, and worshipped in chairs on the lawn. As of October, a few are worshipping inside with masks, social distancing; and without hymnals, pew Bibles, anthems, and handshakes. We do not yet know how many have created a new lifestyle that does not include church.
In a previous article, “How Methodism Went Wrong,” I tracked the history of our decline from once being the most phenomenally growing church in America in both membership growth and missional impact. When we go to our medical doctor, however, we want more than a diagnosis; we want to get well. How can we stop the hemorrhaging before 2021? How can we affect a “creative divorce” and emerge with two healthy, growing churches after 2021? Just splitting apart could result in two dead sects or worse, two engraved tombstones.
We can no longer gloss over fundamental differences between progressives and traditionalists. Regardless of posture on social justice issues, statistics reflect that far too few young adults and youth are experiencing a life changing encounter with God through UMC churches. Indeed, we are having far too many who are quietly walking the aisle for their last time.
Reading the speeches from the floor of the 2019 General Conference of the United Methodist Church should be embarrassing to the progeny of John Wesley. There was no evidence of “catholic spirit” in which we said, “though we do not think alike, can we not love alike?” Fortunately, cooler heads and more grace-filled hearts gathered in January 2020 and drafted “A Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation.” Sixteen people from all points of view found congeniality and consensus. In a nutshell, their proposal would provide a “gracious exit” for any local church to align with a new Christian communion and take its property and fiscally related liabilities and assets. However, the “Protocol” is not the official position of the church. And among clergy and laity, the fruit of this long process has been either continued denial that denominational division is coming, or an obsession with the “nuts and bolts” of what new structure, doctrine, preaching, and teaching curriculum will look like.
In 2020, there are less than 7,000,000 United Methodists in the United States, down from nearly 11,000,000 in 1968. The shadow of conflict is creeping closer. People conjecture what their church’s future is and what their pastor’s posture will be on sensitive issues. We attempt discernment with too many variants of misinformation. We need a reality check; the United Methodist Church could lose a lot of members and even more attendance. We risk developing a “Titanic” mentality if business as usual continues after we hit the iceberg. For some, apathy is becoming atrophy; COVID is giving cover for some to remain away even after churches reopen. Statistics coming from Donald House in Texas and GCFA in Evanston expose our need to build into a new future. It may well be “later than we think.”
The real challenge before us is to live into a new future. We must pray fervently that every local church hears redemptive good news from the pulpit and practices what Wesley calls “holy conferencing.” Yes, we have cheapened the term by abusing it at the General Conference, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, holy conferencing remains a gateway to a new future for every local church. The process must involve creative strategy, and may mean jettisoning some cherished though ineffective traditions and biases.
Every local church needs a blueprint for a new future. Peter Drucker, a business consultant once predicted for failing business models, “If you keep doing business like you are now doing business, you will soon not be doing business at all.” This is true of thousands of local churches. The theorem that “managers climb the ladder of success; leaders determine if the ladder is leaning against the right wall,” has shaped our church landscape. Clergy guaranteed appointment has produced “managers.” Now we need leaders. Wesleyan grace theology is needed in today’s religious and secular culture, but our future depends on episcopal and pastoral leaders and a laity who are all committed to a dynamic that the Jews called “learning Torah.” Theirs is an annual liturgical reading of the Pentateuch, not for academic review, but for constant search for new insights. We must begin reading the Bible again and seeing it for the first time.
The prophet Habakkuk challenged us to “Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith. Write the vision, make it plain…so that a herald may run with it.” We need not, indeed we cannot, wait for the United Methodist Church to divide and be reconfigured while churches close and God’s children are spiritually orphaned. What can we do to grow in the midst of this institutional polarization? We must break out of this prolonged period of maintenance mode ministry. Thousands of our local churches are supported in attendance, offerings, service, witness, and supportive prayers by a diminishing nucleus of older adults. Deaths and drift to “inactive status” far surpass confirmation, conversion, baptism, and transfer of incoming members from other churches. We need a school of Habakkuk’s!
We are experiencing the end of the world as we have known it. As a farm woman in my childhood was known for saying, “Don’t talk to me about what ‘used to be.’ Ole ‘Usta’ is dead.” Over a score of years ago, Kennon Callahan of Candler School of Theology opened a book on church growth by writing, “The age of the parish pastor is over; the age of the missionary pastor has come.” Secondly, he wrote, “The age of the local church is over; the age of the mission station has come.” No one listened, but he was a prophet.
In 1980 I hired Win Arn of the Church Growth Institute, originated by Dr. Donald McGavern, to come to my local church to envision and empower us to live into a new future. One diagram he drew on the board was a huge circle that represented our church of about 600 in Sunday worship attendance. Then he drew lots of smaller configurations and labeled typical small groups. He said when a new member joins a church, if they relate to it only as an attendee at Sunday worship, they will gradually become less active. New members remain active if they get involved in a small group of some description—study, teaching, missional work, music, crafts, etc. That was the beginning of a concept I developed called “blueprinting a new future.”
I believe every church needs to form a creative, proactive group to design, test, and implement a blueprint for a new future. To build a helpful database, outside consultation needs to record feedback from a cross-section of the congregation in one-on-one conversations. We need to develop leadership and invest funding in three areas that we test to understand reasons why Gen Z, Millennials, and seekers of every age would be attracted to our local churches:
A. What is our Message?
The pulpit message cannot be the same old moral platitudes. Our brand image cannot be vanilla. We see God’s love and the holy scriptures differently from Calvinists, Fundamentalists and Liberation theologians. In 1725, as a college student, John Wesley wrote to his mother, “Does God’s being in total control make God the author of evil?” Suzanna congratulated his insight. Sermon #141 entitled “The Image of God,” which considers Genesis 1:27, is sadly overlooked by most preachers. Wesley saw in that verse what he called “original righteousness.” Sin defines our behavior, but not our personhood. Guilt is counterproductive. Methodism’s message today must be good news, not guilt tripping. In 1777, Wesley launched the “Arminian Magazine.” He also wrote and had printed thousands of tracts delineating the message of Methodism. We are not Calvinists and we need to know it.
A 3500 member UMC in Winston Salem, North Carolina, surveyed the congregation about needs. Millennials and Generation Z expressed the need to know their core beliefs. Our message in small groups, tracts, pamphlets, websites, social media and elsewhere needs to emphasize Wesleyan grace theology with an Arminian accent. We need to explain the dimensions of prevenient, saving, and perfecting grace through which we all have “God moments” at God’s initiative.
B. What is our mission?
All churches should embrace the mission to reach people in the community who are not already in the congregation, but we have been much too inhibited in our evangelistic intention. Eddie Fox used to preach, “Pass the cup and name the Name.” We must develop a personal spiritual self confidence that respects the life journey of other persons, but guides and encourages them toward a personal faith-walk with Jesus Christ. Wesley called repentance the “porch of salvation.” It is not remorse but metanoia, or turning our life around in a new direction. Denominational loyalty is almost deceased; reality has fragmented into relativism; reason has failed to rescue the perishing and lift up the fallen; meaning itself is often eroded by trivial pursuits. So many people are either disenchanted with their earlier church experiences or disoriented in identifying their overarching life goals. Wesley often defended early Methodism by citing the changes he could document in people’s lives. We need to recover that story. Some small groups must be excited about honest questions and doubts from new spiritual seekers.
C. What are our diverse ministries?
Sunday School and worship are old paradigms. “Field of Dreams” efforts like building gymnasiums and calling them “Family Life Centers” created massive debts and accomplished almost no discipling. Preaching, choirs, Sunday School, sports, and praise bands bring very few guests to worship.
Every church must creatively establish two “kinds” of groups:
Relational. These have a high emphasis on building friendships, discovering commonalities, gradually developing trust, and overcoming loneliness. COVID has exacerbated disconnects in relationships. We need “no empty seat Sundays” when everyone brings a friend, relative, acquaintance, or neighbor to church and to lunch. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, these relationships must become available when we hit a low or stress out. This does not happen through congregational worship. The old “Cheers” adage, “where everybody knows my name,” has a lot of value in church. Going to church only to have no one really make our acquaintance or appear interested in us is very off-putting. Relationship building must be an important part of the culture of every small group.
Recovery. Our mission must be to throw life lines rather than holding plumb lines. The shortcoming my grandson saw in “AA” after ten years of earning “chips'' was the cultural maintenance of a victim complex: “My name is Don and I am an alcoholic.” That is important in facing reality, but it should not replace, “My name is Don and I am a son of the Most High God.” Dr. Russell Richey, preeminent Methodist historian, says that the uniqueness of historic Methodism was not orthodox doctrine so much as people saying, “this is my faith walk,” or, simply, “Listen to my story.” Even with the success of independent churches in numbers, the monosyllabic testimony is “I was saved.” That is neither the beginning nor the end of our faith journey. We need to teach that God’s prevenient grace is the beginning of our journey and perfecting grace is the long journey.
Charles Albert Tindley’s great hymn should be our theme song:
“When the storms of life are raging…
When the world is tossing me like a ship upon the sea...
When the hosts of hell assail, and my strength begins to fail…
When I’ve done the best I can and my friends misunderstand…
O Thou Lily of the Valley, stand by me.”
Donald W. Haynes is a retired UMC minister in the Western North Carolina Annual Conference. He is the author of A Digest of Methodist Grace Theology and a two-volume set of Methodist history, The Methodist Story—1703-1791 & 1760’s-2019.