CORRECTING A LITTLE MISUNDERSTANDING ABOUT WEIRD CHURCH

It has been a great year of conversations about ministry, in part related to the buzz around the new book Weird Church.  Even in rather slow-to-change places like Mississippi (where I worked this month), people report unprecedented numbers of their neighbors moving into the None and Done clubs.  Where once almost everyone was at least tangentially related to some faith group, today, more than half of Mississippians are unchurched in parts of the state.  They are talking about Fresh Expressions.  In Mississippi. Friends, it is certainly not 1996 anymore.

But in all this great conversation, there is a little misunderstanding that I would like to clear up.  Weird Church is simply the title of a book; it is not a ministry strategy or a category of church.  Fresh Expressions, on the other hand, refers to a category of unconventional faith community strategies.  FE is a category.  Weird Church is a book title.  In fact, the book unpacks 19 distinct forms of faith community that we believe have a promising future, each decidedly different one from the other.  Beth Estock and I believe that there is no singular future for the church in America, but many parallel futures.  Some of those futures (like the tabernacle, the family chapel and the cathedral experience) are very much in keeping with forms of church many will recognize from their childhoods.

Furthermore, in the book we explore cultural shifts utilizing Spiral Dynamics: talking about how churches must change to engage people moving into the green and yellow worldviews (for more on this, see the Initium section in the book).  Beth and I underline that a lot of people in the USA will remain in more traditional worldviews - a shrinking but significant number of people for years to come in places like Mississippi.  And even in California, given the many millions who live there, it will be possible to find a couple million in the near term who are still ready to engage in conservative, blue-value-system religion.  

As I listened to folks in Mississippi talk about the ways they are innovating in ministry, I saw examples of several types of faith community that we described in the book.  It is really quite amazing that Weird Church is resonating with the experience of church leaders in the very deep South, even as it resonates in places like California and Maine.  

One woman in a Chicago workshop was unable to connect with the thrust of the book's argument since she lived in a context where multiple black mega-churches are thriving. These churches, of course, live in a blue-orange cultural space.  Within the black middle class in America, there are millions of folks who live in blue-orange; and many churches are well designed for these folks.  All I could say in response to her is that on the West Coast and in the Northeast, we are seeing the emergence of African American young people who are resonating more with a green value system, and who do not show up in the mega-churches.  Their numbers will likely increase in the years ahead - and if we want to reach them, we will have to think beyond simply church as it may currently be working for suburbanites in Atlanta, Dallas or metro DC.

American religion is a complex thing.  There's a lot going on.  It is tempting to generalize from our experience of our local context.  Seattle people often share a bleaker outlook on the church's future than people in Columbia, SC.  But everyone notices that something is changed, a tipping point has been reached.  This new century is taking us to a place we have never been before.  Fresh ways of doing church and practicing faith in Christ must be developed.  Sunday morning worship attendance has peaked almost everywhere. Many of the churches that were flying high 15 or 20 years ago are seeing stagnation and shrinkage in participation.  

And one kind of church is fast moving toward extinction - the church that finds its primary identity in denominational brand, while lacking a fresh sense of calling from God and lacking vital relationships with its neighbors.  That represents probably half the denominationally-aligned congregations in the USA.  But I am encouraged that thousands of churches are discovering that they are more than simply a franchise for Baptist, Methodist or Presbyterian groups.  And to the degree that they live into their uniqueness and embrace it, the future is bright.