FLIPPING THE SUSTAINABILITY QUESTION

Last month, I wrote about the changes I am seeing in the baseline health of American protestant churches now versus a generation ago.  The challenges are rising - and thousands of churches are experiencing collapse in this decade.

This month, I want to look at the hopeful side of the equation:  A LOT IS WORKING THESE DAYS.  Beth Estock and I, as we wrote Weird Church, stopped at 19 in terms of the varied iterations of church that we profiled in the book - we could have done 38 - we just ran short of pages.  I commend the book Weird Church to any church leaders that would like to see what's working these days and to think through the shifts that are required for their church to live well, deep into the twenty-first century.  Weird Church is now seeping into the North American conversation on church vitality.  After all these years, Kennon Callahan's 1980s work 12 Keys to an Effective Church still impacts my consultative approach - but when churches are firing on all twelve pistons and still fighting to hold even, more must be said.  I think we say much of the more in Weird Church.

But there is something I would add.  The sustainability question has to be flipped.  In two ways.

Several years ago, on one of my trips to Asia, I started work to write a book on church sustainability.  I threw a stack of books from the field of sustainability studies in my bag.  For two weeks in Taipei, I sat in little cafes and read about global sustainability.  I realized in my reading that I was starting with the wrong question: how can we sustain tired and aging congregations to live a few more decades?  I learned:

1. Many of the leading thinkers in sustainability have shifted to use the term RESILIENCE.  It really is a better word.  It connotes more than survival - more than stopping the damage.  Resilience leads us to think far beyond a financial balance sheet.  A resilient church is one in which new life and possibilities are intermittently and (forever it would seem) blossoming.  These churches are learning, adapting, growing in grace, getting better.  The idea of Resilience more aptly fits with what we know of churches that thrive across multiple generations.

2. As I kept reading about global sustainability, it hit me that there were far more urgent sustainability questions than congregational sustainability: questions more interesting to the people in the neighborhood as well.  What about the resilience of the people around us?  What about the resilience of the nation?  What about the resilience of the planet and the global community?  What is the church doing to be a part of the solutions?  What is the church doing to contribute to the resilience of human beings, of neighborhoods and of the larger systems.

The gospel has little to nothing to say about congregational sustainability. But the gospel is all about global reconciliation.  "All creation groans in travail until now."  "Behold I make all things new." "Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."  Each of these statements is global.  It is the whole of the human experience that needs salvation - and certainly not simply last-century-style churches in aging buildings.  Churches that are applying the gospel with Spirit-energy to the lives of people and communities are typically more resilient institutionally.

So, for congregations late in their life cycle, the biggest sustainability question becomes: What are you doing to create a legacy of spiritual resilience in your neighborhood, and in the world?  Downsize the house of worship.  Invest in the neighborhood.  Listen and discover what people care deeply about, and join them with your caring. Love your neighbors as God loves.  Flip the sustainability question.

Happy Thanksgiving!