WHY REVITALIZATION IS NOT ENOUGH

Most American denominations are now in free-fall. We have tried everything we know to encourage and help local churches adapt to a new world - and we have produced several excellent resources and processes which are bringing real renewal and hope to hundreds of congregations. And yet the death tsunami seems to swallow all our anecdotal victories in a collective plot-line of ecclesial annihilation. This thing is so far beyond "adaptive leadership" that I am apt to throw something the next time I hear that term benignly tossed about as a solution to our present situation.

We need prayer, fasting and serious partnering with Gen Y-ers to rethink everything! 

All the king's horses and people-power are helping maybe ten percent of our mainline churches to do the depth of ministry re-engineering required to offer vital twenty-first century faith community. But the world is changing so fast, with so many moving parts - that even the ones that revitalize well in this round, will have to do it again in 2024, and again in 2034, and at some point they may not be so fortunate to have the leaders and collective resources necessary to do it for the umpteenth time. It just takes one generation that fails to catch the ball and the lights will go out at almost any church we can think of. 

Just one fail, and it's over.

As I write this, I am flying back home from working with a heartland congregation that had 350 Sunday worshipers in 1984, and which has 150 today. Go back further in time and you will see that they had nearly 1000 in weekly attendance in 1954. We had great meetings this weekend, and we are hopeful that several new initiatives may help to take that congregation back to 350 - in four or five very diverse worship gatherings. Down the street from this church is a peer church of another denomination, a church fortunate to have had very stable leadership (longer pastoral tenures and no major staff crises that would split their church) over the last sixty years. The church down the street is the survivor church in the neighborhood, still collecting half of their 1954 attendance even today.   In other words, play an almost perfect ballgame and you might only lose half of your people over sixty years. But every time there is a crisis, and a major exodus of people, the typical church never recovers - it just learns to work with fewer folks.

Consider simply the problem of willingness to revitalize. For every church that steps up to the plate and discovers a renaissance of ministry with the new world around it, two or three or maybe even four are unable to muster such willingness. Untold numbers of churches in Alabama will go out of business before 2030 because their elderly leaders are (a) racist, (b) seriously homophobic or (c) so hell-bent on deporting undocumented people that they hesitate to serve Hispanic people in the spirit of the Gospel (most of who are perfectly documented).

Revitalization is great, and I believe there is hope for any church that wishes to engage with the Spirit in birthing a fresh ministry. But if that is the only strategy we are pursuing, we will see steadily shrinking churches and shrinking denominations. And given the challenges of engaging Gen Y in anything organized by their grandparents, a revitalization-only strategy will mean the end of most American denominations before the end of this century. (Folks, we haven't even met Gen Z yet, but if you want a glimpse of how they roll, I might suggest a weekend trip to Toronto or Stockholm.) 

To get any traction with Gen Y and Gen Z people, we must start new things.  New ministries! New groups! New churches! And lots of them! We absolutely must. There is no precedent of any thriving Christian movement in any land in any era without a robust and steady planting of new faith communities.

Against the backdrop of of the current ecclesial and social cataclysm, it is chilling to hear some of the silly conversations that church leaders get sucked into.

"How would the existing churches in that valley feel about a new church being planted within their territory?" Really? How would the churches feel? 

"What about all the churches we now have? Should we not do more for them rather than start new?" What about them? No one is stopping any of them from stepping up to the plate and deciding to fast and pray for great awakening.

"New churches are too expensive." In fact, let me show you a very cheap model of ministry: that would be an extinct denomination where 9 out of ten churches are gone, and the overhead is unbelievably modest.

The big question is this. Do we care at all about the future of American society? Do we care at all about our great grand-kids that will have not a clue about who Abraham and Sarah were nor a clue about a life of faith that would call them to venture with God into a great unknown for the sake of blessing the world?

Are there any Christian leaders out there disturbed by this? Is anyone tracking where the current plot line goes if we do not plant thousands of new faith communities in the next twenty years? In the next five years, the church where I worked last weekend will end up planting two new faith communities within its neighborhood, partially based out of its building. My gut says they will step to the plate and do the hard work. Changing the game is more than simply shoring up their two current worship services - it is about diversifying ministry and taking the ministry beyond their walls to venues all across their neighborhood.

Any church with a future will do something similar. Revitalization alone in 2014 is simply way too little way too late.