My church is going to be hosting a church workshop with the United Methodist Fresh Expressions group on Saturday, August 19th, where we will spend the day learning how our culture has shifted, what that means for us and the community around us, and how we are being called to think in new ways to be the Church in our world today. In light of this, I am going to be sharing various blog posts to inform/educate our church members, but I hope it may also be helpful for those not connected to us as well.

Quite often churches exist for those who are already a part of it. There are three stumbling blocks that stick out to me in this regard. First, If you sit in board meetings, committee meetings, or listen to parking lot conversations at many churches they tend to revolve around what we would like, what we enjoy, and what we want to see happen. Secondly, even when churches do good things for their communities, it often ends up being “for” their communities instead of “with” their communities. When it comes to Churches serving we also tend to make assumptions about what the community needs, instead of engaging in conversations with those not connected to the church to see what is really going on. When this happens, it leads to the Church spending a lot of hours and resources providing something that was not wanted or needed. The third stumbling block for Churches is we have a tendency to keep doing something even if it is no longer working or fulling our purpose. We will do an event because it is the 56th annual event rather than because it is still making an impact.

Why do we do those things? First, our conversations tend to revolve around “us” the insiders, when we have forgotten why the Church exists in the first place. When we lose sight of our mission, then it is easy for our very consumeristic culture to infiltrate the Church. When this happens in the Church then the Church becomes more of a producer of spiritual goods for Christian consumers. This shifts the focus of the congregation around providing the right types of events/programs/music/ that will keep those already a part of the church happy. In the late ’90s/early 2000s churches became extremely program centered, which is sometimes referred to as the “Attractional Model”. In this model, the Churches’ main focus was on providing the right type of atmosphere/events/programs/music that will draw people into the church and then keep them there. These things are connected to the second stumbling block I mentioned above where over the years the attractional model caused families to be at the church multiple times a week, which then led to them becoming more disconnected from those outside of the church. When this happens the Church lives inside a bubble unaware of the reality around them. Thirdly, I mentioned how Churches will continue to do things even if they no longer work, why? I believe for many they are more comfortable doing something they are familiar with even if it no longer produces the fruit they want because it is less scary than trying something new and failing. This leads congregations to think if they can possibly recreate the past, then the past successes will return, and then this will lead to the revival of their church…yet when this doesn’t inevitably happen it fills people with sadness, disappointment, and even anger while they try to find someone to blame.

So, what do we do? One is we need a reality check that the church does not exist for us, but we are the church and exist for the world! If this is true then it should lead us to ask ourselves as the Church, are we willing to die to our preferences, wants, and previous church culture, so that we may thrive and make a difference in the world today? Let us reflect on these two points as we take this journey of faith together.