Bold By Design (Part 2)

Antifragility and Spiritually Mature Churches

What if the very forces that threaten to destabilize the church are the same forces God uses to deepen its faith and clarify its mission? In this second installment of Bold By Design, we will shift our attention from innovative churches to churches characterized by antifragility. In Angus Fletcher’s book, Primal Intelligence: You Are Smarter Than You Know, the author tests and develops several of his theories with special operators in the military. He writes, “Antifragility first crosses my radar when a Special Operator tells me, ‘I don’t have any post-traumatic stress.’ He says it like it’s normal. But it’s highly atypical.” The particular Operator Fletcher refers to has “undergone abnormally high levels of combat stress…Yet he experiences no flashbacks….He doesn’t wake up drenched in sweat.” Rather than the typical Post-Traumatic Stress, “He has gained perspective, grown in confidence, and deepened his sense of life purpose….This is antifragility.”¹

Antifragility develops when people get tougher after heartbreaks or wiser after mistakes. It is what happens when life punches you in the face, and rather than becoming more tentative, you become healthier and more aware. It is what happens when kids fall down, skin their knees, and, rather than running inside crying, they get up and continue playing. Fletcher claims that most of us lose touch with this ability as we age. Rather than bouncing back from skinned knees and unkind friends, we find we are more fragile. We don’t recover as quickly or, in some cases, at all from what we suffer as adults. To be fair, often what we suffer as adults is notably more difficult. Yet most of us know someone who has taken hit after hit and recovered well. And if no one comes to mind, just open your Bible and turn to the book of Job.

Job is a powerful picture of antifragility because his faith did not merely survive suffering; it was refined, clarified, and ultimately strengthened through it. In Job 1–2, he loses his wealth, his children, and his health, yet he still declares, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). Even when he wrestles honestly with grief and confusion, Job refuses to curse God, and in the midst of loss he confesses, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him” (Job 13:15). By the end of the book, Job’s encounter with God moves him from a passive awareness to personal awe, as he says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5). That makes Job a striking biblical example of antifragility: pressure did not simply test him, it became the means by which his faith was deepened and his understanding of God transformed.

Churches can be fragile or antifragile as well. Some churches recount their history with a catalog of challenges, setbacks, poor leadership, and disasters, yet maintain a joyful and buoyant spirit. Eric Geiger, the senior pastor of Mariners Church in Southern California, in his November 2014 blog post titled Fragility of a Church; Strength of a Church, writes, “Churches are more fragile than we often realize. Leaders stumble and struggle. Pastors get sick. Natural disasters strike. Relationships go awry. Communities rapidly change.” Yet even if your church has not had one of these challenges, there is no doubt your community has changed and is changing. Perhaps change is the greatest cause of church fragility - because it never ends. Churches that respond to change by preserving a fixed expression often become increasingly esoteric, turning inward rather than engaging the present—yet the pressures of societal change will not abate. On the contrary, if the recent past is any indication, change is happening at an increasingly rapid pace. Unfortunately, many churches lack the resilience to keep up.

According to Lifeway Research, the median church size has shrunk by more than 50% since the year 2000. They further report that church closure rates are roughly three times the rate of new church starts. It seems as if many churches are so fragile that societal change simply overwhelms them. They choose to close rather than adapt. Closure is not a foregone conclusion. It is a choice made by leaders who simply cannot imagine that ‘church’ can be church in some way unfamiliar to them. Their understanding of church is so rigidly tied to a particular culture and social style that anything else seems unfaithful. This is a clear picture of a fragile church.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a professor of mathematics at New York University, argues in Antifragility: Things that Gain from Disorder that some systems actually grow stronger when they face stress and disruption—what he calls “disorder.”² He suggests that fragility and antifragility aren’t fixed traits, but qualities that develop based on how a system responds to adversity. Instead of trying to avoid risk altogether, systems can benefit from engaging challenges in ways that lead to growth, adaptation, and innovation. Taleb also draws a clear distinction between resilience and antifragility: resilient systems aim to return to their status quo after a disruption, while antifragile systems use ongoing stress and uncertainty to move forward and become better than before.

Our ability to navigate disorder, particularly as church leaders, is not a self-generated strength but a Spirit-enabled capacity rooted in our dependence on God. While leadership often demands endurance, discernment, and courage, Scripture consistently points us away from self-sufficiency and toward divine sufficiency, reminding us that “our sufficiency is from God” (2 Cor 3:5) and that true wisdom is given by Him (Js 1:5). When we attempt to endure by our own insight or strength, our limits will eventually be exposed, but as we abide in Christ, we discover a deeper, sustaining capacity that is continually renewed, for “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength” (Isa 40:31). It is in prayerful dependence, attentiveness to God’s voice, and trust in His guidance that we are equipped to navigate complexity, grow through hardship, and shepherd others faithfully, knowing that God’s “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). It is precisely this power at work in and through us that allows us to respond to disorder not with anxiety and fragility but with flexibility, ready to grow through the challenges. It is God in us that leads us to antifragility.

Among the variety of systems that historically struggle with fragility, churches may rank near the top. By definition, churches seem to resist change. Yet spiritually mature churches demonstrate an internal culture of antifragility. That is, they plan for and embrace change, and by doing so, they develop the ability not only to survive change but to grow through it. If churches want to grow in antifragility, there are several dos and don’ts to consider. Let’s start with the don’ts.

1. Don’t overplan. Systems that overplan generally do so to reduce risk and assuage anxiety. Yet, by doing so, they often reduce their ability to pivot and flex when the unexpected happens. Overplanning becomes less of a temptation as leaders learn to trust in God and lay down their anxiety.

2. Don’t fixate on novelty. Not everything new is better. An obsessive attraction to novelty is called neomania. Like overplanning, anxiety frequently drives neomania. The problem with neomania is that it opens the church to catastrophic risk.

Responding to disorder, disruption, and change either by overplanning or by chasing all change leaves the church vulnerable. Nonanxious church leaders develop antifragile churches that can face challenges, and rather than retrenching in an antiquated status quo, or idolizing every new social movement, they help their churches realistically face the inevitable challenges and grow through them. For churches that want to become more antifragile, try these do’s.

1. Fixate on wonder. Fragility frequently evolves as we are no longer susceptible to wonder. Antifragility requires that we remain open to uncertainty and surprise. If a church needs the world neatly explained and managed, it becomes less able to respond to and develop in response to unexpected events. Conversely, healthy churches treat uncertainty as an opportunity to discover God in fresh ways. To help a church develop antifragility, help the church fixate on the wonder, glory, and majesty of God and all that God is doing in our world. Explore seemingly inexplicable ways God is working, moving, and blessing our world in spite of all the challenges and dysfunctions we see.

2. Minimize fixed obligations. When churches position themselves in ways where nearly all of their assets are required just to exist as a congregation, they have little in the way of resources to take advantage of situational opportunities. In specific terms, when churches devote more than 90% of their financial and human resources to merely keeping the building open and holding a single weekly gathering, there is little chance they will make an impact on their community. Since the single largest fixed obligation is their property, they may have to liquidate, downsize, or share their property to have a spiritual impact on their community.

3. Develop a clear purpose. Churches that have a sense of purpose, or telos, bigger than their congregation are able to absorb difficulties and setbacks because they value something greater than maintaining the status quo. Having an important purpose focuses the church on something outside itself and motivates it to keep going and growing despite disruptions. A congregation’s mission ought not be written inside the walls of the building but outside. Mission is developed on mission. If your congregation wants to discover its mission, spend 6 months or a year regularly getting into your community and working to solve a community problem. As you get to know your neighbors and learn to love them well, you will discover your mission.

In the end, a healthy and lasting church isn’t built by avoiding risk or by trying to return to a static, idealized past. It grows by learning to gain strength, wisdom, and a clearer perspective through pressure and disruption. As cultural change continues to accelerate, churches face a real choice: hold tightly to a fragile identity that will not survive, or lean into uncertainty as a space for growth. Rather than pulling back in the face of adversity, antifragile churches move forward with courage, using challenges as opportunities to deepen their sense of purpose and step into new possibilities - making them mature.

Building this kind of bold church culture means leaders have to resist the urge to overplan or chase constant novelty out of anxiety. Instead, they cultivate wonder at what God is still doing in our world, stay flexible with resources, and keep a clear sense of purpose that extends beyond the congregation itself. At its core, this kind of maturity is not something we manufacture—it’s something formed through dependence on the Spirit. As churches lean into prayer and trust in God, they discover the ability to face disorder not with fear, but with a courageous, innovative flexibility, growing through it and finding that God’s power is indeed made perfect in weakness.

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Tod K. Vogt, serves as the Executive Director of Mission Alive in Dallas, TX. Prior to working as Mission Alive’s Executive Director, he served as our Director of Equipping. Tod joined the Mission Alive team in 2007 after several years in local church ministry. Tod began his full-time ministry as a church-planting missionary among the Fon people of Benin, West Africa.

1. Angus Fletcher, Primal Intelligence: You Are Smarter Than You Know, New York: Avery, 2025, 126-17.

2. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, New York: Random House, 2012, 2014.