January 2026 Editorial
Aging Congregations and the Future
Last Sunday, the announcement was made that another local Church of Christ was gathering for worship one last time. After years of decline, the church was closing. Later that night, I heard from a minister friend who shared that the church he serves is letting him go. With the church facing decline, their thought seems to be that finding a new minister will stem the downward trend. I doubt it.
I’ve had the privilege of serving as a minister of the gospel among the Churches of Christ for over twenty-five years now. For the most part, I have enjoyed the journey. I have witnessed congregations offer hospitality to people who were hurting, showing them that someone cares. I have witnessed people encounter Jesus Christ among congregations in life-transformational ways, becoming my brothers and sisters in Christ. I have also received much love and encouragement from church members, who have reminded me of God’s calling upon my life.
But I have also witnessed significant dysfunction and conflict among congregations. I have witnessed the gospel of Jesus Christ take a back seat to legalism, traditionalism, and nationalism. Every church I’ve spoken with claims it wants to “reach the lost,” but most don’t. Internal conflicts about where God is leading the church, along with those mission-stiffling isms, get in the way.
When I began serving as a vocational minister, I had no idea I would become a minister who helped a church close. When the church closed, I was among a very small handful of ministers who helped close it. Since then, that number has grown. I then joined another group of ministers, which was already quite large, when, out of the blue, I was fired less than a year after beginning to serve with the new church. I wasn’t involved in any illegal, immoral, or unethical activities. The elders just told me I wasn’t a good fit for their church, as if the problems they were facing could be resolved simply by letting me go in search of a new minister.
I share my experience for two reasons. First, I want to acknowledge how I have seen God at work among the Churches of Christ. Because of God’s redemptive work, many people have become Christians and learned to live as followers of Jesus Christ among the Churches of Christ. While our tribe, just like every other tribe, has its challenges, only blindness keeps us from seeing the redemptive work of God among us. For that, we should be thankful.
Having said that, there is another reason why I have shared a snapshot of my experience. I believe my experience illustrates the challenges many existing congregations face. Churches are aging, memberships are declining, and those who remain often have very different ideas about what the church should be doing. But truthfully, nobody seems to know what to do.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. And it shouldn’t.
The challenges won’t disappear by ignoring them. Doubling down on what the church is doing won’t fix anything either, since that’s part of the challenge. As we all know, Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. It is insane. If we do the same, we’ll continue getting the same.
The first step in addressing a problem is admitting there is a problem. There are reasons aging congregations are in decline and facing a range of conflicts. Those reasons aren’t so apparent on the surface and are even more difficult to see when it’s our congregation. But with some courageous introspection, listening to one another, discernment is possible. And if we reach this point and think the problem has a quick-fix solution, such as finding a new minister or maybe just changing the style of worship, we can be sure we’re not listening. In my experience, the challenges aging congregations face are never just a one-person problem or a simple matter we can solve with a quick fix.
Are there ways of addressing the challenges? Absolutely! The answer lies in understanding the difference between technical and adaptive change, concepts originating with Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty. Technical change is easy because it doesn’t require any new ways of thinking or doing. When the church website becomes outdated, the church can build a new website while continuing on as is. There is no need, for example, to rethink their understanding of hospitality or how they practice it with their neighbors.
Adaptive change, on the other hand, is challenging because it requires adaptation—changes in the way the congregation thinks and does. So if a white middle-class congregation now meets in a neighborhood whose residents are from Colombia and Vietnam, you can imagine how new ways of thinking and doing are needed if the church is going to reach the lost of the neighborhood.
Now here’s the catch. Not every aging congregation will be able to make the necessary adaptive changes for a vibrant future. For different reasons, adaptations just don’t seem feasible, and that’s okay. But this is the very reason why existing churches need to take domestic missions more seriously, particularly through church planting.
If an aging congregation can embody a renewal and engage its community as participants in the mission of God, then that is wonderful. But there is a need for new churches. Or as Mission Alive likes to say, North America needs new innovative communities of faith focused on transforming marginalized communities. Establishing new churches is not only an effective way of evangelism but also a way to be fruitful and multiply, which is a natural part of the life God has given us. Starting new, innovative communities of faith is a way to reach people that an existing congregation may not be able to.
At the end of the day, establishing new churches is an investment in the future. Rather than trying to preserve the past, which is not our calling, we follow Christ into his future, giving a fresh and faithful expression of the gospel so that others can participate in the future of Christ.
My hope for the Churches of Christ is that we will take seriously the need to plant new churches. I’m not saying that we should abandon our existing congregations. But sometimes being a good steward of the gospel means letting go of the need to keep aging congregations afloat and investing instead in the new births of innovative communities of faith.
K. Rex Butts, D.Min, serves as the lead minister with the Southside Church of Christ in Milwaukee, WI, and is the author of Gospel Portraits: Reading Scripture as Participants in the Mission of God. Rex holds a Doctor of Ministry in Contextual Theology from Northern Seminary in Lisle, IL, and a Master of Divinity from Harding School of Theology in Memphis, TN. He is married to Laura, and they have three children together.