June 2026 Editorial
Church Renewal and the Reimagining of the Future
I have often used the language of “church renewal” to speak of local churches seeking to move from years of slow decline into a new participation in the mission of God. But in a recent conversation with Tod Vogt, the Executive Director of Mission Alive, he raised the question of whether the word renewal is the right language for local churches to use.
The concern is that it’s too easy for churches to think of renewal as moving forward by looking to the past. That is, the revitalization of the church involves trying to bring back the past, viewed through the lens of nostalgia. The way the church is conceived remains the same: a building-centric approach in which the Sunday morning assembly, involving Bible classes and worship, is the most important aspect of the church. So the nostalgic gaze remembers when every classroom in the church building had Bible classes, when the auditorium was mostly full, and when the singing and preaching were superb. The hope for a renewed future then easily becomes an updated version of the past.
For existing local churches that have experienced decline, a healthy future on mission with God requires more than just an updated version of the past. Stepping forward on mission with God requires reimagining what it means to be a local church, leading to new ways of functioning within the community. After all, whatever internal challenges have contributed to the decline, there are also external factors at play. That is, the neighborhoods in which the church is located have changed. The way non-believers think and what they value has changed. So there are external challenges that must be thought through, which should inform the imagination of what it means to be a church that is faithful to Jesus Christ and contextually relevant to the community.
As churches think through external challenges, internal challenges will surface and need to be addressed. Such internal challenges could include theological commitments and values that need to change, such as the limitation of women in the life and ministry of the church, or the formation of new partnerships with other churches and organizations in the community.
In working through the external and internal challenges, the church will face the inevitable question of what needs to change. The reimagining of the church presumes that change is necessary because the church is not just an idea but an actual people participating in the mission of God as followers of Jesus.1 These changes will be technical and adaptive, so knowing the difference between the two is important in the reimagining of the church.
Whereas technical changes have known solutions that can be implemented with already existing knowledge, adaptive change requires solutions that can only be implemented with new ways of thinking and doing.2 So adaptive change emerges beliefs, values, and practices about what it means to be a church. Part of the challenge is that adaptive change requires letting go of things about church we love and are even done without much stress because that’s how we’ve always done church. It means we must change, which is why adaptive change is so difficult.3
For Churches of Christ seeking to reimagine what it means to be a local church on mission with God in the local community, I would highly recommend reading Jack R. Reese’s book At The Blue Hole: Elegy for a Church on the Edge.4 I recommend this book because the author understands the history of Churches of Christ and, thus, how many congregations have become what they are. However, Reese also understands that any future will require change. So, rather than providing a one-size-fits-all answer about what changes are necessary, Reese offers a framework for a conversation about the future that both draws on resources within the DNA of the Churches of Christ and discusses technical and adaptive change.
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.
The doctrine of Missio Dei or the Mission of God is that the mission belongs to God, who has the church to participate in his mission rather than the church having it’s own mission. Or as Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2006, 62, says “…it is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world but that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church, the church was made for mission—God’s mission.”
Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009, 19.
Ibid, 69, “Adaptive challenges are difficult because their solutions require people to change their ways.”
Jack R. Reese, At The Blue Hole: Elegy for a Church on the Edge, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021. I so strongly recommend this book that I bought copies for the Family Life Minister and Shepherds of the Southside Church, where I serve as the Lead Minister. We read the book together and then formed a group of about 12 other people from the Southside Church to read and discuss it with us.