Reimagining Church
A Failure of Imagination
Bigger and better is not the only strategy for doing church. In fact, that strategy in today’s world is often disastrous. Not only does it dishearten church leaders and members who feel their churches don’t measure up. It also causes churches to put too many eggs into one basket.
This is especially true in my faith tradition, Churches of Christ. Like many other denominations, Churches of Christ are experiencing historical decline. This steep erosion of membership comes on the heels of decades that brought historical growth.
The post-World -War-Two era was a heady time for Churches of Christ. Many congregations came to believe that success and growth were inevitable and unstoppable. While most churches started with modest buildings, their success led them to believe that the most faithful path was to “plan for growth” by building ever larger and more modern facilities. So in the 1980s and 1990s, when growth was already tapering off and decline was on the horizon, many churches built new facilities or expanded their campuses in the hopes of triggering new growth.
To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with bigger or better. With growth comes a natural need for larger things. When families grow in size, they often need bigger cars. Single folks who are content in 700-square-foot apartments may suddenly prefer a house when they get married. The pants and skirts folks wore in their twenties no longer fit because they needed a bigger size. Large is neither inherently good nor bad.
The problem, however, is that size and status can become an obsession. This is especially true in our results-oriented society. People want to know if your children are applying to the biggest or most prestigious universities. Being promoted to a higher-level job with a bigger salary looks impressive to most folks. People oooh and aaah over a bigger this or a better that. This mentality is fully baked into our way of thinking.
In the 1980s and 1990s, many churches jumped on bigger and better bandwagon. Accustomed to the belief that progress and growth were their natural inheritance, they built. Massive capital campaigns and debt often accompanied these major projects. They did this with the belief that these upgrades would guarantee a continued or renewed upswing in attendance and giving.
“The fact of Jesus’s coming is not an oddity to be admired. It exemplifies how God works in our world. And it models how the church is to relate to the world around us.”
Sadly, many of those churches are now stuck with facilities they can’t afford to maintain, much less hope to fill. They are caught between a rock—needing costly repairs for which there is no money—and a hard place—the continued belief that the only path to success is to continually modernize and beautify their existing facilities.
This is how churches can end up putting too many eggs in one basket. Instead of acknowledging their failure to imagine, they double down on the mentality of bigger and better. “We have this amazing building and we need to fill it,” becomes the dominant strain of thought. So the mission of reaching out is therefore forced into a one-dimensional template. Instead of curiously exploring how to adapt to today’s changing world, utilizing and improving the building becomes the focal point of every hire, event, and expense. It’s the old we-have-a-hammer-so-everything-must-be-a-nail fallacy. Meanwhile, potentially helpful tools lie untried.
Successful ministry and evangelism do not require bigger and better buildings. This is the secret sauce we’re trying to share in this series of articles. Our authors are laying out creative and imaginative ways of doing church.
These ideas don’t require massive investments in structures or salaries. They aren’t filled with pie-in-the-sky concepts. The authors are real ministers who are finding fresh ways to reach new people. Many of those they’re reaching might never walk in the doors of their church buildings, no matter how snazzy, new, or inviting it might be.
These non-church-goers, however, tend to be interested in relationships. They are usually not opposed to participating in a community or to finding spiritual wholeness. What they have often rejected is the Sunday worship gathering. Whether that service is “traditional” or “contemporary” makes no difference to them. They simply aren’t interested, for a variety of reasons, in “doing church” on our terms.
In this series of articles, you meet church leaders who are building fresh ways to connect with people. And here’s the key. They’re connecting with people on their own turf, and sometimes in ways that don’t sound at all like church.
In the season of Advent, we recall the incarnation of Jesus. The fact of Jesus’s coming is not an oddity to be admired. It exemplifies how God works in our world. And it models how the church is to relate to the world around us.
Just as Advent invites you to realize that God enters into the world through the birth of Jesus, this series calls you to imagine how you and your church can better engage your community for the sake of the gospel.
Please explore this with us and share your thoughts and feedback. We eagerly await the conversation.
Jason Locke is the preaching minister for the College Church of Christ in Fresno, California. He and his wife Julie spent seven years as missionaries in Prague, Czechia. Jason also worked for eight years as a campus minister at West Virginia University for the Morgantown Church of Christ. He obtained a Doctor of Ministry from Abilene Christian University, where his doctoral thesis focused on the work of re-missioning in a local church.