Transforming Church

It is easy to blame leadership, but I have seen many pastor-leaders wanting to do something about this, more than I’ve seen congregations willing to transform. And even though the number of pastors willing to accept the risk of change is fewer, they are, nevertheless, growing in number. I wish there were as many congregations open to transformation, but change is even more of a threat to them. The tension between pastor and congregation often becomes its own train wreck.

Too frequently I’ve had to stand on the sideline and watch pastors torch and burn because they and their congregations have chewed each other up and their relationship explodes. Pastors who realize they have to take time, move slowly with lots of patience, eventually misstep (as seen by the congregation’s controlling leadership) and in frustration or discouragement end up looking for another call.

While other pastors have not lost the vision, in their humanness they give up or give in. They come to this perceived reality by a variety of rationalizations, all of which tell them they should pull in their head like a turtle. I have watched a number of these pastors leap with both feet instead into a particular ministry of the congregation, a lesser goal but one that still offers fulfillment. It is interesting how often this takes the form of conducting mission trips, mostly to Central and South American countries.

I have been perplexed my entire ministry watching the extent to which the church identifies with the foreign mission field, at the same time it lives daily with the third largest unchurched population in the world and doesn’t act upon it. Providing local human assistance to individuals and families no different from humanism is not evangelism. My Rotary Club is better at humanism than most area congregations.

In a mixture of naivety, stubbornness and self-interest, the biggest problem lies at the feet of the congregation. Try to get them to see the misguidance of “membership” and how it precludes discipleship, and you’ve drawn the line in the sand. To forfeit the status of membership is to forfeit the power, and that just isn’t going to happen. Congregations have justified their power as the way to be faithful to Christ and they cannot or will not see how easy it is to move away from Christ, even against Him. They think saying, “In the name of Jesus,” makes it so.

So other than watch thousands and thousands of congregations shut down over the next 30-40 years, what can we do about this? We are rapidly moving into desperate times, and so I, for one, am committed to some desperate measures. I refuse to be suicidal, even if most congregations knowingly or unknowingly are. I know there are things we can do. Other new strategies may well show themselves now or in the future, but for now I can detail two I would personally pursue immediately.

The first and cleanest strategy is to start new congregations, not based on membership as we have been doing, but based on discipleship. Mission development has gradually been evolving toward this, but denominational baggage still prevents it from full transformation. In the future I would personally never start another congregation that in any way uses the concept of membership.

The second strategy relates to our existing congregations. I have spent twenty years trying to “inspire” congregations to transform. A number of them have gone part way down the road with me, but none have made it all the way. So I am ready to start a new approach, one that is inspired by work of The European Church Planting Network (ECPN) and involves what they call Mid-Size Communities (MSC).

In Europe today parishes (congregations) are being organized with of a number of MSC’s. Sometimes called pastorates, MSC’s are made up of disciple families who live in some proximity to one another. Their ideal size is 35 individuals, but they are not allowed to grow beyond 50 without dividing. More than 50 compromises the community’s sense of family, belonging and purpose. Each would take their mission from the congregation, but each would also identify their own vision, how they would live out that mission.

Inasmuch as no Christian would be against becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ, I would develop these groups as pure Disciple Communities within the congregation. Each of these communities, drawing their mission from the congregation itself, would not simply be ‘using the term discipleship,” but focus in dead seriousness on growing as disciples and shed any and all membership identity.

As these MSDC’s multiply within the congregation, the need to transform the entire congregation becomes obvious. Remaining member holdouts regarding a commitment to discipleship would eventually be offered identity with a MSC that would not force concepts of discipleship. And at that point, having then leveled the entire playing field, the full transformation can proceed.

Hopefully not needed, but if “old guard members” boycott and their refusal is somehow still able to block the way for transformation, I would not be above inviting the functional MSDC’s to become part of starting another congregation. Property and facility are not essential; so this process, if necessary, would remove any non-discipled member ability to divert the entire congregation from Christ’s mission.

I remember attending a conference in northern Florida in the early 1990’s where it was identified the Southern Baptist denomination was dealing with this by starting a new congregation in between two shrinking or dying ones. I remember how “shocked” I was to learn that a denomination would do such a thing and was thoroughly insulted on behalf of the dying congregations. I tell you I and others have come a long way in nearly twenty years. Unfortunately all of us are now more than twenty years behind.

If we do not do this, and even if 30-40 years from now the church has become only a shadow of its former self, I am not worried the church will die. This is my confidence that the Holy Spirit will find ways to advance the mission of Christ in spite of the church. There will be more strategies offered, and the church of Christ will not remain shackled; He and His mission will move forward.