To Become 21st Century Churches, Part Two of Three
by Mark Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader
In order to live into greater expressions of church in this 21st century context, there are three realities congregations must accept. Our experience at Pinnacle tells us that congregations will inadvertently and unconsciously undermine their progress until they shift their perspectives in these specific ways. This is the second of those three articles.
We must accept our context for what it is, letting go of anger or bitterness directed toward our society and culture.
The gentleman described in last week’s article is realizing the cultural assumptions which guided his generation in their church life are no longer at play. New cultural assumptions are operational, guiding the formation and development of organizations and movements of all kinds. Some Christ-followers are collecting their angst about this, hoarding and secretly nurturing it, while it slowly poisons their souls. They don’t mean to, but they are so hurt by church-as-we-have-known-it passing away that they become angry and bitter. Perhaps this is a phase people experiencing loss must move through, but it is certainly not a life-giving way to live long term. Harboring anger and bitterness never leads to positive outcomes.
When people do not address and resolve their strong emotions related to loss in healthy ways, they tend to act them out. Unfortunately, in the community of faith context, this usually presents itself as judgment. “If this younger generation was just more committed, then we wouldn’t have this problem in church.” How many variations of this statement have we heard by now? As one might expect, when a congregation adopts this perspective, they run off the very people they would like to include. Judgment is not the work of Christian disciples.
During Shift presentations I enjoy using a video which comes out each year on YouTube called “Did You Know?” Participants are presented example after example of how quickly the world is changing. Change itself is not new, having been around forever. The pace of change is what’s different. Students working on a four-year technical degree find that what they learned in year one is outdated by year three. Is it any wonder that processes, structures, and methods we employed for being church twenty years ago serve as impediments to fruitful ministry now?
Yes, we do need and want to keep those traditions which are life-giving, while avoiding traditionalism. There have been many companies and businesses who have enshrined their products or approach to production only to go the way of all things when their market changed. Though the gospel itself does not change, the way we live into it, the shape it takes in our churches, constantly changes… when we are healthy and growing churches.
To that end, through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, may we seize the courage available to us for becoming vitalized and life-giving expressions of God’s Church.