An 8-Track Church in a CD World

The title of this blog post is also the title of one of my favorite books on ministry.  An 8-Track Church in a Cd World: The Modern Church in a Postmodern World by Robert N. Nash, Jr. describes the problem many churches have trying to do ministry in the 21st century.  I fell in love with the book as soon as I read the following on page 2.

We play a little game each week in church called "Let's Pretend."  We pretend that people want the same things from church in the 1990s that they wanted in the 1950s.  We pretend that the majority of Americans are churchgoing Christians who believe in the God of the Bible and who order their lives to reflect this reality.  We pretend that the spirituality of Americans in the 1990s is enhanced by a decades-old diet of practical faith, old-time religion, revivals, and personal "quiet time."  We pretend that the church is still the center of community life and that people will come back to church "when they get their lives straightened out."

This book was published in 1997; imagine what he might write today!  Our culture has changed even more since 1997, but his words are still true today.  And we wonder why society thinks the church is irrelevant.  Later, in his book Nash shares a study done by Barna that found that only about one-fourth of Americans believe that the churches in their area are relevant to the way they live.  If they perceive that what we do and teach is not relevant we should not be surprised that they are not interested in being a part of our churches.

Nash writes that "The number-one religious story of the next century will be the deaths of thousands of local Christian churches.  These churches will die slow and painful deaths brought on by changing demographics and their unwillingness to face the reality of their own spiritual inadequacy."  Of course, that is already happening with about 100 churches in the United States closing their doors every week.  Most of these are smaller churches that long ago forgot why they existed and had no vision for their future.  The good news is that does not have to happen to your church if you are willing to make the changes necessary to effectively reach out to your community with a Gospel message that speaks to the real needs of postmodern people.

The book offers some recommendations for such ministry.

• Churches must find their niche.  We should not attempt to copy what other churches are doing but identify the unique vision God has for our church and live into that vision.
• Churches must localize their ministry.  Our primary mission field is just outside our front door.  The 8-track church believes it is a mission-minded church because it sends money to the denomination to support mission work around the world.  While that remains important, it is not enough.  We must do our own mission work in our own communities.
• Churches must let leadership "trickle up."  Another writer calls this the second Reformation.  He wrote that the first Reformation gave the Word of God to the people, and the second Reformation will give the ministry back to the people.
• Churches will become more dependent upon lay ministers or bivocational ministers, many of whom will not have been to seminary.  Churches and judicatories must assume a more active role of training these individuals for ministry.

In my opinion, many smaller churches in the United States will have to make some major decisions in the next decade.  They will either decide to make the changes necessary to enjoy a productive, effective ministry or they will, by default, choose to die.  Some will die rather quickly.  For others, it may take several decades before the doors actually close but they will have been walking corpses for many of those years.  God will already have moved on and raised up other churches in their communities to achieve His purposes.  Which will your church choose?