I haven't posted anything lately as we've been dealing with health issues and other family emergencies over the past few weeks. I had Covid first, and on the day I was out of quarantine my wife came down with it. She actually had to spend one night in the hospital. After being home for a few days, she became ill again last week and went back into the hospital for three days with some complications they believe is related to Covid. On top of that, another family member contracted the disease and was later diagnosed with some after effects. To say the past month or so has been challenging would be an understatement, but we are pressing onward and upward.
One author recently wrote that the challenges that will face us in the future will be unlike any that have been seen before. In the past, a challenge would arise and we could address it with things we had learned from similar past events. That may not be the case in the future. Just like Covid forced everyone to find new ways of dealing with everyday life, the new challenges that will come will require us to change in new ways to address them. I think of our educators who do know one week from the next what decisions will have to be made to educate our children. I think of employers who are struggling to stay open never knowing if their employees will suddenly be quarantined for two weeks. And who knows what new challenges are out there for us?
Another author I recently read said that churches continue to spend much time trying to get people to attend their services and programs, and the reality is that isn't going to happen. This is an unexpected change for many churches and church leaders to consider. After spending several years pastoring a megachurch in the US he resigned to spend three years ministering in Europe. There he learned how most of the people consider going to church to be irrelevant to their lives. The majority of people there are totally secular with no sense of any need for God in their lives. He warned that the attitude towards church and God in America is fast becoming the same as in Europe making most of our outreach efforts ineffective.
For the past few years we've heard about the "nones," those people who report they have no religious affiliation. There are also the "dones." These are people who are done with the church as it currently exists. They may have been hurt by the church or they may just find it to no longer be relevant to their lives, but they are not going back. The "nones" and the "dones" are raising a generation who are not in church, know nothing about God and the church, and will grow up completely secular in their thinking and their worldview.
Unfortunately, although we know this is the case, much of our Western church world has continued to function as it always has. We keep doing the same things we've done for decades with diminishing returns. We cannot continue to address new challenges with the same tired programs and remedies that haven't worked in decades. We must find new ways of ministering to the world as it is, not as we remembered it. We must become missionaries to our ever-growing secular world and find new ways of connecting people to Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God.
For years I have been telling churches and other gatherings that the church is in the midst of transition. I do not know what the church will look like when we come through that transition, but I am quite certain it will be much different than it is today. The question each of us must ask is are we are willing to make the necessary changes to be part of what God is doing, or will our churches become like the empty religious monuments in Europe that used to be healthy vital churches?
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