Most of my readers know what I'm about to share, but for anyone new I want to give a backdrop for this post. I am 75 years-old and have been in ministry since 1981. I served one church for twenty years before spending the next 14 years as a minister in our judicatory with direct responsibility for 133 churches. Since retiring from that ministry I have served three churches as their Transitional Pastor and am currently serving the third church. From my experiences I agree 100 percent with what Reggie McNeal wrote in The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church.
The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money and energy of previous generations from a previous world order. The plug will be pulled either when the money runs out (80 percent of money given to churches comes from people aged fifty-five and older) or when the remaining three-fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both.
The sad thing is that most churches are not aware of this. They realize things have changed, but they still hope that some day people will come to their senses and return to church. All they have to do is to keep doing the same things they did in the 1950s and everything will be great. That's not going to happen. Many churches are living off savings from the money that came from the Builder Generation, a generation that is growing smaller every day, and when that money is gone they can turn out the lights.
Some churches do realize what is happening, and they are seeking new ways of doing ministry that will be appropriate in their context, but these churches often run into a lot of opposition. The current members like things the way they are. Their needs are being met. Change will just produce conflict, and many church leaders are very conflict-avoidant. Some pastors who see the hand-writing on the wall are counting down the days until retirement. Others are simply leaving the ministry and seeking other employment.
I'm painting a rather dismal picture, but it is a reality for many churches. What is especially sad is that every church is in the midst of a huge mission field. We know from studies that a minimum of 50 percent of every county in the US is unchurched, and in some counties it can be as high as 80-90 percent. Using just the 50 percent figure, we have a potential mission field in the county in which I live of 16,000 people. I seriously doubt that if every church in our county was full that we could hold that many more people in addition to the ones who already attend our services. We need new churches, and we are seeing some being started. But, what we also need are our current churches getting serious about the Great Commission and becoming missionaries to this mission field God has given us.
At some point, our church members must stop thinking only about their own needs and preferences and being to think about the eternal fate of those who will die without Christ. We must become willing to put aside our wants in order to present the gospel to the unchurched in a way that will speak to them. This will often impact our worship styles, our music, our programming, our traditions and many other aspects of church life that many of us take for granted.
One thing that has helped me is to remember that many of our church traditions were once new ideas that were developed to serve a new generation. Those new ideas were often rejected by those in the church at that time, but eventually they prevailed and enabled the church of that time to reach the people of that time. Now, many of those traditions have become a roadblock to reaching a new generation.
In a doctoral class I took Elmer Towns reminded us that every church has created walls that keep people out. Often, these walls were unintentional, but they were built anyway. He challenged us to tear down those walls and begin to build bridges into our communities by which the gospel can be shared. What walls can you identify in your church that keep people out? Are you willing to tear them down. If your church is on life support, you don't have much time.
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