Discontinuous change and the church

 Change has always been a part of life. Babies are born, they grow into childhood and then into teenagers and finally become adults. Factories have always found new, inventive ways of producing items to sell. I worked in a factory for 30 years and saw many changes take place during those years. We could name many other similar changes, but these are all continuous changes. These types of changes come from what has occurred before. they can be expected and managed.

Discontinuous change is completely different. it is disruptive and is not expected. It often challenges our expectations. Worse yet, such change often challenges our skill sets and knowledge. The printing press is a good example of discontinuous change. There was little reason for the average person to learn to read until the printing press made it possible for people to have Bibles and other books. A more modern example might be the Internet. The entire world was transformed when the Internet was created. This was followed by the smart phone which placed more computing power in our pockets than was used to land people on the moon.

The changes faced by today's churches are often discontinuous changes. Everything the church believed to be true about being the church is being challenged. Once upon a time the church was at the center of much of a community's life. Today, it is barely on the periphery of most people's lives. Pastors were trained to manage churches with well-developed programs that had been tested over time and proved to be useful. Denominations received annual reports from their churches to see how well their branch plants were doing. There was a large pool of pastors ready to move into those churches seeking pastors. None of this is true today.

Smaller churches find it extremely difficult to find a new pastor, and even many mid-size churches may take 2-3 years to find a new pastor. Many of the programs that had been so successful in the past have been discarded today as less than useful. A majority of people no longer find the church to be necessary for their lives. In fact, some Christians now believe that the church has been harmful to their spiritual health. Church membership and financial support have been declining for several years now in most churches. Many denominations have been forced to cut staff, sell off buildings and offer only minimum support to their churches.

It isn't that churches are not trying to overcome their challenges. Many are trying real hard, but they are still using their old tools which no longer work. We are not prepared for discontinuous change, and many in ministry today are not equipped to deal with it. We have to learn new ways of doing ministry, and this will require the efforts of every Christian, not just the pastors. As one book suggested

A congregation must become a place where members learn to function like cross-cultural missionaries rather than be a gathering place where people come to receive religious goods and services.

Because we live in a pre-Christian world, we have to begin to think and act like missionaries entering a place of ministry for the first time. We have to learn new languages. We have to learn how non-Christians think and act before we can hope to share the gospel with them. We have to become students of their culture, not to adapt to it but to respond to it with the good news of Jesus Christ.

Much more could be written, but it's enough to say that if we keep doing the same things we've been doing, we will become less and less relevant in a world filled with discontinuous change.