I was listening to
an interview on the radio in which a well educated, well versed, and very
articulate pediatric physician/university professor was explaining how the
changes we made in our food in the 1970s to reduce fats for better
cardiovascular health have had the opposite effect. We now know that carbohydrates are the real
culprits in cardiovascular disease. It
made me wonder what a physician/professor might be saying about our current
thinking about food and disease forty years from now.
It seems everything
goes through phases of understanding.
We're always adjusting our thinking based on new evidence, experience,
and the results of past efforts. Growing
the church is no exception. Today the
two methods of reaching people and growing the church that are most talked
about and promoted are church planting and church revitalization. Church planting concerns itself with starting
new churches. Church revitalization
seeks to reverse the decline of existing churches and give them new life. After thinking about these things for some
time, I've come to the conclusion that, while church planting is a tried, true,
and Biblical method of growing the church and we should continue to plant
churches, it's a mistake to try to revitalize churches and we should put and
end to the practice.
I think that the
primary problem in church revitalization is that it ends up being used as a
means for church members to try to recapture or re-create the glory days of
their congregations. Rather than looking
for new ways to reach new people, the core group of people committed to
revitalization efforts are seeking to reestablish old ways and attract people
who share their love of them. Many
(most?) revitalization efforts inevitably seem to lead to crippling conflict
between those honestly seeking to revitalize the congregation and those who
want to bring back the good old days and good old ways.
We know enough now
to understand that every congregation goes through a life-cycle. While decline is not inevitable, once a
congregation enters into decline it's unlikely to recover from it. Revitalization efforts are almost always
reactive and are typically desperate attempts to extend the life of a
congregation in advanced decline. What
we don't seem to have learned is that we should let the congregation finish
it's life-cycle and let it die a peaceful, dignified death rather than squeeze
out every moment of life that we can through heroic, but doomed, revitalization
efforts. In other words, once a
congregation has entered into advanced decline we should shift our emphasis to
providing palliative care for it.
That being said,
while the congregation is living out its final days in dignity under
compassionate palliative care, we should make every effort to bring forth life
from death. Using the resources of the
dying congregation as an inheritance and trust, we should plant new churches as
legacies of the old. The new church
could use the buildings, personnel, capital, and even the name of the existing
church. It could aid in providing the
end-of-life care for its predecessor. As
one human generation passes the baton to the next, one congregational iteration
can enable the creation of a new and vibrant descendent of itself.
Imagine the glory that could be brought to
Christ if the time, money, people, and energy we're expending in
confrontational church revitalization efforts were to be redirected into a
harmonious effort of bringing dying churches to a dignified end while planting
churches that are genuine rebirths of the old rather than altogether new.
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