I have three priority passions in Christian ministry. The first is to help denominational organizations to transform in the 21st century so they might be real, relevant, and risk-taking in kingdom endeavors.
Concerning this first passion, I have recently written the first of what will be at least an eight-part series on Real Denominations Serve Congregations. It is available as an Amazon Shorts and may be downloaded for 49 cents when you click here.
My other two passions are congregational multiplication movements and congregational transformation movements. I have worked on all three of these for more than 30 years. A support priority to these is to help Christian leadership to develop the capacity to lead in these areas.
So, how is the North American church doing in these three areas? Here are my subjective observations.
Congregational Multiplication Movements: First, the centrist to mainline to liberal Protestant denominations have rediscovered church planting as a viable strategy to which to give emphasis and resources. Their church planting efforts are being primarily carried out by younger pastors under 35 and by non-Euro-Americans. It is the evangelical voice within these denominations that is typically behind these renewed church planting efforts. These efforts are struggling to break out of a denominationally-driven approach whereby church planting initiatives must be coordinated by the national denomination and funding come primarily from the national denomination. It may take another decade before the church planting efforts in these denominations will begin to become a grassroots congregational multiplication movement. And, this will happen only if the denominations do not run out of money and shut down their church planting efforts before true movement is achieved.
Second, the fastest growing and most productive church planting efforts are true grassroots movements emerging out of missional congregations and missional congregational movements. Two examples are Northwood Church in Texas, and the Acts 29 network. These efforts are fast growing, multiplying, entrepreneurial, cross cultural, cross generational, and emergent in style. They are also trans-denominational in that they are not bound by any one denominational identity, yet the core congregation may be denominationally affiliated and express various degrees of loyalty to their denomination. Many of these core congregations are less than one generation old.
Third, much more emphasis is being placed on identifying church planters who have the DNA necessary to successfully plant a congregation than was once the case. Church planter assessments and "boot camps" are contributing significantly to culling the field of prospective pastors to those best equipped spiritually and strategically to plant a new congregation. Some seminaries have a focus on developing church planters, and some do not. If more seminaries would develop this focus it would likely increase the number of pastors prepared to plant a church.
Congregational Transformation Movements: First, many more regional denominational organizations, consultants/coaches, seminaries and leadership development centers, and grassroots movements are focusing on transforming existing congregations than has probably ever been the case. The number of models available is so many it if hard to figure out which ones will work best in which situation. I even have my own known as Spiritual Strategic Journey. Probably every denominational organization has some type of proactive strategy to redevelop, revitalize, or transform congregations. They are afraid they will lose their base if they do not do something to help struggling congregations. And, these congregations are demanding assistance from their denomination. By the way, they also have more political clout in their denomination than do the church planting people. That is why many church planting efforts are moving outside official denominational circles.
Second, the approach to congregational transformation in a particular denominational family or network of congregations is driven by the theological and methodological image of the sponsors of the efforts. Some images are of congregations who are faithful and without significant conflict. The goal here is to get congregations to be comfortable or "warmed and filled". Some images are of congregations who have fixed all their weaknesses and developed potential power to soar. The only problem is that when weaknesses are the focus the congregation keeps finding more weaknesses to fix, and have less time to soar. Some images are of congregations who take on the model of highly successful mega churches and thus success is through emulating someone else's model. But it is hard to find a long-term example of existing congregations who emulated someone else's model and thrived without significant conflict. Note that often these models are from congregations within the first generation of their lives whereas congregations in need of transformation are older and have more "baggage" to carry with them.
Third, it appears each generation must learn anew what works for them in congregational transformation. There appears to be an inability to learn from the past successes and failures. Having been actively involved in congregational transformation for more than 30 years there are so many times I would like to tell people the models they are pursuing have been proven not to work. But, they must learn these things for themselves. The reality is that the true, long-term transformation of an existing congregation is so difficult that only 10 to 20 percent are able to do so. Whether it is called church growth, church health, or now the missional church, the journey is long and tough. Too many congregations give up before they achieve transformation.
Denominational Transformation Movements: First, the good news is that more denominational organizations are seeking to serve congregations in a variety of ways than was true several decades ago. The bad news is that many denominational organizations are running out of money, are using ineffective strategies, are losing connection to their younger pastors and newer congregations, are spending way too much time dealing with issues surrounding their agencies and institutions, and are focusing on theological correctness--particularly around moral or ethical issues--rather than on mission.
Second, at the same time, denominational organizations are not going away. As denominations split, new denominations are being formed. As younger generations become disconnected from their denominations, they are creating new denominational forms based more on networks than hierarchy. Many denominational organizations are not going away any time soon--no matter how weak they get--because they have partially endowed their future by amassing large reserve funds tied up in endowments. [A sidebar: these reserve funds made a great target for various types of litigation against congregations and denominations.]
Third, wise denominational organizations will work on developing a hybrid denomination that clearly identifies the core ethos of the denomination, cuts away the practices of denominational life not relevant to that core ethos, and develops a new approach to denominationalism that focuses on networks or a distributive system more characteristic of an organism than an organization. For the vast majority of denominations this will be too great a challenge, so they will continue to experience incremental decline. For a set of newly emerging denominations, this type of challenge will excite them. Motivated by mission they will do what is necessary to become a lean, mean denominational system. How will you denomination respond to this challenge?
Stay tuned to more insights on real denominations as future manuscripts are posted at www.Amazon.com. Expect a new manuscript to be posted about every six weeks.
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