Many in the church today look at the current situation and remember a “golden age” of church life. Post World War Two the pews were filled, Sunday school classes overflowed with children, budgets were growing, the community was influenced by what the churches supported, seminaries were booming, and denominational bureaucracies were expanding.
Today, church members look around at empty pews, unused classrooms, diminishing resources, and an overall lack of relevance in the community around them. This disparity provokes grief, confusion, anger, and disillusionment.
In his Doctor of Ministry project at Central Seminary pastor Jason Mack pointed out that this “golden age” was an aberration. Noting the work of Gil Rendle in Quietly Courageous: Leading the Church in a Changing World, he calls this “aberrant time.” Postwar influence drove the population to be cohesive and common values were espoused. Rendle writes:
“It was a time in which people “agreed to agree” and sublimated their differences in order to work together on a greater common agenda. It was particularly in this time of consensus and cohesion that the American culture pushed people toward membership in congregations and a legion of other membership organizations.”
The postwar mindset was also a mechanistic approach—bigger, better, faster—that worked against an organic understanding of the church but emphasized church and denominational growth. This level of church growth and involvement was not the pre-war normal practice, but we have come to believe that this is the way that things out to be. The challenge to churches is to live in the “now” rather than the “then.”
The context has changed and so must we. Change happens and is part of any living system. Regenerative leadership offers these principles of organizations that help us not only to understand change but to take advantage of it.
Living systems undergo constant change yet there is a continuity in the overall form.
Continuity in the church is based on shared theology, values, and culture. Although some change is possible in these areas, they provide the crucible for change to occur. If we look back over two thousand years of church history, we see a rich tapestry that reflects the way that Christians have adapted to the challenges and opportunities of their time.
How can we take steps to assure this continuity? We can encourage conversations within the congregation about the basic commitments of the congregation as well as celebrate past victories and help to understand the innate values of the congregation that drove them.
Living systems exist at dynamic equilibriums, not single optimal states.
Changes in demographics, external factors, and personalities are bound to upset the equilibrium or any group. With patience, experimentation, and discernment, a balance can be restored, and effective ministry continue, even if it is in different ways. This requires intentional conversations about uncomfortable issues.
We must recognize that nothing is stable. The church must acknowledge not only changes in the culture, but changes in itself.
Living systems are not centrally controlled. Life organizes itself into decentralized networks.
Even though a congregation is a large fellowship, there exist groups within it that provide both diversity and strength for body—Bible study classes, mission teams, musical groups. Decentralization can offer strength rather than fragmentation.
We must recognize the contributions that each part of the church is making to its total life. This diversity is a strength and one we can leverage for sustainability and ministry.
Living systems are organized in nested wholes. There are wholes within wholes. This pattern of organization is often called fractal.
A fractal is an infinitely complex, never-ending geometric pattern that looks the same at any level of magnification. The term is used most often in discussions of nature, mathematics, and art. Driven by recursion, a small piece of a fractal contains the same shape and structure as the whole. This phenomenon of self-similarity repeats continuously over increasingly smaller scales
If they are valid parts of the system, the groups within the church will tend to carry the basic values or DNA of the faith tradition. Nurture these common elements while recognizing the strength of diversity. The fact that they are all part of the same entity witnesses to some shared DNA, basic commitments that maintain the whole.
The churches of the mid-twentieth century responded to its culture in ways that they felt were most relevant, but this is not the 1950s. Like the exiles in Babylon, we must learn to “sing the Lord's song in a strange land” (Psalm 137:4).
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