Barnabas File

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.  Re...

  Here’s a new word to add to your vocabulary:  permacrisis.  It refers to “an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events.”  The Collins Dictionary added it to their files in 2022 and declared it the word of the year. The word represents the compounding crises we have seen in recent years including inflation, the cost-of-living crisis, the pandemic, disastrous climate change, the war in Ukraine, and ongoing racial tensions.   Permacrisis may well take the place of the VUCA acronym—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous—to describe our present-day situation. Although it has been used in economic, social, and political contexts, the word might appropriately be applied to where we find the church in North America today.  It appears that several crises are coming to a head for our churches.  All denominations report that their congregants are aging, resulting in...