Today’s post is from Dr. Jack R. Reese, one of my homiletics professors as an undergraduate at Abilene Christian University and seminary, at The Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University.
His new book, At The Blue Hole: Elegy for a Church on the Edge, explores what churches — particularly from our shared tradition in churches of Christ — might do to stem the tide of dying churches.
It’s almost a cliché to say that churches are dying. Of course they are. In fact, that’s hardly news.
It will happen in different ways, of course. Some will die in plain sight. The last remaining members will sell the property, shut the doors, and walk away. Other churches will appear to continue on, business as usual. Their death may not be visible, even to themselves. But the facts remain. They are dying. The trends are clear.
Church leaders today are having to deal with issues and conflicts they could not have imagined a generation ago when the questions seemed more orderly and the answers more certain. But that old world is gone. Millennials and their younger siblings won’t be squeezed into the molds they inherited. They won’t have patience for churches that can’t differentiate gospel from preference.
Many of them are struggling with churches that equate certain narrow political causes with the cause of Christ. They won’t tolerate the de facto segregation of races and ethnicities common in our churches. They won’t tolerate hypocrisy. They won’t tolerate churches that think it’s their job to condemn others. They won’t tolerate intolerance. Many of these young men and women are already gone. Churches are feeling their loss. It will get worse.
But our crisis isn’t simply the result of young people turning away. Every generation is affected. Every congregation is facing, or will face, disruption and decay. As the impact of a massively changing culture takes its toll, as conflicts—or excessive busyness or apathy—increase, some will find themselves distressed that the old resources seem to be diminishing, that the old answers don’t seem to work anymore.
I know I should grieve this trend, but I’m struggling to feign sadness. It’s not that I wish these churches ill. I don’t. I just think the impending death of American churches is good news. Or could be.
Knowing we were dying would focus us. We could set petty things aside and concentrate on important matters. If we don’t know our church is dying, we won’t look for courage because we won’t know we need it. We won’t find faith, not grasping that our crisis, still hidden, requires it. We will waste time on piddling matters and miss the moment at hand.
But here’s the greater truth. Our death is necessary for the resurrection only God can render. There’s going to be a death either way. We will either die of disregard, maintaining the status quo because it’s the easiest way, then withering into irrelevance. Or we will die as an act of community surrender, relinquishing our will and our future in the name of Jesus.
Perhaps, that’s our greatest hope, that our looming demise will wake us up to the only death that will ultimately matter, that by actually embracing our death, we will finally pick up a cross. Together. And find precisely in our current troubles the miracle we have been seeking, what we have been counting on all along. New life.
— Dr. Jack R. Reese