It is not. The values of routine, tradition and stability that define the church are distasteful in our fidgety age. (modern). As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year probably accelerated by Covid. On Sunday I will be installed as an elder in my local church, Southlands. 2020 Fieldstone Pkwy. Some will thrive. 17) Religious Freedom. If anything, we are learning from the pandemic, it is that the 21st century church must be nimble and resourceful. Most challenges confronting the church today do not affect the church universal per se b. This diversity is a challenge or, better said, an opportunity. About 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the last year data is available, with about 3,000 new churches opening, according to Lifeway Research. Ken This is where Gravity Congregational Transformation can help. We also live in a time when we need to pool our ideas as well as take a good hard look at the resources that our church has available to it and how we are using them. When presented with a list of possible challenges facing their church today, half of Protestant pastors note that "reaching a younger audience" (51%) is a major issue for their ministry. Vision and strategy that aren't aligned Scripture is clear that without vision, people are more likely to turn to their own way. Our relationships are digital. "The church needs to quit talking quite so much about visions, plans, strategies, new teachings, authors, bands, missions, buildings, teams and heresies," advises Brad Vanderburg. Quite simply, people in churches (and even moreso those not in churches) may pay lip service to the importance of the Bible, but by and large they do not read it or know it. 6) Temptation to Reinvent the Wheel. a. You have to be nimble and roll with the situation. When we were shut down, we quickly developed a radio broadcast for our seniors who are not tech savvy and dont do Facebook or other social media. When you were closed for three months, you were able to get over it, Muzyka said. In the middle of a pandemic a leader needs to be affirmed and assured that a good decision made now is better than a perfect decision made later. The faith-based transaction is so different in so many ways from the for-profit transaction. by Thom S. Rainer Your email address will not be published. I would say if a church stayed closed for more than a year, it was really hard to get those people to come back. Get expert advice on everything from church budgets, staffing issues, facilities, and much more! About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their church's stance on political and social issues, McConnell said. 1) Pastor/Church Leader; 2) Executive/Management. All churches have a gap. We are the generation that is opting to own homes at a far lower rate than previous generations did. I have served, loved and struggled with the church for my entire life. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); All during this pandemic our church has stood firm in our convictions that no matter what, we will do SOMETHING to keep getting the word of God to our congregation. yet we find ourselves in that simple but complex ; mind-blowing equation of being workers together with Christ.responsible for input; but not the ultimate outcome! The goal of action is aligning your congregational system with a fresh vision for flourishing Gods kingdom and loving neighbors. With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America. In 1910, only 1 percent of the world's Christians lived in sub-Saharan Africa; in 2010, this percentage had risen to 24 percent.3 The growth has not only come in Pentecostal or charismatic movements but in mainline Christian traditions. Third: Mission, outreach and empathy is essential. This is why we must be careful not to assume that just because a congregation is egalitarian does not mean there are male-centric assumptions and structures that marginalize women. Too many churches do not encourage intellectual curiosity, vibrant debate and healthy questioning. Just 47% of American adults identify with a particular creed, down a prodigious 20% in just two decades. Should we be forced to shut down again, we are prepared to do whatever it takes to carry on. Deaths were declining. Frequently churches become housing or care homes, while some of the churches are bought by other churches wanting to expand. It has been 21 years since Mark Nolls discouraging assessment in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (that there is not much of an evangelical mind), and while progress has been made there is still a lot of work to do in combating anti-intellectualism in the church. Racism includes personal bias or prejudice of one person against another that trades on a socially constructed (and arbitrary) hierarchy of being that makes light-skinned (white) people superior to darker-skinned (black or brown) people. Complexity is cumbersome. Also, it isnt just the sermon on Sunday that is important. You cannot truly understand how particular issues are uniquely shaping your congregation or how God meets you in the midst until you sink down into all the messy particulars. I also should note that each of them represents not only a challenge but also an opportunity. 15) The Need for Racial Reconciliation. Yet, as most pastors also know, leading a congregation often feels more like navigating one problem after another than it does launching exciting new initiatives. Do you recognise any affecting your church? Weve heard for years that when you give antibiotics willy nilly, we end up with SUPER bugs. Crowds were gathering again. In 1900, more than 80 percent of Anglicans lived in Britain; in 2008, that number had fallen to 33 percent. Almost every aspect of social life (economics, voting, housing, jobs, education, etc.) This gap between vision and practice is not necessarily a problem. By the time millennials came round, they had little experience or relationship with churchgoing or religion. Blessings, We are playing a very dangerous game when we entrust the government with that level of authority. We are the generation that has rendered RSVP-based party planning a futile endeavor. Do you remember the excitement when the data began to point to a waning of COVID? We have spoken to countless pastors who tell us the biggest surprise of the pandemic as a church leader was all the new decisions they had to make. ), or else figure out how to deal with inevitable legal/legislative challenges. One thing is certain: I am NOT giving up my constitutional rights including my freedom of assembly and freedom of worship simply because the government thinks I should. colonialism). 16) Gender and Sexuality. More folks are once again losing jobs. Churches will need to disentangle from the government to the extent that they can (return to house-churches? Gathering and scattering for mission. 7. Understanding your context is the first step. Arent we a people of resurrection and hope? Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of US adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular, Pew wrote. Church is a place where members of a body come together for purposes beyond themselves. Every scientist has an opinion and most of us agree in part and dissent in part. The problem of patriarchy is not simply about holding an anthropology that teaches women and men are different. With the first wave of COVID, we saw many churches reduce personnel costs. hurches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon. PO Box 34 She is near and dear to my heart. Even while scientists are learning new things about it, their knowledge quickly becomes obsolete because the virus, as all new just-born life, experiences more frequent and drastic changes in its early days. Even in congregations that teach more traditional sexual ethics, leaders must reckon with the reality that there are people under their care who struggle with gender dysphoria or who find liberation in the idea that the gender binary (male OR female) is actually more of a spectrum or that gender is (at least partly) socially constructed. The challenges are aplenty here, with major theological and pastoral implications. They told me if I got the vaccine, I wouldnt have to wear the mask anymore. Taking concrete steps forward is not meant merely to be corrective, as if the goal is fixing problems. If leaders want to address difficult issues, then they must have the courage to understand the gap. The era of bi-vocational and co-vocational ministry has arrived rapidly. Of course, churches have survived greater challenges and endured greater changes in the past 2,000 years. The second and majority view was that churches would face a new normal and must learn to adjust. I got the vaccine, but now theyre telling me I still need to wear the mask. This requires out-of-the-box thinking. At the heart of it is an unbelief in change and a weak theology of sanctification, a problem that leads to claims of this is just who I am essentialism and immutability. Some of the reasons were logistical, McConnell said, as people moved away for college or started jobs which made it difficult to attend church. We need to get rid of this type of thinking. Some things work while some do not. When people are heard with empathetic ears, it catalyzes Gods work in their hearts and prepares the soil for transformation to take root and grow congregation-wide. The firm found that seven out of 10 had stopped attending church regularly. We begin with an Initial Evaluation where we find a focus question that will guide the research phase. At some point, maybe the congregation ages out, maybe they stop reaching young families. Major personnel shifts in churches. Word and Spirit. Pastors are experiencing burnout, anxiety, and depression and leaving ministry at rapid rates. General and special revelation. The goal is arriving at a handful of practical experimentsconcrete responses to what God is disrupting and renewing. Learn what being an exvangelical means, and gain resources for how to recover after leaving evangelicalism. Now, with COVID, we are all guinea pigs in the learning phase of a new *and* evolving organism. All those divisions still exist, but the polarization over vaccinations has been added to the mix. Like racism, sexism includes personal prejudice where individual persons harm other persons, this time on the basis of a socially constructed hierarchy that makes one biological sex superior to the other sex. We need to rediscover the beauty of simplicity, focusing on the core practices and historic sacraments of the church. They just get new data that leads to a change in tack. You have to realise that science is data driven and what worked today wont always work next week. ), each of which could be its own category on this list. In this sense I think the evangelical church should become a bit more Catholic, trusting a bit more in continuity rather than seeing every cultural change as an invitation to reinvent the wheel. Head in the right direction and adjust as you go. For a deeper dive into spiritual abuse, listen to the interview with Wade Mullen on the Gravity Podcast about how to decode the hidden tactics of abusive systems and people. One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity and science. It's one more example of how a change in strategy requires churches to also consider a change in structure. We need discernment and wisdom, grounded in hopeful realism. Surveys have found that 82 percent of Americans think God helps those who help themselves, is a Bible verse. In patriarchal environments, women are often assumed to be a dangerous temptation to men. My main concern about this surgery is the possibility of developing blood clots which can be quite the threat to ones health and possibly life. As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic. 1. But it has been largely numerical and statistical growth. Churches must lean into the complexities and paradoxes of these things and try to seek healthy balance, tempting as it will be to claim radical and extreme positions so as to appeal to Generation Antsy. We are an antsy culture. In our [Episcopal} Diocese, they enlisted assistance from a group of professionals in various Public Health roles: epidemiologists, Social Work, Community development, disease control, and church function (there is a $0.25 word but that is what it is). Here are the seven most common challenges we see with churches: 1. A study by Pew Research found that . Challenges Facing The Church in Africa. Several months ago, President Trump signed an executive order ceasing enforcement of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibited a church, as a nonprofit entity, from endorsing and promoting a. Isnt the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead within us now? Also like racism, sexism is infused in the institutions and systems that characterize our lives. Reason #3 - Churches come across as antagonistic to science. Public health is also in the Torah when lepers were to be put outside the camp. This was ancient quarantine. Rather it reflects the influence of todays me first culture. Remember, God gives rulers their power even those with whom we disagree, awful Csars including Nero. The church should be no haven for racism, and yet too often the church has let racial wounds fester and prejudice (whether explicit or implicit) go unaddressed. Culture and tradition 2. This is where transformation begins to really take root. Im in Gods hands and one cannot do better than that.. When the desire for this power reaches for partisan political influence in the name of Jesus, collapsing together the structures of a particular nation-state with the kingdom of God, that is the ideology of Christian nationalism. Today, it seems the church has been more influenced by the society, rather than society being affected by the church. At this point, the success of their efforts lies in the hands of each individuals willingness to make the recommended lifestyle changes. But it has also created a boom market for those wanting to buy churches, with former houses of worship now finding new life. Several neighbors listened from their front porch. Your email address will not be published. 6. Many ministers are producing daily podcasts and having daily services that get large numbers of views from people worldwide. At the beginning, leaders must resist the urge to prescribe the right answer or solution and rather seek to describe what is happening and why. Our church may have resources that are going unused because we do not see them as resources. I think that dampens it down until you get the millennial generation for whom the cold war is just a vague memory from their early childhood.. In fact, thats another big problem in our churches. 20) Distrust of Authority. Chief among them is the challenge of posturing, a performative obsession that feeds pride and hypocrisy. Churches are beginning to realize they need a new team creating content and experiences targeted specifically to an online audience. Brian Dolehide, managing director of AD Advisors, a real estate company that specializes in church sales, said the last 10 years had seen a spike in sales. The 21st church must not be on the sidelines in the work of justice, healing and reconciliation; she must actually lead these efforts. maybe some women in your congregation feel marginalized and wounded by recent teaching on gender roles), dont settle for a false peace (see Jeremiah 6:14). In fact, we are now beginning the initial stages of exploring an expansion of our current facility to meet our current and future needs. We must remove the notion that any adjustment or decision any pastor or leadership team in a church makes in the midst of this current context is the most important decision they will ever make. The answer is "growth without depth.". The question is, will you pay attention or stick with business as usual? The counterintuitive way forward into transformative territory is facing problems and difficult issues head-on, rather than avoiding them or hoping they will fade away. These are several challenges, but let's focus on one more: the trend toward post-denominationalism. Just over one-third of pastors (34%) marks this statement as a top three concern for their church, with 12 percent noting it as the top concern. Todays focus on identity politics makes this even more challenging, as any given member of a church may see their Christian identity as secondary to some other identity (gender, race, political affiliation, nationality, etc.). Politics 3. Schools. The bottom line is that these issues are not problems to be solved, but opportunities to get under the hood of congregational life and join Gods re-creating work. While grandparents might have been regular churchgoers, their children would say they believe in God, but not go to church regularly. 19) Hyper-Intellectualism. Its hard to have to return to masks in church again. Its an invitation to join Christ in what he is already doing in the world, not an invitation for Christ to affirm our self-actualization. The end goal is not endless dialogue, but action, particularly the kinds of embodied practices your church can do to lean into the new life God is making available. As always, the best are praying and making the best of it and using this opportunity to teach/reach people they would never have even thought of 2 years ago. But church leaders today wonder if any stability is on the horizon. Pst Fana Skosana from gauteng, South Africa Today were seeing this play out in the messy entanglements of Christians in politics, to the point that we have to say out loud that trickle-down economics and the right to bear arms are political, not biblical values. I think all of us who got vaccinated feel somewhat cheated, hoping that the vaccine would help us get back to normal unmasked church life. 3) Disembodied Tendencies. This means worship and church life will be messier, more emotional and more unpredictable than the rationalists would prefer, but it will be more powerful and I daresay more transformative. They are more subtleproclivities and inclinations smuggled into our churches alongside the cultural sensibilities we've inherited. The biggest challenge? Some signs of Christian nationalism in our congregations are obvious, like when we support political candidates or policies that we know contradict the teachings of Jesus in order to guarantee that Christians (from our tribe) can remain in the center of public influence. Some of these challenges include compromise with the standards of the world or walking the path of the world. Top 10 challenges facing pastors in 2022 August 1, 2022 Many pastors today feel tired, overcommitted, embattled, and under-resourced. There is no way I could have reliably gathered that information on my own. In Texas, John Muzyka of Church Realty, a company that specializes in church sales, said there were fewer churches for sale than at any point in the last 15 years. Hard decisions do not need to be hard to make. When a difficult truth becomes clear (e.g. Listening can be sacred work in your congregation. But selling a church isnt like selling a house or a business. But, when tapping our Diocesan membership we could find many of those folks in our Parishes. In our prayer time, that is the message we kept hearing: preach the word. To subscribe to my latest blog posts, enter your email address here. 10) The Authenticity = Brokenness Fallacy. The horizon doesnt look bright from the perspective of many leaders. This exacerbates existing Gnostic tendencies (a cerebral rather than embodied faith) and subtly deemphasizes the crucial physicality of the church, the body of Christ in the material and not just theoretical sense. Yes, in my experience, a decision is never final. All of this makes it easier to fracture our lived experience into disconnected compartments, a process that wreaks havoc on our spiritual formation. And there has not been sufficient growth in discipleship that is comparable to the growth in numbers. Hospitalizations were down. You felt in the first round that it would be over and done, even if it took a year or so. We see this in the 345 definitive definitions of the gospel that various authors and theologians set forth every year. As the world becomes more and more polarized and less and less capable of nuance and complexity (favoring simple, soundbite answers and tweetable convictions), the church will increasingly struggle to resist oversimplifying or too neatly resolving important tensions and complex paradoxes (which often leads to heresy). The new rules are part of a government plan to crack . 11) The Idol of Autonomy. All of these conversations reveal assumptions in our congregation about what it means to follow Jesus with our bodies, but many of those assumptions might have nothing to do with Jesus. has been, and continues to be, affected by the sin of racism in complex and often subtle ways. We also help you craft a plan to step into transformative new practices. b. If our motives are pure then even mistakes become opportunities. Many who had covid but gratefully recovered are facing incredible medical bills. Other issues seen by more than half of American pastors as major concern facing the church in the U.S. include: poor discipleship models (63%), addressing complex social issues with biblical integrity (58%), prosperity gospel teaching (56%), reaching a younger audience (56%), and political polarization (51%). If wrong, make the next one! We have an fixed, inflexible way of looking at things. But with the second wave, we see many denominational structures destabilizing. Ken, I can relate to the frustration. We surveyed leaders about their thoughts on the role of the Bible in leadership: Then, we asked leaders to describe the top leadership skill or trait they'd like to personally develop over the next 12 months. In the discernment session, we lead the group in some contemplative brainstorming on the basis of the findings of the report. 2) Family Ministry Make it! As with most things in the realm of science, a decision is made or a hypothesis is asserted. We are far less likely to be affiliated with a religion or a political party than previous generations were, and we get married at lower rates and later in life than our parents and grandparents did. Many small and /or rural churches and pastors are still/again working twice as hard as before to help their folks stay connected to their faith community and the love and grace of God we help folks feel sure of, especially in these tough times. Since Im here, tomorrow morning Im scheduled to have my right knee replaced which I think you know about already. This second wave seems to be ushering in a new era where church leaders must rethink everything about both full-time and part-time staff. The second wave has been a real challenge. But churches must challenge rather than cater to this mentality.