To Become 21st Century Churches, Part Three of Three

by Mark Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader

In order to live into greater expressions of church in this 21st century context, there are three realities congregations must accept. Our experience at Pinnacle tells us that congregations will inadvertently and unconsciously undermine their progress until they shift their perspectives in these specific ways. This is the third of those three articles.

We must accept the church is facing adaptive challenges just like all other organizations and institutions in our society, releasing the desire to enshrine one way of being church.

We live in a swirl of change. People know it and experience it daily. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, resulting in the thought, “doesn’t anything stay the same anymore?” Then one considers God. Extrapolating from the common belief that God doesn’t change, one gets the idea that God’s Church should not change. It’s a small leap from the steadfastness and faithfulness of God (experienced as stability) to viewing the Church in a similar manner. Since the Church is representative of God in some ways, then shouldn’t the Church also be immune to shifts in time and culture? This kind of thinking results in faith community islands in a sea of change, with ever diminishing dry land available to them.

Peter Senge was a prophet (no, not in the faith-based Biblical sense). He was a prophet in that he saw a likely future ahead of time. The Fifth Discipline, written in 1990, was a groundbreaking book about becoming an effective organization or corporation in a shifting environment. Senge suggested that healthy and sustained organizations invest themselves in significant learning. In fact, he predicted that the organizations and corporations who survived and thrived in the future were those who could learn the fastest. “Learning Organizations,” became Senge’s name for those who learn quickly and adapt. Now, we might call this Adaptive Theory and Practice. Those groups of people who learn what’s needed and then adjust themselves to their current context will continue to exist, as well as discover new and effective ways of being in their culture.

Since this reality is so apparent, what holds churches back from viewing themselves as learning organizations with the need to adapt? Some congregations believe that faith is enough. When we just trust God and remain faithful (code language for continuing to do what we’ve always done), then we will harvest the results for which we are looking. Typically this statement is made when congregations are feeling overwhelmed, throwing up their hands in the face of their adaptive challenges.

Accepting the perspectives identified in these three articles is part of the letting go, or winnowing process. We are shedding understandings, perspectives, and attitudes which no longer help us move forward. Though there is pain and grief in this process, it’s not unrecognizable. Letting go and taking hold is the process of salvation. We die to self, are buried with Christ (baptism) and then are raised again to new life. We stop clinging, clutching, and controlling life… releasing our wills to God’s will. When we become like the proverbial grain of wheat, falling to the ground, we discover resurrection.

To that end, through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, may we seize the courage available to us for becoming vitalized and life-giving expressions of God’s Church.