Three Clear Opportunities in the Demise of Christendom

by Mark Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader

The pandemic didn’t create the dilemmas churches are facing. We, along with many others, described the long slow decline of Christendom in North America long before pandemic was a household word (See my book Shift for more on this). The pandemic, along with many other dynamics ratcheting up the volatility in our world, are serving to exaggerate and accelerate what was already underway. The Age of Christendom, wherein Christianity and culture were thoroughly mixed, is over in North America. Now the Christian faith is one among many religious options, along with a high dose of skepticism about Christianity’s integrity permeating social discourse. Most of us experience relief when we are able to recognize and name what’s happening around us, including describing this shift in the religious landscape.

But….that’s not the story’s end. Many times during history, Christianity’s popularity in the larger culture has waxed and waned. This dynamic is not new.

What is unique though about these times of large-scale religious change is how Christ-followers living during these times interact with the crisis and opportunity coming our way. Will we give into despair, abandoning our faith and God’s Church? Will we grimly persevere, yet as pure drudgery without any joy? Will we recognize the opportunity for growth, reshaping our faith and expressions of church, discovering new vitality in the Way of Jesus? These are our questions to answer. Like it or not, we are those people who must decide how we will engage the moments before us.

To that end, we at Pinnacle are observing more and more individuals and churches who are accepting the calling embedded in Christendom’s demise. Here are three ways this is showing up.

Churches are accepting there is no going back.

Do you remember Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Tipping Point? It seems that more churches are beyond their tipping point now, accepting there’s no returning to church-as-we-have-known-it. We were preaching that sermon in innumerable ways long before the pandemic, yet the pandemic has actually helped clarify the reality of our current situation. More Christ-followers in churches are recognizing there’s no going back, laying aside their previous intention to snap-back to the same expressions of church after the pandemic.

Those who recognize what’s happening typically move through the stages of grief… denial (as long as they can maintain it), bargaining (trying one more time to make the old model work), sadness (accepting and grieving the losses), and integrating (beginning to look for God in the shifts).

Then they are ready for adaptation and innovation, becoming new wineskins for God’s good, robust, delicious new wine. This is the first calling embedded in the Christendom’s demise… to let go of our grip on familiar and comfortable ways of being church which resonated during a bygone era.

Christ-followers are examining and refining their motives for participation.

When a faith tradition is popular within its culture, adherents receive reinforcement through large quantities of social approval. By listening to older people in churches across this USA, we hear stories of when their workplaces, schools, and communities saw their church participation as admirable, making them more an asset to the community. Now, in many contexts in this country, those who participate in churches are viewed as curiosities at best, or persons to be avoided at worst. Since Christianity is falling out of favor with our culture, those of us engaged in the Christian movement are having to wean off social approval as a motivator for participation (honestly, none of us have totally pure motivation).

The result of this shift is an opportunity for personal refining, for developing and growing as disciples of Jesus. When the reinforcements to which we were accustomed go away, a crisis of sorts is created. Those who are paying attention during the crisis are confronted with a question, “Why then do I participate in the Christian movement?” This is a question we wanted our churches asking all along. Sometimes it takes a good crisis to shake our paradigms, pushing us out of our comfort zones to engage the right questions. This is the second opportunity embedded in the demise of Christendom.

Churches are pursuing adaptation and innovation, making the most of the current situation.

I was recently with the leadership of a church who’s in our Pinnacle One Initiative, partnering with us for one year, focused on adapting and pursuing God’s calling in their current context. After not being together much over the summer, I was not sure what I would find when we reconvened. As we started our meeting, I was blown away by their exciting progress report. Recently a sixteen-year old was baptized in a pool in a disciple’s backyard, a high and holy moment for this church. The lead and associate pastor shared the booklet they created for their fall sermon-based small groups called “On The Way.” Their church has never done anything like this before – the entire church immersing themselves in the same scriptures used in worship and their small groups. The momentum of this church is clearly ramping up, moving forward in various other missional ways, changing the mood and morale for the better. This leadership group was quick to acknowledge this as God’s doing, not theirs, with their intention to stay out of God’s way. We spent the rest of the meeting strategizing on how to follow the Spirit’s leadership into the next legs of their journey.

I find myself so heartened when hearing more stories about churches innovating and adapting in ways surprising to themselves. We ARE beyond the tipping point for many, recognizing we are not returning to the past and affirming the opportunity to become new creations as churches.

Isn’t that the gospel story written into the fabric of our existence? When we die, loosening our controlling grips, trusting to God’s goodness… then new life springs forth, reshaping church-as-we-have-known-it into church-as-it-is-becoming. Thanks be to God for the demise of Christendom, giving birth to the next expression of the beautiful body of Christ.