Churches Don’t Die

“Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead.’”

Earlier in Lent, one of the daily devotions in the StillSpeaking Devotion series focused on the story of Lazarus. Rev. Anthony Robinson recalled that when the book, I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church was published, he told a minister friend how great he thought it was. Her response was, “I think the book I need is, ‘I Refuse to Lead a Church that Doesn’t Know it’s Dying.’”

Tony went on to suggest that we like the first title, because it’s bold and defiant. It suggests that with resolve and determination, hard work and perhaps a few adjustments, our church will rise up and be great. He also said most people would not like the second title. “I Refuse to Lead a Church that Doesn’t Know it’s Dying.” It’s too pessimistic and negative.
Tony got to a good conclusion: that we need God. Desperately. That for today’s context, tweaking isn’t enough. Even “growth” isn’t enough. We need the power of God to break in amongst us and raise us to new life. We need resurrection, which isn’t a human thing, but a God thing. God raises the dead to life. Well put, Tony.

But the letting go that churches need to do in order to have new life isn’t the same thing as death. Human death is a misleading analogy to the closure of a local church, emotionally laden and not helpful. For Jesus and for Lazarus, death was necessary, because they were human. But for Christ, for God manifest, death is irrelevant. There is only resurrection, and the promise to be with us no matter what the future holds. “I will be with you to the end of the age.” “I am who I am.”

And that is also Christ’s promise to the church. God’s church has been changing, constantly adapting for at least 2,000 years. Clear evidence that “I will be with you to the end of the age.” As the church adapts, it has needed to let go of old practices and forms, but that is hardly analogous to the death of a human individual.

None of us who still are alive have actually experienced death, though many of us have observed its mystery, sometimes with awe, sometimes with fear of what it will mean for us personally. Most adults have also experienced the pain that losing a loved one brings, and the loneliness that follows. And part of the pain is the inability to know exactly what the experience of death will be like for us personally. We’d like to ask Mom or Dad to tell us what to expect, but that’s not the way death works.

That’s not true when a local church closes. There are people that have been through this process before, either directly as a member o f the congregation, or indirectly as a pastor or consultant working with a church considering closure. Through them and their stories, it is possible to know what happens to people after a church closes. It is even possible to continue seeing loved ones, church friends, after the church closes. That’s not like death at all, in my book.

A church closure, no matter how sad, also does not mean that the ministry needs to die. The remaining disciples in the church are merely asked to find a different way of serving, perhaps a different local church. And the other resources of the closing church are capable of starting new ministries as well. This is not death; it is a redeployment of life and ministry in which death is irrelevant. In other words, it is resurrection. The church of Jesus Christ continues.

As we move through Holy Week and on into the Season of Pentecost, would you please join me in prayer that we come to understand with both our heads and our hearts that, though the form of church or the place of worship may change, that God’s church will live forever. God promised.

Survival or Faithfulness?

I’m just finishing up a study leave period where my objective was to read anything I could find about life in churches that have become very small, very old, and therefore weak enough that the thought of needing to close has crossed their mind. There wasn’t a lot to read, I think because church executives and church-development pros like myself usually focus on other areas of ministry. Lots of people find this subject depressing. I think it is an exciting, largely unexplored area for ministry, just ripe for a pastoral approach.

So I started looking for stories about churches that had closed, and what happened afterwards. I have a few from my own personal experience, and have been offered some by colleagues. A Facebook post got a helpful response. Often, these stories of the people released from ministries without much future have allowed them to take on far more effective new lives for Christ. And the resources of that old church have often been able to support or develop a new ministry for another generation. So I’m finding support for my theory, or if you prefer, God’s promise, that death is a fact of life, but there is a resurrection. So far, that has always been the story I’ve heard.

Click here to read a story that’s a little different, sent by a friend from Portland, where I used to live.

Eastlake Presbyterian is in a modest neighborhood, and used to be a big church. Today, it’s down to 20 souls, mostly in their eighties. Their future is is problematic. Like any church in that situation, anxiety is high, and fear comes easily to the surface, making their future all the more difficult to unfold. But they, rather than shrinking from a new ministry offered them for reasons that would have come easily (risk for the building, fear of homeless people, hidden costs, no staff, no volunteers), they decided to take it on.

What I find interesting, though, is why. Why accept this ministry to homeless people, when the church is on the edge of closing? Homeless people are unlikely to be new members, bring new life, become pledge units. It is clearly not a church-renewal strategy. So why do it? Justice work is nice, but “Should we do this?” would be a logical question to ask, a reason to put their limited energy elsewhere. From the story, it appears plenty of other churches asked that question, and came to the logical answer. Eastlake’s answer, however, is different. Their answer is pretty simple, and yet breathtaking: they simply chose to be faithful. To them, it just seemed the right thing to do. And yes, it came to them in a Spirit-filled moment.

I don’t know what the future holds for Eastlake Presbyterian. They remain small, old, and limited in resources. The church may still need to close someday soon. But to me, it looks as if they are already receiving their resurrection gift. They chose to be faithful, and are being blessed in very unexpected ways. And if the church ends up closing, my guess is that those blessings will continue, maybe even multiply. What’s so depressing about that?

If you have a story about a church’s closing and what happened after that, good or bad, I’d love to hear it.

Why am I here??

Two weeks ago, on Pentacost Sunday 2010, my son (Mark Roberts) was ordained at Hillsdale Community UCC, where he was raised.  It was an incredible experience; imagine the community that raised your son or daughter laying hands on him or her, and setting your (adult) child aside for ministry to Christ’s church. 

But what kind of church will he or she end up serving?   I work for a Conference of the United Church of Christ, and both my work and my passion is for the vitality of those churches.  Many of them are fulfilling important roles in the life of Christ’s church, as are churches from other mainline denominations.  But many others are struggling to adapt to the culture of 21st century Southern California and Southern Nevada.   The world has changed in major ways in the last half-century, and the changes that are needed for churches to thrive in this new culture are daunting.  Over half the churches I serve probably find themselves resonating with this challenge.

I am retirement age.  Many people my age are enjoying travel, hobbies, free time, or families.  I have those yearnings.  But I keep remembering three years ago, when I attended a 50th-anniversary celebration of the birth of the United Church of Christ at our General Synod in Hartford, CT.  It was a great celebration of the work the denomination I love had done in it’s first 50 years of life.  But reflecting afterwards, I realized that this celebration did a far less satisfying job of looking 50 years into the future of the UCC. 

Why?  Who really can know, but my personal guess is that the people that planned the event were far more comfortable thinking about their church’s past than its future.  There are certainly many reasons for that, some of which are perfectly understandable.  But I can’t shake the feeling that the real reason we continue to avoid the subject of our future is not that we can’t see what’s coming – its that we don’t like what we see.    

That is why I’m here, still working instead of enjoying my retirement.  I want to help these churches, and maybe by example churches with similar challenges in other places and denominations, see that there is a future for “the church”.   I believe that with all my being.  The open questions are “What kind of church?”   ”How different from today’s church and churches?”  “How do we make the transition?”  What if we cannot, or will not, adapt to this new world?”    

Unlike my son, I am not ordained, and yet, I feel as if I have been trained for this mission all my life.   My undergraduate degree in social sciences, my post-graduate training in business and research methods, and my early careers and developer and analyst have been great preparation for helping people see what needs to be done to shape the future of the church, and the church of the future.  I also have spent my life in the church.  It has protected me when I needed protection, held me up when I needed protection, brought me my wife and raised my children, and been the vessel where my faith has deepened and my life has found meaning.

So that is why I’m here, opening this blog conversation with others who love their church and want it to thrive in the future.  The blog is named NewLife4Church for that reason.  I feel called to spend my “retirement” helping churches find new life, and even become new churches again. If you’re in a congregation that is longing for something similar, I hope you’ll look for more thoughts from these posts in the weeks and months ahead.