By: Jim Taylor
Fifty
years ahead
Every church I know fusses about recruiting new
members.
“We’re all growing older,” a
church member fretted, a while ago. “Who’s going to replace us when we’re
gone?”
Rightly or wrongly, many view
the
The prevailing assumption seems
to be that we need new members to preserve the church as it is today – or, for
those who don’t like what the church has become, the church as they like to
think it used to be.
I think it’s the wrong
question. It assumes that today’s church – or yesterday’s church – is the
perfect and final expression of what a church should be.
A better question would be,
“What kind of church will people want to belong to, 50 years from now?”
Yesterday, tomorrow
Think
back 50 years, if you can.
Television was in its infancy.
Cell phones, computers, the Internet, fax machines – none had been invented
yet. Kids played pinball machines in arcades, not video games. There were no
professional sports on Sundays; in many places, not even organized amateur
sport.
On Sunday, church was the only
game in town.
Today, church is just one of
many alternatives. When people wake up on a Sunday morning, they can make
choices about what to do.
Now fast forward 50 years. What
choices will people have on a Sunday morning – if they still have Sundays at
all?
Frankly, I don’t have an
answer. If I did, I’d found a church and become famous. But I can see some
directions.
The only sure thing is that
people will have many more choices. As change accelerates, we may well be
connected directly into each other’s thoughts. It may be possible to transport
ourselves physically to another location, perhaps even to another time; it will
certainly be possible through virtual reality.
So why would someone choose to
gather with others in a church – real or virtual – instead of, say, languishing
on a beach in
Closer than family
Unless
religious institutions – be they Christian, Muslim, or Hindu – can offer
something distinctly different from all the other choices available, they will
inevitably suffer attrition.
All of today’s religious faiths
are at risk of becoming cults that ritualize the past, and claim it’s the
future.
People will gather for an
interpersonal intimacy they can’t get electronically—a willingness to share the
deepest core of who they are, without fear of ridicule or rejection.
Unfortunately, that currently seems to happen better on electronic networks
than in most churches.
Beyond talk, we’ll want the
comfort of shared rituals and liturgies. Mutual commitment to
a common vision. A community closer even than family.
A conviction of a power greater than the sum of our individual parts, and a
collective openness to its urgings…
If I’m right, if that’s the
church of the future, we should start creating it now. Not just preserving
buildings and denominational labels.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study
groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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