I Survived the Church Renewal Movements. Re-Missioning Is What We Need Now.

There are two common streams of thought for responding to church decline. The first could perhaps be named “Incremental Improvement.” It’s the attitude that our beliefs and practices are fundamentally sound but just need to be done better. This mindset believes gradual change will lead to a magic moment when things suddenly coalesce and produce good results.

The second stream of thought is what I would call “Fatalistic Faith.” It’s the mentality that “the way is narrow” and that decline and death are inevitable. This acknowledges that there is a problem but thinks that little can be done other than hang in there and be faithful.

For most of my thirty years in ministry, the first stream of thought has dominated my thinking and that of my closest colleagues. This started with efforts to renew our hermeneutic. We moved away from the command/example/necessary-inference framework that long shaped Churches of Christ. We adopted more holistic and theologically sound approaches to reading scripture. I am grateful for this change.

Then we renewed our worship style. We removed song leaders and hymnals and leaned into contemporary Christian music, praise teams, visual arts, and even bands (in many places). We tried to introduce heart-felt worship in place of four-part harmony.

We also renewed our preaching style. Gone were the sermons that quoted random verses separated from context. We brought new forms of preaching rooted in our renewed hermeneutic. Instead of seven points or even three points, preachers focused on one point or a series of movements. We now have well-trained preachers working hard to craft quality sermons.

We have renewed our thinking about gender roles. While few would deny that men and women are different, we have come to believe that this different-ness doesn’t limit how God gifts us for ministry. I am thankful to be in a church where the voices of men and women bless us on Sunday mornings, and where the leadership skills of both genders can guide the church.

In addition to these, folks have tried to renew just about every aspect of church life. There are programs to improve your welcome ministry, to renew your leadership structure, to revise your giving platforms, to repurpose your facilities, to add coffee bars and indoor playscapes, to rebrand your church, to update your logo, and even to change your name. I am not at all opposed to incremental improvements that are responsibly implemented, for they are often a necessary part of life.

But here’s the catch. These incremental improvements benefit people inside your church. These may renew and revive the spirit of many who already belong. But—and here’s the key—they don’t move the needle on something vital. They don’t help the church reach the world outside the church building.

Folks are always looking for silver-bullet solutions. They hope the next incremental improvement will stem the tide of decline, when in fact each step forward becomes a bridge-too-far for someone inside their church. Incremental improvements on their own often exacerbate the problem of church decline.

This, in turn, can birth a second stream of thought: fatalistic faith. “All the sacrifices must have been worth it,” we tell ourselves. “The path is hard. We must be faithful. Surely God will reward us in the end.” We lean into Jurgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope and tell ourselves that death is the only path to life. All are true statements.

But something is missing. What’s absent is a shift to becoming a missionary people here in our own contexts. I’m all for renewal. I wouldn’t reverse the renewal movements I’ve experienced in the church over the last thirty years. But inward renewal does not automatically produce outward remissioning.

What would it look like to lean into remissioning? Let’s picture a group of American missionaries living in Kenya in the 1980s or 1970s. How did they go about their work? Did they build a church building, put up a sign, create a worship service, and wait for people to show up?

That’s not at all what they did. They went to various villages or communities. They walked about, met village elders, drank tea, learned about the needs and aspirations of those folks, and got to know their names and their stories. Along the way, they began to tell the story of Jesus and asked who wanted to learn more about him.

This missionary work in places throughout the developing world created new Christian communities where new believers outnumbered those who came as missionaries. These new communities grew up in the villages and communities where they were located, not back on the missionaries’ home base. The missionaries slowly mentored, discipled and taught them how to be God’s people in their own contexts.

What would it look like to lean into remissioning here? It could mean that small teams of pioneering Christians would leave their church buildings and go where non-church-goers gather. They would build relationships, meet real needs, and slowly share about Jesus. To do this, these pioneering Christians might form or join groups: parenting support groups, hiking clubs, dart nights, dinner clubs, ESL conversational groups, and many others. These pioneering Christians would partner with non-church-going folks to meet real needs and build community. Their primary goal would not be to invite them to an existing church but rather to form new kinds of Christian community around these folks as they become believers.

This is what missionary work is all about. It’s the stance needed in our churches. Without re-missioning, renewal leads us nowhere.