Exactly! The biggest challenges we face today are not from tyrannical regimes or oppressive governments. And then the second big wave of COVID came. 2020 Fieldstone Pkwy. In patriarchal environments, women are often assumed to be a dangerous temptation to men. Lack of love for God 6. Deaths were declining. Email : [emailprotected]. We chat with multiple people at a time, post one fragment of our lives here and another there, consume visual media in one window and read the Bible in another. 10) The Authenticity = Brokenness Fallacy. At the beginning, leaders must resist the urge to prescribe the right answer or solution and rather seek to describe what is happening and why. I must not, however, assume that everyone would . BIPOC people have been, and continue to be, directly and indirectly harmed in body, mind, and spirit by singular acts of racism and shaped by it. 7) Complexity. Patriarchy often hides inside a leadership culture characterized by top-down, command-and-control decision making, zero-sum power games, rationalist modes of thinking, and an aversion to vulnerability. In the first wave of COVID, churches faced divisions over politics, masks, regathering, streaming services, and social distancing. Dr. Ligon Duncan empathizes with church leaders and reminds them of their ultimate hope during discouraging seasons. The counterintuitive way forward into transformative territory is facing problems and difficult issues head-on, rather than avoiding them or hoping they will fade away. 11) The Idol of Autonomy. Weariness expanded. Life and leadership rooted in the love of Christ, by Gravity Leadership on October 3, 2022 1 Comment. Things that seemed certain are being shaken. We begin to tell a story, grounded in the data, that gets at your original focus question. Hard decisions do not need to be hard to make. Once more information comes in, either supporting or refuting the decision/hypothesis, the next decision/hypothesis gets made based on the totality of evidence. Our relationships are digital. We need discernment and wisdom, grounded in hopeful realism. But some of the other answers are not so much logistics. The consumerism of contemporary Christianity has unsurprisingly led to churches that are more homogeneous than ever. Today were seeing this play out in the messy entanglements of Christians in politics, to the point that we have to say out loud that trickle-down economics and the right to bear arms are political, not biblical values. Your email address will not be published. In 1910, only 1 percent of the world's Christians lived in sub-Saharan Africa; in 2010, this percentage had risen to 24 percent.3 The growth has not only come in Pentecostal or charismatic movements but in mainline Christian traditions. One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity and science. 90% of covid ICU patients are unvaccinated. Todays focus on identity politics makes this even more challenging, as any given member of a church may see their Christian identity as secondary to some other identity (gender, race, political affiliation, nationality, etc.). 91% of us expect to stay in a job less than 3 years. One of the biggest challenges for theologically conservative churches will be to maintain a consistent biblical ethic on these matters, speaking in truth and love about (for example) the witness of Scripture on divorce as much as the witness of Scripture on homosexuality. The church must reprioritize its vocation as presenters of Gods presence in the world, and to do so we must cultivate habits and liturgies that create the space and contours for that presence to be felt and known. My basic premise in this lecture is that the main challenges that the Church faces today are directly derived from the phenomenon of globalization. By the time millennials came round, they had little experience or relationship with churchgoing or religion. The research plan looks a bit different in each congregation, but plans usually include things like a mix of church-wide surveys, qualitative interviews, and field work. General and special revelation. On Sunday I will be installed as an elder in my local church, Southlands. Offices and stores were reopening. There will not likely be a new normal any time soon, if ever. Public health is also in the Torah when lepers were to be put outside the camp. This was ancient quarantine. Now and not yet. 15) The Need for Racial Reconciliation. About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their churchs stance on political and social issues. And so the younger generation just doesnt feel like theyre being accepted in a church environment or some of their choices arent being accepted by those at church.. Working with Gravity Congregational Transformation, which is not designed to do crisis intervention or conflict resolution, will be even more fruitful after making a journey back to baseline health.If youre not sure where you are, wed be happy to help you discern that in a consultation call, and then make recommendations based on your situation if it seems like partnering with a different organization first would be most helpful. Lack of knowledge of function of Spiritual Gifts 5. There are several major social issues affecting congregational life today. They gathered information, made recommendations based on the evolving information, and answered practical questions regarding the CDC policies. All of this makes it easier to fracture our lived experience into disconnected compartments, a process that wreaks havoc on our spiritual formation. Unemployment/Uncertain Financial Future. 16) Gender and Sexuality. One perspective was that churches would resume their practices just as they were before the pandemic. But churches must challenge rather than cater to this mentality. About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their church's stance on political and social issues, McConnell said. There seems to be change after change with no time to catch your breath. Meeting with God in our messy congregation begins with curiosity about the habits of thinking, talking, and acting that make up our particular congregation. The West is in the middle of a cultural moment that centers all of reality around the autonomous self. As with most things in the realm of science, a decision is made or a hypothesis is asserted. They should be there to make us more wise, and to depend upon God. One thing is certain: I am NOT giving up my constitutional rights including my freedom of assembly and freedom of worship simply because the government thinks I should. But church leaders today wonder if any stability is on the horizon. Blessings, All of that to say that we have learned that we must do SOMETHING to continue ministering to people. We understand that we must be open to try new things and that we cannot place God in a box because we are operating under a mandate to preach the word, whatever that may look like. This destructive assumption is often called white supremacy. But its more than personal; its institutional and social. They must fast-moving torpedo boats that can make a quick turn in a new direction at a moments notice. Just over one-third of pastors (34%) marks this statement as a top three concern for their church, with 12 percent noting it as the top concern. The people I know are sympathetic to clergy who did change many things. Fishers, IN 46038 The other end of the spectrum is a challenge as well. "The church needs to quit talking quite so much about visions, plans, strategies, new teachings, authors, bands, missions, buildings, teams and heresies," advises Brad Vanderburg. "Just start. by Thom S. Rainer Quite simply, people in churches (and even moreso those not in churches) may pay lip service to the importance of the Bible, but by and large they do not read it or know it. Many church leaders find themselves reminding their church members of the hope of Christ more than they ever had. As they learn more and the virus changes, the methods to fight it must also change. Consumerism turns creation and people into objects for my use; again, denying the image of God in others and the reality of creation as a gift. Church leaders particularly feel the exhaustion of dealing with so many issues. Churches are naturally tempted to use gimmicks and trendiness to solve this problem, but this is ill-advised. In the middle of a pandemic a leader needs to be affirmed and assured that a good decision made now is better than a perfect decision made later. The privatization thesis in Bryan Wilson's seminal 1966 study, 'Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment' was taken forward by Steve Bruce in 'Post-Secularity and Religion in Britain: An Empirical Assessment'. All churches have a gap. Here are the seven most common challenges we see with churches: 1. 13) The Struggle for Balance in an Immoderate Age. With the pandemic speeding up a broader trend of Americans turning away from Christianity, researchers say the closures will only have accelerated. Your email address will not be published. Both church leaders and members can get ornery and critical as a consequence of their exhaustion. The challenges of today's church are many and it is difficult to define which are the most ominous. In 1900, more than 80 percent of Anglicans lived in Britain; in 2008, that number had fallen to 33 percent. Great answer, but I'd suggest that they biggest challenge facing the church is the privatisation of faith and belief. About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their churchs stance on political and social issues, McConnell said. Pastors are experiencing burnout, anxiety, and depression and leaving ministry at rapid rates. t: +1 (317) 537-7775. In the final phase, we gather with you and a larger group of leaders in your congregation for a discernment session. It is time to simply follow the Lord! As you begin to name the themes and patterns that emerge, begin a dialogue about the story they tell about who your community is in practice, about your points of struggle and pain, and also about how God might be bringing renewal into the future. Another challenge facing churches in the past year is financial, said Nate Rauh-Bieri, Financial Shalom program manager for PCR. We live our mediated lives via windows and boxes. Then, in the research phase, we execute the research in your congregation. And there has not been sufficient growth in discipleship that is comparable to the growth in numbers. In fact, we are now beginning the initial stages of exploring an expansion of our current facility to meet our current and future needs. A lot of people who were weakly attached, to suddenly have months of not going, theyre then thinking: Well we dont really need to go, or Weve found something else to do, or thinking: It was hard enough dragging the kids along then, we really ought to start going again next week.. Founder & CEO. Anything to re-sensitize people to the fleshly reality of the church in the world. A study by Pew Research found that . 3. We have spoken to countless pastors who tell us the biggest surprise of the pandemic as a church leader was all the new decisions they had to make. The second wave has been a real challenge. They just get new data that leads to a change in tack. Today is a good day to (re)read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.s Letter From a Birmingham Jail and reflect on the continuing relevance for discipleship in our day. The days are numbered for churches to freely conduct their affairs according to traditional beliefs and practices on issues of sexuality and gender, without government interference. The science I read indicates that its not necessarily the unvaccinated that allowed the virus a chance to mutate.The best explanation I heard as to why you dont mass vaccinate, indiscriminately during a pandemic is that it leaves nowhere for the virus to go, thus making it more virulent just like overuse of antibiotics. Sometimes churches are in crisis. If our motives are pure then even mistakes become opportunities. And when that gets to a critical point, churches close. Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether even as faith continues to dominate American politics. A church will go through a life cycle. The core of Christian nationalism is xenophobiafear of those who are not like us.. As giving has fallen in some congregations, pressure mounts on many people in the church, especially the . Many ministers are producing daily podcasts and having daily services that get large numbers of views from people worldwide. Again, this requires holding space for the life of your community to be revealed as it is rather than how it ought to be. 7. This phase is a dialogue. Some signs of Christian nationalism in our congregations are obvious, like when we support political candidates or policies that we know contradict the teachings of Jesus in order to guarantee that Christians (from our tribe) can remain in the center of public influence. CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY CHRISTIAN YOUTHS AND THE WAY OUT - challenges of the youth in Christianity, role of youth in 21st century, challenges facing youth ministry in the 21st century, challenges facing teenagers in the 21st century, top 10 issues facing christian youth, challenges facing youth in Africa, challenges that youth face today. This gap between vision and practice is not necessarily a problem. No one foresaw the virulence and spread of delta Variant. Several months ago, President Trump signed an executive order ceasing enforcement of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibited a church, as a nonprofit entity, from endorsing and promoting a. One perspective was that churches would resume their practices just as they were before the pandemic. It is simply the next decision they have to make. We are all tired. Get our latest resources and curated links FREE each week. Complexity is cumbersome. 5. It is not. 4. Schools are wondering what to do. As Russell Moore recently observed, In an age suspicious of all authority outside the self, the appeal to a word that carries transcendent authority can be just distinctive enough to be heard, even when not immediately embraced.. I also think this is one more way Satan is using to divide uswe are casting blame on the other, whoever the other may be! ), or else figure out how to deal with inevitable legal/legislative challenges. Interesting information but, at this point in time, our congregation seems to be doing very well which of course, includes Lita and myself. God is already disrupting and renewing your congregation. They offer simplistic and unsatisfying answers to huge questions and in so doing they foreclose a whole arena (the life of the mind) wherein God can be worshipped and holy wonder cultivated. The goal of action is aligning your congregational system with a fresh vision for flourishing Gods kingdom and loving neighbors. It is destructive and dehumanizing foremost to the victims but also to those who benefit from its lie. She is near and dear to my heart. The horizon doesnt look bright from the perspective of many leaders. Church leaders need to be quick-thinking and quick-moving. Everything is fast-paced and harried; we can hardly remember which Netflix show we loved last month or which restaurant was the rage last year. Thats wonderful, certainly a blessing for you and yours, but please remember that not all churches have those resources and not all congregants have computers and wifi. One of the greatest challenges facing the church is discipleship that centers around the autonomous self. Almost every aspect of social life (economics, voting, housing, jobs, education, etc.) To do nothing is not an option, regardless of government mandates. 9) The Temptation to Homogeneity. Great harm can and has been done when churches cultivate a hostile, shame-infused environment, where people wrestling with questions about their sexuality and bodies do not feel safe to be honest. Les. 5) Boredom. Some of these have been external, and unfortunately the worst challenges Christ's church has gone through are from within -internal. 2. The second and majority view was that churches would face a new normal and must learn to adjust. Since Im here, tomorrow morning Im scheduled to have my right knee replaced which I think you know about already. This is in addition to webcast services with limited people present. Major personnel shifts in churches. As always, the best are praying and making the best of it and using this opportunity to teach/reach people they would never have even thought of 2 years ago. Christian nationalism should not be confused with a practical theological vision for political activism or with any one instance of Christians supporting a public policy associated with a particular partys platformright, left, or centrist. You can get started addressing difficult issues right away by listening, naming the truth, and experimenting with concrete action steps. I pray that for all of us. We see it in the enormous staffs and array of programs that turn churches into bureaucratically complex corporations. We are far less likely to be affiliated with a religion or a political party than previous generations were, and we get married at lower rates and later in life than our parents and grandparents did. With the first wave of COVID, we saw many churches reduce personnel costs. Most challenges confronting the church today involve how local churches respond . Integrity is wholeness (integer = whole number), all parts of our lives integrated and reflective of the Lordship of Christ. With the first wave of COVID, we saw many churches reduce personnel costs. When Jesus talked about loving others, he was talking about a sacrificial love, not a pretense of love that puts our interests first. Its important to reach out for third party help if your church is in crisis. The most vibrant centers of global Christianity are not in western countries these days, and the face of western Christianity is becoming much more diverse. The bottom line is that these issues are not problems to be solved, but opportunities to get under the hood of congregational life and join Gods re-creating work. I am a scientist with a PhD. We are an antsy culture. That was ten years ago, but the shallowness persists. We did parking lot church for several weeks in order to bring everyone together. Entire social systems have been built to advantage white people and disadvantage brown or black people. Get expert advice on everything from church budgets, staffing issues, facilities, and much more! Do you recognise any affecting your church? Many churches will survive. Being Jesus church in a community does not require as many things as we have come to think and believe that it needs. Every week, many church leaders are confronted with gather or dont gather, masks or no masks, and other issues unique to the pandemic. Masks were coming off. What is the future of Catholic schools on all levelselementary, secondary, and collegiate? Most pastors and ministry leaders are looking for ways to cultivate transformation in their congregations, to move beyond business as usual and step deeper with God into loving and just forms of life together. We also help you craft a plan to step into transformative new practices. The firm found that seven out of 10 had stopped attending church regularly. Adjustments do not possess the potential to produce fatality. It's one more example of how a change in strategy requires churches to also consider a change in structure. World system entering Church system 4. Truth and love. Churches must lean into the complexities and paradoxes of these things and try to seek healthy balance, tempting as it will be to claim radical and extreme positions so as to appeal to Generation Antsy. Some will thrive. It involves seeing to the needs and concerns of others, those outside our particular fellowship. The era of bi-vocational and co-vocational ministry has arrived rapidly. For a deeper dive into spiritual abuse, listen to the interview with Wade Mullen on the Gravity Podcast about how to decode the hidden tactics of abusive systems and people. More from Thom, The definitive, custom report that will help you to reach and attract your local community. The problem is that a significant minority of people didnt get vaccinated, which gave the virus a chance to mutate. There are practical ways leaders can address these issues head-on in ways that better illuminate whats going on in your congregation and avail you to more just and loving forms of life together. While certainly not ideal, we learned there is power and a real sense of community in a smile or a wave from across the parking lot. This means getting outside the walls of the church. Most pastors I talk to, including myself, will not be shutting down the churches they pastor. All those divisions still exist, but the polarization over vaccinations has been added to the mix. The trajectory of technology is away from incarnational presence and toward disembodied experience. Understanding your local context does not primarily consist of reading books about culture or staying updated on the latest church statistics (although there is a place for that).
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