What Happened To Our Churches

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Churches, Too, Now Have to Live in Hard America

“Hard America” is a phrase used by writer and columnist Michael Barone in his book Hard American, Soft America: Competition vs Coddling. He describes changes that have happened in our American society in recent decades. Almost all institutions have run into heavy competition that forced them to change how they operate if they want to survive into future decades.

For centuries churches did their ministries in a soft environment. State churches had, with few exceptions, no competition at all.

The pastor is the key to developing a congregational culture that will be more competitive in Hard America. Most mainline pastors grew up and functioned in Soft America. Many probably don’t have the heart to change their ways. Let’s hope more will take the challenge to become more competitive in our emerging American culture. Soft America is not coming back.

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The Misunderstanding of the Church

The understanding of truth and church are fundamental to ministry. A German Protestant professor in Zurich, Emil Brunner opened up for me new perspectives on each. He is regarded as one of the top four or five Protestant systematic theologians of the mid-20th century.

He saw Truth as Encounter, the name of his book. In my philosophy and seminary days, I thought truth was presented in books that had carefully formulated propositions all in a logical order.

In contrast, Brunner highlighted that truth is relationships experienced, not doctrine tightly defined. Encountering Jesus is the truth, the way, the life. Life-changing encounters happen in the heart, not just the head. Heart-work is done by the Holy Spirit. As Jesus said, the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.

The other fundamental new perspective came through his book The Misunderstanding of the Church. In his time when most church leaders thought of church, they had in mind church institutions, which in Europe were well developed over centuries. They saw the Christian church of the first several centuries as the “primitive” church. The “early” church is a better name. I regard the early church as the best source for re-learning how to do church more effectively in our times.

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Blending Two Kinds of Church Cultures

In the past, American Protestants have had two different kinds of church cultures. They emerged out of the colonial First Awakening of the 1730s-40s. One side emphasized religious emotions as the essence of being a Christian; feeling the love of God was most important. The other side taught that the heart of true religion is right thinking; emotions are fickle and often lead one astray.

Historically since the Reformation, pastors of established mainline churches were university educated. It is no coincidence that the Reformers were a university professor and a sophisticated lawyer. Pastors in my heritage were and are taught by professors lecturing them. I know that the majority of Bible studies in our churches are lectures to the members by the pastor. No one else could be trusted to have the right knowledge.

The problem with one-way lectures is that they are absolutely the least effective way of communication, especially if you want to change someone’s behavior. Job behavior is shaped much more by informal communication with those around you. On-the-job training is so effective because you learn by doing. Worker effectiveness is shaped much more from these two sources than from the formal job description given to you.

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Fine-Tune Your Congregation’s Church Culture

Congregations have a church culture. Each is unique in some way but shares much with other congregations in the same church body. One denomination’s general culture is different from that of another.

When traditionalists want to preserve their tradition, the necessary question is which tradition: the church culture of the 1970s, which is different from that of the 1930s, which is different from that of the 1880s, which is different from the church culture in the 18th century back in the homeland. Church cultures change over the generations in sensible ways. Leaders are continually fine-tuning what they do and how. Seldom does a congregation’s culture change abruptly and completely, however, that is the fear of many who resist.

What does change are the ways of communicating and organizing.

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Mutual Conversation and Consolation

According to the Apostle Paul, a Christian congregation is a fellowship of the Holy Spirit, also called the body of Christ. In his letters to the early churches, he had many words of encouragement for those first believed. Offering his observations was participating in the Spirit’s work of building up relationships in a specific fellowship.

A key question for any Christian congregation today is how well their fellowship of believers offers others encouragement for living out their individual relationship with God in their daily relationships with others. Some churches delegate that job to the pastor. Healthy churches share that function in individual conversations.

“Mutual conversation and encouragement” was a key concept in Martin Luther’s understanding of church life. He even listed it as a fifth means of grace, a very lofty status right up there with Word and sacraments. But you won’t find much of such mutual encouragement in traditional churches. One of my pet peeves about the church life I experienced in a lifetime of Lutheran congregations is that I found little of such “God talk” beyond the formal worship service. Most conversations seemed to be the same “small talk” you could hear in any other social setting.

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Growing Into a Free, Cheerful, Glad and Loving Heart

“When the Spirit comes, he makes a pure, free, cheerful, glad and loving heart—a conscience made righteous by grace, seeking no reward, fearing no punishment, doing everything with joy.”

So observed Martin Luther in a sermon he preached in 1521. The Spirit was very much in the center of his thinking in those early years of the Reformation. He was not a systematic theologian. But what he intuited in this off-hand comment happens to fit three of the stages of faith development recognized in modern developmental psychology.

Luther described three kinds of conscience, which are three stages of faith development. A churchyard conscience concentrates on getting the external rules of church life right. A nave (pew section) conscience characterizes those who are living faithfully but out of guilt with no joy. Progressing forward, those who are living with a heart changed by the Spirit have a chancel conscience. “Conscience” in classical theology describes what I call motivation. The Latin would be affectus.

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The Holy Spirit Influences Your Human Spirit

Nicodemus was a prominent Jewish leader who came to Jesus under cover of darkness. He wanted to find out more about this new rabbi who had come to town. Jesus was proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand, but no one can see it until he or she is born from on high.

“Tell me more,” Nicodemus said. Jesus explained, “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but Spirit gives birth to spirit.”

That phrase “Spirit gives birth to spirit” can have revolutionary meaning today for traditional Christians from mainline churches.

An appropriate translation of the key verb is “the Holy Spirit influences human spirit.” Human spirit is one of the words the Bible uses for “soul” or “heart” or “inner being.” A modern equivalent is “motivation.” The Spirit can and will change the motivations of those who are open to him.

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Look on the Other Side of the Coin

Kevin Park is a member of our church who designed and by now has distributed 150,000 grace and mercy coins. One side has a cross and the words “Mercy is when God spares you what you deserve.” The other side has a dove and the words “Grace is when God gives you what you don’t deserve.” It’s a great evangelism tool.

The first side’s cross represents Christ. The other side’s dove is for the Holy Spirit. Mercy is the proper word for the forgiveness God gives us through Christ’s redemption. The Bible word is charis for the gift given, which we call grace. A second kind of grace is called charisma, the gift received. This is always associated with the Holy Spirit. One form is the special energy he gives to do specific ministries (1 Corinthians 12). The other is the higher gifts of love, faith and hope (12:31) and other fruit the Spirit produces in believers, like joy and patience.

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Do Your Ministries Reflect Belief in the Holy Spirit?

In general, the ministries of traditional mainline churches are done without conscious belief in the Holy Spirit—a belief that goes beyond mouthing the Creed. We mostly rely on the Father and the Son. But ministries lose their effectiveness over time without reliance on the power of the Spirit. Our ministries cannot remain effective without a firm belief in the Holy Spirit and the role he performs. Luther describes how the Spirit “calls me by the Gospel, enlightens me with his gifts, sanctifies and keeps me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth.”

Those roles are the essence of the ministries and church life we try to guide and develop. How can we do that effectively if we are not looking for and expecting the Spirit’s power to accomplish what we are trying to do on our own? Believing in just the Father and the Son is like trying to do ministry with one arm tied behind your back. Without the Spirit, tradition too easily turns into traditionalism.

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Why Do Some Churches Grow While Others Decline?

Big changes are happening on the American religious scene. This is my constant theme. Many in the declining traditional Protestant churches often seem perplexed. Why are those community churches growing while we are going down? There is no simple answer, but some explanations are emerging.

In the 1980s and 90s, there was a ministry discipline called Church Growth. It grew out of the observations of Donald McGavran, who studied mission movements. His work was popularized by C. Peter Wagner. Both worked out of Fuller Theological Seminary, where I was in the 80s. One of McGavran’s key insights was that people don’t become believers individually; they do so in groups. Out of this came the controversial homogeneous principle. People like to go to church with others like themselves.

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How Motivations for Church Life Changed

Most of the New Testament, after the Gospels, was written about the church life of the first several generations of Christians. What prompted them to come together? Roman cities offered many hundreds of clubs and mystery cults to join, not unlike American cities today. Easiest to understand are the Jews already accustomed to synagogue life who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and moved on to a Christian house church (Acts 18: 7). They acted on conviction.

But Luke tells us there were many non-Jewish God-fearers, too. What motivated them? They probably had the same kind of mixed motives found among church-goers today. Most gathered out of conviction. Others were probably neighbors who liked the fellowship. A few knew they could get a meal. Others sought the protection of the influential leader and enjoyed the status that went with this patronage.

We do know that in the earliest years they regularly shared a meal, during which they usually also remembered the Lord’s last supper. We know they were expected to help each other out because Paul scolded the Corinthians for not taking care of the hungry in their midst.

I am offering these descriptions to illustrate motives within the categories of classic motivational psychology.

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