Everywhere I look in the church today, I see congregations struggling to survive. Sunday schools are disappearing for lack of children. The average attendance at morning worship, I’m told, is usually between 70 and 100, but many congregations are lucky to have 30 to 50 people in the pews. Meetings are increasingly scheduled for mid-day because all the attendees are retired.
What, I ask myself, does this mean for God’s church? Has God abandoned the church? Is the church going to sink slowly into oblivion as those of us for whom Sunday worship is meaningful die off? Will all of our church buildings become museums, relics of a bygone era? Is God angry with us?
In reading through scripture, there were certainly a number of times when the Israelites thought they had been abandoned by God, or that they were being punished by the Almighty. However, on each such occasion, God made it perfectly clear that God was still very much present with the people but that God was choosing to relate to people in a new way. God was doing a new thing, as we read in Isaiah 43. Why even in Jesus, God did a new thing, bursting into human history in the form of a vulnerable baby. Then on the cross, again God did a new thing, refusing to assert power and authority, proving the unconditional nature of God’s love.
So perhaps instead of grieving the decline of the church we should be asking: “What new thing is God doing now?” How do we do this? How do we embody Christ in our communities? Where might we begin?
Historically, congregations have operated on the premise: build it and they will come. However, in the current climate, this is no longer true. No longer is it sufficient to put an ad in the paper, hoping hordes will show up. In order to thrive in today’s world the church must throw open its doors to let the world in and take God’s new way of relating out into the world. In the Canada of today, Christians not only have to think creatively about how to be the church in their communities, they also have to be prepared to bring the gospel message to life through their actions.
Gateway Community Church, in the neighbourhood of Flemingdon Park in Toronto, did a new thing by changing its primary focus from worship to operating an afterschool program as a mission. Its success has been beyond expectations. Sadly, in this case, with no way within church polity to combine the elements of both church and mission, the congregation was officially closed. However, with the mission carrying the costs of the building, a few former members of the church, some of whom have become members of the board of the mission, continue to gather to worship on Sunday mornings in support of the ministry. Surprisingly, some new individuals have chosen to join them. Who knows where the future will lead them?
Increasingly, I hear of congregations that are reconfiguring themselves in order to be of greater service to the community in which they are situated. In centres small or large, there are enormous opportunities for churches to become relevant again, perhaps not in the way they once were, but in a way that is meaningful to the majority of people around them. All that is required is to move out into the community and ask the question: What would be most meaningful and helpful to the people in this community?
“How do we find that out?” you might ask.
For many years, the primary focus of churches has been to carry God’s word to the people—to preach. Now it would seem God is calling us to listen, to pay close attention to what people have to say to us so that we can carry out God’s will where we find ourselves.
Before launching Flemingdon Gateway Mission, we went out into the community to listen to the people, to build trust with them, and to ask what the church might do to make their lives better. This gave us a true snapshot of the community’s resources and needs, and enabled us to make an informed decision about what programs we should offer. The ensuing afterschool program, that serves children of all faiths who live in the area, has seen numbers beyond our wildest dreams.
In other areas, a wide variety of responses may be appropriate. Some congregations may hear their neighbours asking them to ease their marginalized lives with assistance from congregation members and others as volunteers. Or, they may hear people asking them to redesign their space to make it more universally usable by groups from the community. They may determine that offering special meals to people who are lonely, or supporting parents by delivering afterschool care for their children would be most useful. Or, they may realize that it would be most helpful to focus on building community among their neighbours by hosting a weekly lunch and card game.
Without a doubt, transitioning to this new way of being will be tough. All paradigm shifts are tough. However, if we are to do the new thing God requires of us and help the church become relevant once again, we have to be willing to set aside our conviction that worship is all that is meaningful to God. We have to risk doing something new to connect the community in which we exist to the reality of God’s love. And when we do this, we won’t be able to help but gather to worship the amazingly, awesome God who calls us to do new things.
