The Innovative Church

How Leaders and Their Congregations Can Adapt in an Ever-Changing World

Cormode, Scott

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781493426959
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Kirche

The church as we know it is calibrated for a world that no longer exists. It needs to recalibrate in order to address the questions that animate today's congregants. Leading congregational studies researcher Scott Cormode explores the role of Christian practices in recalibrating the church for the twenty-first century, offering church leaders innovative ways to express the never-changing gospel to their ever-changing congregations. The book has been road-tested with over one hundred churches through the Fuller Youth Institute and includes five questions that guide Christian leaders who wish to innovate.

1
How the Church Is Calibrated for a World That No Longer Exists

Almost everything about the current experience of church was established in a bygone era: the way we worship, the passages of Scripture we cherish, and the people we expect to see. The basic contours of church have not changed, even as the world has been transformed. The church as we know it is calibrated for a world that no longer exists.

Erica knows this all too well. In 2018 she brought her youth ministry team from Florida to Fuller Theological Seminary for an “innovation summit.”1 Erica came to the summit bearing a burden: her young people needed help, she said, in navigating their way toward hope and joy in a world of suffering. But the old ways of doing church did not want to acknowledge her students’ pain. The old ways of leading a youth group involved distracting young people and promising a world free from pain; they did not focus on seeking a God who meets us in our pain. As Erica listened to her middle schoolers (and their parents), she could see that young people today are far more anxious, busy, and stressed than they were in the past, but the expectations of church life were no different. The old ways of being church are not calibrated to speak to the circumstances that Erica’s young people encounter each day.

The world has changed, but the church has not. The internet has transformed how people get information, social media has changed the meaning of community, and the post-2008 economy now expects more labor hours from the average worker. The basic assumptions about time, money, and community—and about membership, Bible study, and ecclesiology—have all changed. But congregations act the way that they did before the climate changed, and congregants often wish that the world would just go back to the way it once was. The mental models that we Christians hold about the rudiments of church (about things such as worship, teaching, and fellowship) were formed in the mid-twentieth century, long before social changes transformed the meaning of almost every institution in society. As the theologian Dwight Zscheile wisely observed, “God’s promises in Christ are steadfast, but the shape and future of the church in America is increasingly uncertain” in an ever-changing world.2

Indeed, the pace of change is accelerating. Something new rolls over us even as we are still reeling from the last thing. In the past, the church had time to adjust between changes. It could absorb the initial shock of social change, wait for things to settle into an equilibrium, and then learn from those who had already adjusted to that new reality. But the wait-and-copy strategy will not work anymore. For most of the church’s history, Christians had up to a century to recalibrate in the face of a disruptive change such as the Industrial Revolution. Even in the twentieth century, the church typically had a generation to recalibrate to changes like the advent of the automobile or the rise of suburbia. But now, sweeping changes are happening years apart rather than decades apart.3 There is not enough time between changes before the next wave hits. The wait-and-copy strategy will no longer work because we live in what one scholar has called “a world of permanent white water.”4 The next wave will always come before we have adjusted. We will need to learn how to live in an ever-changing culture.

Even if a church figures out how to respond to some social change, it faces another problem. Congregations are tempted to make a change and then freeze that change—to breathe a sigh of relief that says they never have to change again. Think, for example, about changes in how we worship. In the late nineteenth century, cutting-edge Protestant churches incorporated organ music into their services. This was a controversial move. Established theologians opposed what they called the “innovators” who were spoiling the plain worship of God with their ostentation.5 Of course, by the twentieth century congregations had become so accustomed to organ music that there was an anguished cry when innovators replaced organs with guitars. Once a change has been legitimated, congregations often demand that the change become permanent, even when the culture has moved on to something else. Neither the wait-and-copy strategy nor the change-and-freeze plan will help us. Clinging to these strategies means we are dancing to the rhythm of a song that no longer plays. We need a way to recalibrate in order to keep from getting out of touch with the needs of the world. That will take innovation.

Innovative Congregations

A changed world demands innovation, and a changed religious world requires innovative congregations. But there is a problem. Most of the literature on innovation assumes that the best innovations will tear down the structures of the past and replace them with something better in just the way that the iPhone camera destroyed Kodak, and Amazon replaced Borders bookstores. “Cut the ties to the past,” some say. “Burn the boats.” But we Christians cannot do this. We are inextricably—and happily—bound to the past. We will never stop reading Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, we will never stop loving our neighbors as ourselves, and we will never stop saying, “Jesus is Lord.” We cannot abandon the past.

Every Christian’s faith depends on the inherited Christian tradition. We receive the faith; we do not invent it. No Christian, for example, invents practices like prayer or beliefs such as “Jesus is Lord.” We receive them—both from God and from those who came before us. We depend on the Christian tradition. Yet, as the theologian Gregory Jones points out, “Tradition is fundamentally different from traditionalism.” He quotes the Yale historian Jaroslav Pelikan: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”6 Although at some level we all know that the experience of Christianity has changed over the centuries (e.g., there are few current congregations that chant in Latin), our tendency is to believe that the present is better than the past and that the future should look about like the present.

All this makes new ideas look suspect. Yes, we must be grounded in the Bible as the authoritative witness to Jesus Christ, and yes, we must be anchored by the theological reflections of the historic Christian church.7 Yet we cannot be shackled to the ways the gospel has always been presented. Christian innovation cannot abandon the past, but it must find new ways to express itself for the future.8

Thus, the question of congregational innovation comes into focus. How do we Christians innovate when our credibility depends on continuity with the past and honoring tradition? To put it another way, How do we maintain a rock-solid commitment to the unchanging Christian faith while at the same time finding innovative ways to express that faith in an ever-changing culture?

That takes us back to the image of recalibrating. But how do we recalibrate? We recalibrate according to a standard. If I want to reset my watch, I look up the time from a standard I trust (usually my cell phone). If I sing, I follow the beat of the musicians. If I plant crops, I wait for the proper season to harvest them. But Christian recalibrating is particularly tricky because we need to account for both the ever-changing culture and the never-changing gospel. We can do that using the dual standard of people and practices—that is, according to the longings and losses of the ever-changing people entrusted to our care and according to the practices that constitute the never-changing gospel. To do that, we must recalibrate our understanding of Christian leadership.

Planting and Watering

If we think the world is predictable, we establish fixed routines hoping to create guaranteed outcomes. This would make leading a church like operating an assembly line. With an assembly line, you plug the right raw materials into the right machine and you know that every time you get just what you want coming out the other side. If you see a deviation, you stop and make adjustments until you get the expected result. But the world is not predictable enough for us to operate as an assembly line; we don’t even know what tomorrow will bring.

We will need to think more like farmers. Farmers organize their efforts around the seasons of the year. They know to expect that spring will bring rain and summer will bring sunshine, but they never know how much rain or how much sun. Farmers have calibrated themselves to know what they can and what they cannot do, just as Christian leaders must. We need to have a view of leadership that acknowledges that God’s work is decisive, that nothing we do can accomplish what we value most.

One short verse of the Bible summarizes Christian leadership. At the fractured founding of the church in Corinth, “[Paul] planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase” (1 Cor. 3:6 KJV). In Christian leadership, God’s action is the decisive work. Paul and Apollos tended the Corinthian crops, but God made them grow. The Christian leaders did indeed have work to do, but it only mattered because of what God chose to do. The distinction is important because the work of Christian leadership is planting and watering. Indeed, this is a book about planting and watering.

We Christians spend our days and nights like farmers; we are tending the people whom God has entrusted to our care. But we cannot make the people grow. We do not operate an assembly line; there is no guaranteed outcome. We nurture our people by creating an environment conducive to growth, then we hand our people over to God. Only God can give the increase. If we are to innovate our way into the world that just now exists, we will need to think like farmers.

My grandfather was what the Bible calls a steward. He farmed 140 acres of citrus trees for a landowner who lived far away. The Hollow Hill Farm was entrusted to his care. He devoted himself to his trees, and he wanted them to bear fruit. But every season, he knew that it was God who gave the increase. So, if God did the decisive work, what did my grandfather do? He managed the environment that nurtured the orchard. Like Paul and Apollos, he spent his days planting and watering. While he could not guarantee a harvest, he could control the water, the soil, and the temperature that encouraged growth.

A farmer will go to great lengths to maintain that environment. For example, there were winter nights when my grandfather stayed up all night trying to deal with the cold. In the Southern California valley where he labored, the temperature occasionally dipped below freezing and threatened to kill the trees entrusted to his care. On those nights, he set up between each pair of trees what were called “smudge pots”—tall, fat pipes filled with burning motor oil. As they belched a smelly haze, they kept the trees from freezing. Smudging was exhausting and dirty work. All night long, he made sure each inky mess continued to burn. In the morning, my grandfather was covered with an oily residue, but his trees had survived. (If you lead in Jesus’s name, you too will have days when you find yourself covered in some sort of grime.) My grandfather was a steward with an orchard entrusted to his care. His planting and watering could not guarantee growth, but he could focus on creating an environment conducive for growth.

This idea that God does the decisive work changes the way we lead, and it even changes the way we see Christian practices like prayer. For example, I learned to pray differently when my wife, Genie, had cancer (cancer that was a lot more serious than either of us wanted to acknowledge out loud). I realized that at the time I had a fairly simplistic mental model of prayer, and I needed a deeper understanding. Sometimes I acted like I could obligate God, as if just the right prayer would control God so that God would do what I wanted. And sometimes I acted like it was just self-talk, as if all it did was make me feel better. I knew neither view was true, but I regularly acted as if they were. I needed an understanding of prayer that allowed me—like the farmer—to hand over to God the things that mattered most to me.

The insight came when I acknowledged that I was deeply invested in something I could neither influence nor control. I wanted to make my wife get well, but I could do nothing to guarantee the outcome I desperately desired. It was deeply disturbing. And, at first, that led to fatalism. I’d just say to myself that God would do what God would do and try not to think about what I could not control. It was a way of emotionally protecting myself while overwhelmed by the initial shock of her cancer.

But eventually I found a way to express faith rather than fatalism.9 I created a little ritual where each day I would start the morning by handing Genie over to God in just the way that a farmer has to turn his trees over to God. I did it each day as I began my commute because that was usually the first time I was alone with God. I would say (often aloud), “God, if I could take control of this myself, I would. But I can’t. I am left with no choice but to trust you. So, with fear and trembling, I hand Genie over to you.” While I said it, I would often make a gesture with my hands of lifting something up to God, asking God to accept this most precious thing from me.

That was a decade ago (she is fine now), but it changed the way I pray. I now see prayer as handing over my loved ones and my fears to God in an honest statement of belief and unbelief. I say (often aloud), “God, if I could make it happen myself, I would. But since I cannot, I hand this person (or situation) over to you. I believe; help my unbelief.” I recognize that I have a part to play when I pray in that I have to lift the person up to God, but it is God who does the decisive work. It would be a tragic mistake to think that my work was the most important part of prayer.

In a similar way, Christian leaders often make this mistake when they pursue Christian innovation. We cannot act as if our work is decisive, as if we could create a program or process that would guarantee our people will grow. When Erica came to Pasadena for the innovation summit, she had a wonderful sense that her people belonged to God and that only God could meet her people in their pain. But there are other Christian leaders who, often through a misguided sense of responsibility, search for the proper program, one that will be enough to ensure that their people will develop a life-altering faith in Jesus. It is too easy to forget that our fa...