The Reinvented Church

“Everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like death and taxes–it should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm.”

Peter Drucker, Management Challenges for The 21st Century (1999)

Change happens. I don?t know why it is such a big deal. We change our oil, our underwear, our tune, and our channel. You would think we would be used to it by now. But we?re not. I consider myself to be pretty open to change. But it took years for me to get over it when Van Halen brought in Sammy Hagar to replace David Lee Roth. Then, just when I had accepted Sammy, they got rid of him. Not fair.

Change hurts. It?s nerve racking. It?s threatening, especially when it is connected to something we consider sacred. I suppose that?s why most churches have difficulty making even the most cosmetic of changes.

I remember one of the first times I ever got into trouble for making a change at a church. I was preaching for a small church outside of Abilene, Texas while I was still going to college. One Sunday morning I moved two grotesque looking chairs from the front of the auditorium that were rarely used and always in the way. That Sunday night one of the longtime members of the church called a congregational meeting and stated with tears in his eyes that he thought it was a travesty that the chairs had been moved. After all, they had been bought 25 years ago in memory of a dearly loved couple that faithfully attended that church for years. To move those chairs was to defame their memory. It didn?t matter that most of the members didn?t even know who these long deceased people were. What mattered was that this man did. In his mind, those chairs were sacred. He couldn?t tolerate the change.

Why do some people struggle when a church changes the kind of songs it sings in the worship assembly? They struggle because the old songs, either because of the lyrics, the music, or the style, have become sacred. Maybe those songs saw them through a particularly tough time in their life, or maybe they remind them of times of great joy. Either way, as they see their favorite songs being replaced by songs they don?t know and to which they have no connection, they feel that somehow the anchor to which they have attached their faith is moving. That?s a terrible feeling.

Church members can and have labeled far more than songs and furniture as sacred. The name on the sign in front of the building, the color of the carpet inside the building, the location of the building, the order in which things are done in the assembly, the meeting time of the assembly, the format of the bulletin, the number of prayers prayed in the assembly, the gender of the person doing the praying, the way communion is taken, …the list could go and on. There is not a corral big enough to hold all the sacred cows that Christians bring with them to church.

Which, of course, creates quite a problem. On one hand, every time a church makes even the slightest change, it runs the risk of slaughtering someone?s sacred cow. My creative idea is your broken heart. On the other hand, the church that doesn?t change eventually loses touch with the world around it and makes the most drastic change of all–it dies. To take a solemn vow of changelessness is not an option. To brazenly make changes without considering the feelings of others isn?t the solution either.

The real question is not: How do we make necessary changes without hurting someone else?s feelings or violating their convictions? The real question is: How do we avoid anchoring the well being of our faith and the peacefulness of our community to things that should never be considered sacred? Unless we learn to do that, we are bound to repeat the same vicious cycle, no matter what changes we make. A generation later, what was once new will be old. What was once cutting edge will be sacred. When its time to make a change . . .MOO!

That?s why, at this point in our journey together, the most important change that needs to take place in our church has nothing to do with externals like worship style, church name, or meeting time. Instead, we need to change the way we think about the church and its relationship to change. To do this, we?ve got distinguish between three kinds of churches that are described by Brian McClaren in his book, Reinventing the Church.

First, there is the renewed church. The renewed church is an old church that, after having lost touch with its own people, goes through the process of change in order to relate to them and better meet their needs again. The problem with a renewed church is that it can never quite catch up with the times. A renewed church will often rely upon the published ideas and methods of what will later be described as reinvented churches. By the time these ideas are published, they are already outdated. While the innovative church that came up with the idea in the first place in moving on to something new, the renewed church exerts massive energy implementing a “new” way of doing something that really isn?t. While the members of the church may feel they are a part of a “progressive” or “contemporary” church, they are still probably ten years behind society at large. When a spiritual seeker walks through the doors there is still the feeling that he or she has entered a time warp and can?t tell whether God is outdated and out of touch or if just this particular church is. Another problem with the renewed church is that in 20 or 30 years it will once again be in serious trouble as it loses touch with another generation of its own people and will be forced to begin the process of renewal all over again.

Second, there is the restored church. The restored church seeks to solve the problems of the church today by going back to the New Testament to rediscover what made the 1st Century church so vibrant. There is nothing wrong with this approach per se, except that most if not all churches end up getting side tracked by some peripheral feature of the early church and end up making it the centerpiece of their identity. They proclaim that this “lost detail” will make all the difference once it is restored. Speaking in tongues, foot washing, a love feast, acapella worship, no church buildings, small group structure, communal living, you name it and some church has latched onto it as being the key to restoring New Testament Christianity. What might have been a helpful addition to the church?s practice of the Christian faith, becomes the most sacred of all cows that often sends the restored church into a spiral of irrelevance and defensiveness.

Third, there is the reinvented church. The reinvented church is different from the renewed church in that it not only changes its style, but also changes its attitude. It accepts change as an unchanging fact of life. Instead of trying to catch up to the present, it corrects those tendencies that would make it fall behind in the first place. It doesn?t avoid change, or enter into it with a grimace. The reinvented church embraces change as an opportunity to more clearly articulate the Christian faith for it?s struggling neighbors. It can do this because it has completely removed the anti-change bias that paralyzes most churches.

The reinvented church is different from the restored church in that as McClaren states, “it doesn?t see the New Testament as a ?New Leviticus?–a law book of strict rules–nor as a fixed blueprint to be applied to all churches in all cultures across time. Rather, the New Testament serves as an inspired, exemplary, and eternally relevant case study of how the early church itself adapted and evolved and coped with rapid change and new challenges.” Instead of having a rigid structure to which all must conform, the reinvented church “advocates a flexible, adaptable, evolving structure that is developed to meet the current needs. The key word is adaptable.”

The reinvented church knows that there is no one “right way” to do church and that even if there is, it doesn?t have the wisdom to get it right. Rather, it will constantly be changing and adapting as it grows as a body and learns more about the needs of society that can be met through the gospel. This is what the early church had to do to survive, and this is what the reinvented church must do. Members of a reinvented church know they must leave their sacred cows at the door, because nothing shy of the gospel itself is safe from the wand of change. There is no place in a reinvented church for sentimentality over worship styles, evangelistic programs, or teaching methods. The reinvented church loves the new wine so much that it vows never to become attached to wineskins of any sort. That way, when the wineskins need to be discarded, there is a minimum of anguish.

To reach our community with the gospel, we must develop the attitude of a church that is about more than just renewal or restoration. We must become a church that is willing to reinvent itself whenever necessary for the sake of a world desperately in need of the gospel. Times, they are a changin?, so is our church. Let?s see if we can?t turn our sacred cows into gourmet burgers. (Thanks Bill Easum)