Four Pivots the Church Must Make
Shifts in posture, focus, structure, and leadership will help us follow God into a hopeful future.
Pivot One
Posture
From fixing to listening, discerning, and experimenting
Many churches and leaders are tempted to expend their energy trying to fix inherited structures in order to reverse the decline of institutional affiliation, participation, and resources.
Christ’s local church will endure, but voluntary association institutional structures largely can’t be fixed.
Instead, churches should focus on discerning and joining the triune God’s presence and movement in their personal and congregational lives and in their neighborhoods.
This means: presence, curiosity, deep listening, and experimentation.
Pivot Two
Focus
From membership to discipleship
Inherited patterns of institutional membership often assumed discipleship rather than intentionally cultivating it.
Following Jesus in the power of the Spirit is not optional for Christians.
Churches that thrive will orient their communal culture around practices and relationships that connect faith and daily life and answer questions of meaning, belonging, hope, and purpose.
This means learning God’s story in scripture and embracing and embodying a holistic Gospel.
Churches that thrive will orient their communal culture around practices and relationships that connect faith and daily life and answer questions of meaning, belonging, hope, and purpose.
Pivot Three
Structure
From one-size-fits-all to a mixed ecology
The term “church” conjures up for most people a particular institutional expression (dedicated building, staff, programming focused on Sunday worship) that is too narrow for today’s context.
One size or shape of church does not fit all.
We need a mixed ecology of inherited and innovative forms of Christian community that connect with people where they live, work, and play.
Pivot Four
Leadership
From clergy-led/lay-supported to lay-led/clergy-supported ministry
Increasing numbers of local churches are already lay-led by choice or necessity.
As the association model of church erodes, so will the professionalized model of ministry.
As a result, the future will be largely lay-led, clergy-supported, rather than clergy-led, lay-supported.
We have an opportunity to reimagine leadership in ways that faithfully mobilize all the gifts of the body of Christ to participate in God’s mission.
