When Dr. Michael W. Goheen was a young church planter in Toronto, he found himself caught in an impossible tension. On one side was his rich Reformed theological tradition, deeply rooted in scripture but seemingly irrelevant to contemporary Canadians. On the other was the pragmatic church growth movement—highly relevant but theologically shallow.
This tension would lead Michael on a journey that would transform his understanding of church, culture, and mission—and ultimately help revitalize a dying congregation in one of Hamilton, Ontario’s poorest neighborhoods.
“American pastors want things fast, large, and famous,” Michael reflects, drawing on his colleague Zack Eswine’s observation. “But you look in the Bible, and the kingdom of God comes slowly, in small and mostly unrecognized ways.” This insight cuts to the heart of why many church renewal efforts fail to produce lasting transformation.
The Cultural Idolatry We Don’t See
One of Michael’s most striking insights, drawn from his study of missiologist Lesslie Newbigin, is how difficult it can be to recognize the assumptions shaping our own cultural context. After years as a missionary in India, Newbigin found that returning to the West helped him see his own culture with fresh eyes, and how Western culture subtly transforms things like progress, efficiency, and individual autonomy into objects of worship.
“The reality is that most of us don’t realize how deeply we’re shaped by the beliefs and values of our culture,” Michael explains. “We often assume our cultural perspectives are neutral or natural, when in fact they’re profoundly forming how we think about everything—including our faith.” This unconscious formation makes it particularly challenging for churches to discern where they might be accommodating to cultural assumptions that subtly deform the gospel.
Michael notes how this plays out in church leadership: Many congregations unconsciously adopt business metrics as their measure of faithfulness, pursue technological solutions to spiritual challenges, or reshape their ministry to cater to individual consumer preferences—all without recognizing how these approaches might reflect cultural idolatries rather than gospel values. The solution isn’t to reject every cultural form, but to be more discerning about how cultural assumptions shape our understanding of church, faith, and mission.
“The question isn’t whether to engage with culture,” Michael emphasizes, “but how to love and live into a place without taking on its idolatries.”
Beyond the Quick Fix Mentality
The path forward, according to Michael, isn’t about finding new programs or strategies. Instead, it requires rethinking core church practices with a missional orientation.
“It’s about taking the normal practices of the church—preaching, Lord’s Supper, worship, discipleship, fellowship—and reorienting them in a new way towards the world,” he explains. “In other words, nourishing God’s people for the sake of the world and finding ways to remind them constantly of that.”
Such reorientation isn’t quick or easy, but it can lead to profound transformation. Michael experienced this firsthand when he received a call from a struggling congregation in Hamilton, Ontario. The church was down to 50 elderly members and losing people rapidly. Unable to secure a full-time pastor, they reached out to Michael after hearing him speak about missional renewal.
Together with two of his seminary students, Michael began working with this congregation to reshape their common life around mission. They started by reimagining their Reformed liturgy, looking for ways each element of worship could orient people toward God’s work in the world. They launched a two-year preaching series on the biblical story, helping people see God’s mission woven throughout scripture. Rather than lowering expectations to attract more people, they actually made church membership more demanding—focusing on deeper discipleship and mission formation.
To everyone’s surprise, the congregation began to experience dramatic renewal. “We saw the church explode with mostly conversion growth,” Michael recalls. They witnessed remarkable transformations, including one of the city’s biggest drug dealers coming to faith in Christ. “I’ve never seen God work like that in my life and may never see it again,” he reflects. “But it was quite exciting.”
The key wasn’t implementing dramatic new programs or following church growth formulas. Instead, it was helping an existing congregation rediscover their identity as God’s missionary people through ordinary practices done with extraordinary intentionality and prayer.
Learning from the Early Church
Michael points to the early church’s catechetical process as a model for this kind of formation. In the first two years before baptism, new believers were taught:
- The gospel and biblical story as their new foundational narrative
- How to recognize and resist the dominant cultural stories
- The church’s missional identity and purpose
- The importance of character formation for effective witness
“There was a sense of not being shaped by the cultural story and forming people over against that idolatry for the sake of mission,” Michael notes. “It’s that kind of discipleship that is so essential.”
A New Way Forward
The implications for church leaders today are profound. Rather than exhausting themselves trying to fix and manage church decline, they’re invited into a different posture—one of prayer and discernment, looking for where God is already at work.
This approach requires letting go of our modern Western assumption that we can save ourselves through the right techniques or strategies. Instead, it calls us to the harder but more faithful work of helping our communities recognize and resist cultural idolatries while embodying the gospel in relevant and transformative ways.
As Michael’s experience shows, this path may not lead to quick wins or dramatic turnarounds. But it offers something more important: the opportunity to participate authentically in God’s mission, forming communities that can bear faithful witness to the gospel in our challenging cultural moment.
