The Need to Reimagine

by Jacob Clagg, Director of Communications

THE CGGC'S THEME FOR THE LAST YEAR has been “Reimagine.” There was a recognition in the last few years that things just were not “working” anymore for many churches. We could place the blame on Covid, but common wisdom suggests Covid merely accelerated already entrenched problems. Small churches had been feeling the pinch of low attendance and lower evangelistic outcomes for years prior (maybe decades prior). In truth, a whole host of reasons surround the impetus for reimagining ministry

Low attendance, precipitous Christian demographics and a significant fallout with the current and next generations of youth, a changing cultural stance towards (or against) Christianity, the failure of many new church initiatives, the closing of many well-established churches, large denominational splits, and horrendous clergy scandals are all challenging issues for the Church. From the perspective of the average inward facing Christian, not much about church had probably changed in the last two decades, but for those with an outward focused or local church leadership perspective, almost everything about ministry feels more difficult. The same evangelistic tactics that worked in the last decade have had poor results in this one, and the amount of effort put into reaching people seems to have had a disproportionate return on investment. Christianity writ large recognizes these problems, and innovators from all over are trying new strategies, propping and sifting to find what works.

I think there’s a hesitation when any of these new trends pop up, whether it’s Reimagine, Strategic Planning, Fresh Expressions, or any number of other fancy and innovative terms we use. And that is perfectly reasonable. Christianity is, after all, a thousands-of-years-old religion, deeply steeped in tradition, and which adheres to a specific book or canon. Christianity inherently resists change because it claims to have found the truth, and the truth doesn’t change. Instead, what we really mean by “Reimagine” is about getting back to the way Jesus asked us to do ministry, not reimagining the truth itself. As we stated in our first Reimagine issue last year, “We’re really talking about rediscovering our true calling or core mission.”

We’ve not been reimagining the gospel, we’ve been reimagining how we go about sharing the gospel effectively in our modern context, and in doing so we’ve been considering all the fixtures of religiosity that might need stripped away. Which parts of our religious traditions are based on Christ and Scripture, and which parts have just been accumulated over time and are getting in the way? Which parts of our church life have started to become so important that they are compromising our ability to do what Jesus has called us to do? Our attempt at Reimagining seeks to use Scripture like a compass to point us back to authentic Christian methods of worshipping God, saving the lost, and making disciples.

What We’ve Reimagined

This is fundamentally what all revivals are, a push to get “back to basics.” This necessarily means excising and throwing off some of the overencumbering weight of past methods and modes. This doesn’t mean we toss out all the old worship music, stained glass windows, and pews for the sake of contemporary aesthetics. No, we mean a major rethink of ideas like “seeker friendly” services, where the inbuilt expectation is that people will just show up to our services, convert, and be discipled.

Very little has been left off the table of our reimagining. We’ve rethought the way we do church planting, as the incredibly high investment cost of starting a new worship service, even in an existing building, has become an unsustainable proposition for many church planters. Naturally, there’s also a serious question about whether or not more worship services are the kind of ministry that our culture needs right now. Worship is a quintessential part of our Christian life, but should our weekly gatherings be limited to worship and a sermon? Likewise, the physical space of the church was reimagined. If we have these wonderful spaces to worship in, they ought to be utilized more than just 2 or 3 days a week. We asked and considered what other kinds of ‘expressions’ of the church we might dare to see in the future. Perhaps the community needs a food pantry, or a perhaps other non-profit community resources need a space to operate out of.

Practical Reimagined

In our next article, CGGC President and Wharton Church of God Pastor David Odegard shares what he believes are four essentials for reviving local church ministry. Here we get incredibly practical and offer truly simple principles to apply to a congregation of any size, but particularly for small local churches. These aren’t radical new ideas. As we’ve stated, much of our reimagining is reclaiming the value of truly ancient ideas of discipleship, prayer, and hospitality.