Healthy Christianity in a Post-Christian West

by Trent Grable, Director of Strategy & Leadership

Yet no cruelty of yours, though each were to exceed the last in its exquisite refinement, profits you in the least; but forms rather an attraction to our sect. We spring up in greater numbers as often as we are mown down by you: the blood of the Christians is a source of new life. —Tertullian, 1890

Western Christianity is a dying institution. Within several decades Christians may be one of many minority religious expressions in the United States of America. 2 The age of Christendom may be over for the West, at least as it relates to worship services, one of modern western Christianity's significant and centering attributes.

Hirsch and Catchim 6 shed the idea that faithful Christians are the ones that simply go to church, instead observing, “every believer ought to be considered a church planter and every church should be thought of as a church-planting church.” Church should be an extension of the very nature of being a Christian. One “goes to church” as much as one “goes to marriage” or “goes to friendship.” As observed by Ford, Wagner, and Hirsch, “[t]he church is not an activity but an identity.” 7 When success for the Church is measured only in financial assets and regular attenders, the act of gathering takes precedence over the purpose of gathering. Marriages, measured only by the number of expensive dates, potentially miss vital metrics of a successful and healthy marriage. The challenge becomes not to look at the gatherings in the marriage as a measure of success; instead, we must look at the health of the marriage itself.

Health is not a measure of mass but missional functionality. Therefore, the health of a congregation is not measured in how big it can become or how many activities it puts on but in fulfilling its mission. In a post- Christendom world, the measure of success is not "how many gather together" but "how far can we go together." 8 The size of our gatherings may decrease in the West, but it was never about attendees. The “death” of Christendom and the cultural safety it provided for many worship services may be the change needed to refocus on the health and mission of our Church for the future.

Rendle explores a different way of measuring the missional success of churches, focusing on the metrics of changed lives and intentional congregations. He explores several critical questions for congregations to wrestle with and pray over to ensure that the congregation's purpose remains the center within any gatherings.

• First, a congregation must realize its environmental state. Only after coming to terms with its current condition and required decision-making will the congregation understand its opportunities in its current moment. A congregation might ask itself whether it feels successful at accomplishing its mission.

• Second, the congregation needs to define or redefine its specific success. Organizations are entities of "purposeful human endeavor. Hence, enterprises strive to accomplish something." 9 The congregation's success is not in that people show up, but in that it accomplishes its mission. A church might ask: what is this church's mission?

• Third, the congregation must determine its accessibility to the purpose and mission. For many congregations, membership is limited, “where the only participation by the vast majority is through singing.” 10 Leadership will need to ask: what does it mean to be a congregation member?

• Fourth, the congregation must establish its governing structure to fulfill the mission. What adjustments need to happen and what structures need to be refined to fulfill the mission are central and ongoing questions for the organization.

References

1) Tertullian. (1890). The Apology of Tertullian. Page 82.

2) Pew Research Center. (2022, September 13). Modeling the Future of Religion in America. https://www.pewresearch.org/ religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/

3) Newton, P.l A. (2007). The Package Matters: Problems with the Church Growth Movement. Areopagus Journal. Apologetics Resource Center: Troublesome Movements in the 21st–Century Church, 7(3).

4) Rendle, G. (2014). Doing the math of mission: Fruits, faithfulness, and metric. Rowman & Littlefield.

5) Barna. (2017, March 30). Meet those who “love Jesus but not the church.” https://www.barna.com/research/ meet-love-jesus-not-church/

6) Hirsch, A. & Catchim, T. (2012). The Permanent Revolution. Jossey-Bass. Page 209.

7) Ford, L., Wegner, R., & Hirsch, A. (2021). The Starfish and the Spirit. Zondervan Reflective. Page 59.

8) Ibid.

9) Hoogervorst, J. A. P. (2017). Foundations of enterprise governance and enterprise engineering. Springer. Page 2.

10) Ford, L., Wegner, R., & Hirsch, A. (2021). The Starfish and the Spirit. Zondervan Reflective. Page 48.

References (Not Cited)

Wang, W. & Elhage, A. (2022, January 2). Here’s Who Stopped Going to Church During the Pandemic. Christianity Today. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/january-web-only/attendance-decline-covid-pandemic-church.html