A few years ago, I sat down with a pastor in the middle of a job hunt. I asked her how it was going.
She shook her head.
“All of these churches say they want to grow. But I know that, when it comes down to it, they don’t actually want to change.”
She was talking from experience. She’d served in congregations that had claimed they wanted change. But she’d found that the reality was different.
If you’re pastoring a declining church, chances are, it’s a story you’re familiar with. Why is this happening? Why is there such a disparity between what congregations say they want, and what they really want?
It’s because there’s emotional work behind church reform.
People see the unused Sunday School buildings. They read the dwindling finance reports. They note the decreasing baptisms and confirmations.
The more invested members of the church may even be keeping up with statistical analysis that discusses the reasons behind religious decline.
They know these trends aren’t sustainable. They know it can’t go on forever.
So they ask for a pastor who will change things up. They know they need one. But they’re not really ready.
Why? Because there’s emotional work behind church reform that’s rarely discussed or acknowledged.
There are plenty of resources on how to modernize your liturgy or programming. But it’s very hard to find blogs or books on the emotional work behind church reform. One exception is Diana Butler Bass’s The Practicing Congregation, which first alerted me to the issue.
But very few other religious thinkers are examining the emotional work behind church reform that must be done before we can actually embark on the complex journey.
Why is there so much baggage?
A few weeks ago, in my OK Boomer blog, I touched on the pain that our increasingly secular society can bring. Back in the 1950s, the Church stood as a pillar of society. Clergymen were an easy source of authority. Social circles centered around religion.
People could, more or less, assume that their friends and neighbors believed similar things. They could count on their children and grandchildren sharing the same religious heritage.
In other words, mainline Protestantism held an elevated, shared place in society. No longer.
In the last few decades, the Church has become relatively de-centralized from society. It’s been removed from the center of social life. It no longer unites families and the country in the way it once did.
And for people who grew up in a time when the Church was central, this new world can be difficult to get used to. It can be heartbreaking to not share the same religious convictions as your grandchildren. It can be unfathomable to imagine generations of children raised without religious education.
I spent four years attending a church mostly made up of Boomers and the Silent Generation. People never stopped asking me why there weren’t more young people in the pews. They always wanted to discuss how my friends could be more attracted to worship.
But underneath the practical, intellectual questions, I sensed deep grief and fear.
Grief that their church wasn’t as vibrant as it once was. Fear that generations of cultural and religious heritage could be lost.
Maybe those aren’t just the emotions of your congregation. Maybe those are your feelings, too. Church decline can lay the heaviest burden on religious leaders.
If that’s the case, the three considerations below are worth your attention to support the emotional work behind church reform. If you experience fear and grief when you think about church decline, use these resources for yourself first. Then, your congregation will benefit from your insight.
Empathy First
If you read Reformation 4.0, you’re probably focused on the future of the Church. Where is the Holy Spirit calling us next?
But elders in your congregation might need to reminisce about the past before they are ready to move forward. So when I meet an elder who wants to talk about church reform, I first ask them about the church of their youth.
I ask them what they loved—what made it vital and alive for them? What made them fall in love with church in the first place?
What was it about this place that made them so loyal to their denomination or congregation, so loyal to the institution?
Chances are, they will mention the community or the spiritual vivacity. This is a way to transition from reminiscing about the past to envisioning the future. If they enjoyed these things so much, might they be interested in creating rich community or spiritual vivacity for young adults nowadays, too?
Their needs matter, too.
Around the time that I first began thinking about church reform, I spent every Sunday with my grandma. I’d come back from church all aflutter about my ideas to make mainline Protestantism more welcoming to Millennials.
One Sunday, my grandma chimed in. “What about us?” she asked. “If you’re so focused on meeting Millennials’ needs, where do we fit in?”
I felt horrible. Of course, her spiritual needs mattered just as much as mine. So I began to ask her and others what they needed from their church communities.
Asking about the spiritual needs of elders reinforces their importance in the congregation. It helps them know that church reform does not mean shutting them out to bring in younger generations. And, it can provide you with clear points of reference as you revision what your congregation will look like.
The emotional work behind church reform
When they’ve reminisced and expressed their needs to you, you can start talking about the emotions this new religious landscape brings. There’s likely some grief that the traditions of the past can’t be taken for granted. Perhaps there’s fear about losing a generational religious identity.
You likely have your own theology and pastoral skills that can handle these emotions. Whatever your style, set up ways for them to express and process their emotions about detraditionalization and church decline.
One thought that has been comforting to me in my own emotional work around church reform: the Holy Spirit is at work now as She has been throughout church history. We are not alone in our reform, and we never have been.