Whenever the church identifies a problem, our instinct is to build something and fix it.
Maybe it’s a sermon series or a new ministry. We might revisit our values, rethink discipleship, or change our staff and leadership structures. Having a plan can be reassuring, especially when we’re not entirely sure what the problem is. At least we’re doing something.
But I wonder if our instinct to fix things has become part of what needs fixing.
We’ve spent years teaching people, often without intending to, that church is something they attend and consume. It’s silly to assume that we can undo that by offering a better product. And if we’ve made pastors into religious producers, asking them to produce more resources about authentic Christian community seems like a strange way forward.
I think we need to repent.
I realize that’s a loaded word, particularly for those of us who grew up in churches where repentance was mostly associated with guilt, fear, and altar calls. But repentance is a gift. It is the grace of being able to tell the truth about ourselves and, by God’s mercy, turn in another direction.
And we need to tell quite a bit of truth.
As a pastor, I have to ask myself why growth matters so much to me. I believe deeply that people matter to God, and I want our church to grow because of that. But I also know there’s something in me that enjoys the affirmation of a growing congregation. Those motives aren’t always easy to separate. I’ve felt the disappointment of a poorly attended Sunday and the satisfaction of a full room. I’d like to believe those feelings are entirely about the kingdom of God, but I know myself better than that.
I suspect I’m not the only pastor who wrestles with this.
Other questions deserve our attention. How much of our ministry has been shaped around the gifts and personalities of pastors? Have we created churches where people are encouraged to follow Jesus, or have we unintentionally taught them to depend on a handful of professionals to do the work of faith for them? (btw, we have)
Congregations have their own reckoning.
We’ve become remarkably comfortable evaluating churches according to what they provide us. We have opinions about preaching, music, children’s programs, and whether a particular church feels like a good fit. We have opinions about the decor (or, as some call it, religious imagery/art), carpets (for and against), and other aesthetics. Some of those concerns are legitimate. Churches should care about how they welcome people, how they embody beauty, and whether their ministries are serving them well.
But somewhere along the way, personal preference has acquired an authority it probably doesn’t deserve. We can become so accustomed to asking whether a church meets our needs that we rarely consider what our presence might mean for the people already there.
I wonder how many of us say we want Christian community when what we actually want is to feel connected without having to be known. We appreciate the idea of people carrying one another’s burdens, provided someone else is available to do the carrying.
And perhaps we’ve become comfortable paying pastors and church staff to practice a kind of Christian life we admire but don’t intend to live ourselves.
This is difficult territory, and I don’t think pastors or congregations get to excuse themselves from it.
What concerns me most is what all of this is doing to us.
I don’t mean whether we’re attending more services or participating in more church activities. I’m asking whether our shared life is actually making us more like Jesus.
Think about the people who know us best. Our spouses, children, coworkers, and neighbors. Would they say we’ve become more patient over the last several years? Do they see people learning to pray, admitting when they’re wrong, and less threatened by disagreement? Or have we simply become more knowledgeable about our faith while remaining largely unchanged in the ways we treat one another?
I find those questions considerably more unsettling than an attendance report.
They’re also questions we don’t know how to manage very well.
A pastor can create a system, but a pastor cannot manufacture spiritual formation. We can teach Scripture and help people develop practices that open their lives to God. We can model what it looks like to confess our failures and invite others to do the same. Church leaders have important work to do.
But the Holy Spirit forms a Christian. And the Spirit has never seemed particularly interested in following our quarterly goals.
In his work on the early church, Alan Kreider describes the patient formation of a people whose everyday habits made the Christian faith compelling to those around them. Their witness was inseparable from the kind of lives they were learning to live. The gospel had become visible in them.
That fascinates me, particularly because so much of our contemporary approach to church assumes that the right presentation will produce the right response.
I’m not convinced that’s how people are formed.
And I’m increasingly concerned that our constant pursuit of new solutions allows us to avoid examining the desires that produced our problems in the first place.
We can change our ministry language without changing what we love. A church can adopt the vocabulary of community and still organize its entire life around the Sunday production. A pastor can preach humility while quietly measuring his worth against another congregation's success. We can talk about spiritual formation while still rewarding the things that are easiest to count.
I know because I’ve participated in some of this myself.
That’s why I believe repentance has to come before our next big idea. Otherwise, we’re likely to carry the same assumptions into whatever we build. We might even convince ourselves that we’ve changed because the new version looks different.
Repentance asks something more difficult of us.
For pastors, it may begin with admitting that we don’t know how to fix what we’ve helped create. I don’t particularly enjoy that admission. After more than twenty years in ministry, I’d like to think I have some answers. And maybe I do. But I’m learning to be suspicious of how quickly I reach for them.
For congregations, repentance might mean accepting that the problems we see in the church aren’t exclusively the responsibility of its leaders. We have helped shape this culture through our expectations and the ways we’ve chosen to participate, or not participate, in the life of the church.
And perhaps, for all of us, it means recovering the ability to sit before God without immediately turning the experience into something productive. This is the practice of contemplative prayer (slowing down to hear from God).
I don’t think the answer is to abandon organization or stop caring about doing things well. I’m grateful for competent leadership, thoughtful planning, and ministries that serve people effectively. Those things matter.
But they were never meant to be the substance of the church’s life.
Our programs should support the life we’re sharing, not replace it. The way we communicate about our church should reflect something true about who we are. And pastors, however gifted or faithful, cannot live the Christian life on behalf of their congregations.
I expect genuine repentance will eventually require practical changes. We may have to reconsider where our money goes or why our calendars are so full. There may be ministries we’ve maintained for years that no longer serve the people we’ve been called to become. We may need to challenge some of our assumptions about leadership, success, and what a healthy church looks like.
I’m not sure yet what all of that should look like. And for once, I think I’m okay with not having a plan ready.
What I do know is that we need to become more willing to tell the truth about ourselves.
Before we decide what the church needs to build next, perhaps we ought to spend some time considering what we’ve already built has done to us.