Everywhere You Look by Tim Soerens

Author:Tim Soerens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Neighborhood church;church in the neighborhood;community church;emerging adults and the church;young generations leaving the church;future of the church;purpose of the church;Christian church;church;parish;community;intentionality;transformation;practices;inhabit;pastor;state of the church;local church;local ministry;neighborhood ministry;parish collective
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2020-04-28T08:33:40+00:00

You Can’t Go Alone

This will sound a bit ridiculous, but we can’t be the church by ourselves. We cannot take this journey into the parish alone. No one would ever make an argument that we can, but the truth is that the vast majority of the stories we tell, the resources we use, and the songs we sing are about us as individuals. We love to celebrate the solitary hero and to read self-help books. Digital technology is shaping us into the most individualistic culture in the history of humankind. The story line that undergirds so much of our culture is “you can make it happen by yourself if you try harder.” But this is tearing our social fabric. David Brooks notes, “Our society suffers from a crisis of connection, a crisis of solidarity. We live in a culture of hyper-individualism.”5 Our task is to build a community with the vision and capacity to create local culture.

For far too long, Christians have employed endless strategies to get more people to come to our church programs. Against the tide of decline, we revert to the default: try to make our programs and services more attractive. Meanwhile the long game—which is the only game that matters—is profoundly neglected. The long game cultivates, nurtures, and creates vibrant local cultures. If we cease to do this, it’s nearly impossible to live into the vision put forth by words of Jesus: “You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept” (Matthew 5:15 The Message).

Naming this reality as I have is not a quick fix. To get where we are today, we have unintentionally focused on the wrong goal, and it will likely take decades to reimagine and recreate the church. We don’t need to be in an anxious rush. But neither can we keep propping up our insecure strategies that place the numerical growth of church attendance above joining God to create a local culture in our parishes.

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