The Biggest Challenge Facing The Church

Sometimes I get questions from people who want to talk about all the challenges the church is facing in the modern world. Usually, these "challenges" come down to one of three things - declining attendance, declining membership and increasing budget deficits. In my own context of Central United Church in Port Colborne, although our attendance is well below what it was about 20-30 years ago, in fact for the last 5 years we've been holding pretty steady. Our membership has taken a hit, and, yes, we have budget deficits. Sometimes big ones. We have some reserves to cover them, but they'll eventually run out if we don't straighten things out. Fortunately, over the last couple of years things have been getting better. The deficits have been going down. That's good news. Overall, though, those three things are the things I hear talked about as the biggest challenges facing the church today. A fourth that sometimes gets mentioned is the increasing secularization of society. I'm not going to deny that those are all significant challenges. They are. But I am going to suggest that none of them are our biggest challenge (either at the micro level of my own congregation, or at the macro level of western Christianity.) The biggest challenge facing the church today is a lack of hope.

Those other challenges can cause us a lot of problems, but when we lose hope, we can easily find ourselves paralyzed. We start to die not so much because we're dying, but because we're convinced that we can't survive. And we become more and more insular, more and more focused on ourselves. Ultimately, the purpose of the church stops being outward mission and becomes fund-raising in increasingly desperate attempts to keep the doors open for another few months. People get worn out serving the institution, and they forget about serving God. Or, they get the two mixed up - and serving the institution becomes serving God. And it's all because we lose hope for the future, we become convinced that we're going to die and so we become committed to just hanging on for as long as we can. Rather than something to be embraced for its potential, tomorrow becomes something to be feared. And that's such a shame. We should face the future with excitement and confidence - and , yes, hope. Loss of hope is the greatest challenge facing the church today, not just because it makes us fearful, but because it runs so counter to what we as Christians believe.

We believe in a risen Lord! Jesus died - and yet Jesus lives! How can we who follow Jesus be so fearful about the possibility that a congregation might die? From death comes resurrection. From death comes new life. And I don't believe we have to literally die to be resurrected. There are congregations today that are dead already - they just don't know it yet, or they're fighting against that reality. But even that reality is (if looked at properly) their great hope - because maybe resurrection awaits. Maybe new life is around the corner. Faith is supposed to release us from fear by reminding us that the thing we fear most - death - is already defeated. So, what's to fear? Why not be hopeful? We should be the most hopeful people of all, because Jesus died - and yet Jesus is alive!

I don't have a prescription for church survival. There are all sorts of church growth books out there; all sorts of programs that are specifically designed to bring the masses into your congregation; all types of new and modern worship and music that will attract the young people. And if you could just get a better minister! Well, I think if we put our faith in books or programs or different kinds of music or liturgy or ministers we'll be disappointed. Some of those things might be good and useful. Others probably aren't. But our only hope is in God. Fearing the future; falling into despair about tomorrow; giving up on possibilities. Those are signs that we've lost our faith and we're just trying to hang on. It doesn't mean that we're bad people. It means that we're real people with real challenges. But sometimes we need to take a step back from the problems of today and take a look at the world and universe around us and remind ourselves - God is with us! We are not alone!