The following four key attitudes of leaders whose churches will thrive in the future are from a post that was written by Thom S. Rainer (author of I Am a Church Member, Autopsy of a Deceased Church, Who Moved My Pulpit? and many more) on the Church Answers website.
- “God is not done with us yet.” To be clear, the leaders of secular organizations were unlikely to articulate this attitude in the same way church leaders were. But all of the healthy organizations had attitudes of hope and possibility. Defeatism was a foreign concept to all of them.
- “We are not waiting for things to return to normal.” Any organization waiting for a pre-COVID normal is already in trouble. Any churches expecting patterns of attendance, giving, and ministry to be similar to 2019 are really up against a wall. There will not even be a new normal, because normal cannot be defined. These leaders are looking for indicators of a new reality and they are making pivots to these new realities.
- “We will be more outwardly-focused than ever.” Too many churches and other organizations got comfortable prior to 2020. The leaders of future-focused organizations are determined more than ever to reach beyond themselves. The churches and the organizations of the future cannot and must not be navel gazers.
- “Major change is inevitable; we will embrace it.” The healthy church or organization of the future cannot simply move from change-averse to change-receptive. They must proactively seek and move toward radical change. They cannot wait for change to come to the organization. These organizations must take faith-based risks like many have never known before. If the leaders of these organizations succumb to the whiners who lament, “We’ve never done it that way before,” the organization is doomed. Healthy organizations of the future will embrace change with wisdom and courage.
These four key attitudes if adopted by church leaders could help change the world – Bill Hybels (founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church) is quoted as saying that “the local church is the hope of the world“, and I’m pretty sure that we all want our churches (or Corps in our setting) to thrive.
The thing is, we’ll need to embrace what God is doing in and through our lives today to impact the world – But throughout the western church it would appear that we have become far too comfortable with ‘normal’ and keeping the wheels of the institutional church or Christian organisation turning.
As Catherine Booth once said “if we are to better the future, we must disturb the present“.
Therefore, we need to challenge the status-quo, the systems, processes, policies and structures that we have built up for our protection and control.
Some of these along with traditions, rituals, symbols and sacred cows are potentially no longer fit for purpose in this day and age.
In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul tells us that we need to “destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God…” (New Living Translation). According to Matthew 5:13-16 we are to be the salt and light that this world needs. God longs to use us for His purposes, so that others will see Him through our good deeds and glorify our Father in heaven.
Therefore, we need to carefully look at the ways that we have been doing church, our methodologies and ascertain if they are fit for purposes, are they achieving what we set out for them to do?
We’ll quite possibly need to come up with creative ways of engaging with our communities so that we can bring ‘life and hope‘. And we’ll also need to be more adaptable as the Holy Spirit leads us into new ways of doing mission and ministry going forward, reaching people who we would not necessarily reach out too.
The reality is that change is happening at an increasingly faster rate than what we are accustomed to in our world, so we’ll need to be a lot quicker at making decisions.
I believe God is doing a new thing but His overall plan hasn’t changed that He will use us, as His church, to change the world.
Shall we embrace the change?
Are we up to the task?
The life and times of Perry... 