Alden Swan dot com

To finish off my critique of the “5 Trends to Watch for This Year” article, here’s the final section.  If you haven’t already, read parts 1 and 2.

5 Trends to Watch for This Year

Now, let’s take a quick look at the 5 named trends.

1. Lack of Organizational Trust.

To this, I reply, “Well, duh…”  I not only agree that this is a trend, I will admit to being a card-carrying member. But, I find that my lack of trust does not apply to all organizations, or even to some I happen to have major disagreements with.  Rather, I tend to distrust organizations which have a very shaky foundation, not being firmly rooted in the past. And, I find that much of the current evangelical church lacks firm historical and theological foundations.

To paint a mental picture, without any ties to history, these groups have no set trajectory. They are points floating in space, blown to and fro by every cultural breeze. So, yes, I distrust them, because they’ve given me no reason to trust them. Rainer is totally right here, in that churches must work to build specific trustworthy reputations, and that takes time.  If they aren’t rooted in or knowledgeable of the past, they have not earned trust. Watch them until they’ve established a trajectory, then compare that to the overall trajectory of the church.

2. Desire for accountability in leadership

Essentially, this is the same issue as #1.  I agree that leadership is an issue; however, the desire for accountability in the church is a by-product of the trend of contemporary churches trying to establish new trajectories.  The problem is not so much individuals, but with the organization. “Accountability” is a big word that no one understands. Accountable for what?  To whom?  On what basis?  Again, if an organization is not firmly grounded in the past, with no established trajectory, the leadership typically has a greater ability to go off course.

3. Fickle Commitment

Here, Rainer ties the fact that people change jobs more often now to them moving from church to church. I’m not sure this is the proper cause-effect analysis.  Rather, I think the lack of commitment to a specific church may relate to the first 2 trends.

4. Intimacy with the crowd

Here, I agree with his point, but don’t think this is so much a trend, although it’s perhaps tied to the development of cities, a pattern which has been repeated since people began creating cities. People simply connect to smaller groups easier than larger groups.  And yes, your mega-church is too big.

5. Weariness with overwhelming amounts of information

Now this may be the only real trend that I agree is a social trend that impacts the church, but only because of another church trend, and that is the trend of pastors believing they need to shove information down our throats every chance they get. As I mentioned in a recent post, I’m “fed up” with the assumption that I need to be “fed,” and assume most of you are as well.

At some point in the last couple of centuries among non-liturgical churches, the trend has been for the sermon to become the central point of the church service, with the sermon growing to between 45 minutes and an hour. This is not the case in liturgical churches, so this trend doesn’t apply to the church universally. I assume one reason may be simply to fill the void created when liturgy and scripture reading is removed. Another reason for sermon-glut is that it has also been the major marketing focus of the church, so the pressure is on the pastor to provide more and more compelling and enticing sermons so people will return, and maybe even come for midweek classes. Another related trend is that in more contemporary churches, the focus seems to be more and more on the pastor as an individual rather than on an individual who steps into an established role, who could easily be replaced. Think of a stand-up comedian vs. a Shakespearean actor.

The 45-minute sermon is unnecessary. It’s one thing to instruct new believers, but another for folks who have been Christians longer than the pastor. I mean, what more can you say?  Let’s be honest, I’ve never known any pastor (and I’ve known some great preachers and teachers) who could fill up 45-60 minutes week after week with great material. Once in a while, sure. But let’s face it, most sermons could easily be edited down to 10 or 15 minutes and be more powerful, especially if they’d put Scripture back as the proper focus.

 Conclusion

Like I said at the outset, this article really got me thinking, about the rather transient and vulnerable state of the contemporary evangelical church. The “recent trend” is that these churches seem to be growing, although that is not true for many of the individual churches who are withering on the vine. It remains to be seen what this segment of the church looks like in the coming decades, and only then will we know if what we are seeing was truly a trend.  Meanwhile, the gospel remains unchanged, and the trend is that it will be there waiting for us.

Continued from here.

The article – Intro

Reading the introductory section to the article’s discussion of the 5 trends, it seems that the author has a somewhat myopic view of the church, as I had already expected, and begins with some other questionable presumptions, including his opening statement, “If you do not make assumptions about the future, then you are not leading.” First, everyone has assumptions about the future. The key is basing your presumptions on something solid. Making presumptions based on an analysis of the past year or two may be fine for some things, but questionable when you’ve got two thousand years of church history to draw from. Again, look at trajectory. If you’re only concerned with the next 2 or 5 years, then a short-term analysis is fine. Even then, you’re like the kid hearing Clint Eastwood ask, “Do ya feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?” At what point do you start trusting trends over an historical-analytical approach?  How lucky do you feel?

Rainer also states that “Good leaders are also willing to change their assumptions,” and compares still having Y2K-era thinking (Seriously, 2000 is old school?  It’s not like we’re still wearing Flock of Seagulls hairdos!) to giving your kids Pokemon cards for Christmas. (It should be noted that in certain pockets, Pokemon is still quite popular.) Of course, to a twenty-something, 13 years is half a lifetime. Again, the issue is scope and perspective.

One of my critiques of the contemporary American evangelical church is not that they don’t have assumptions about the future, but rather, that they lack knowledge and appreciation of the past. Again, you can’t address true trends without understanding past trends. And if a contemporary church is not firmly attached to its historical and theological roots, than a hiccup could indeed be a death rattle.

The next problem presumption was in Rainer’s comparison of leading a church to Ford’s assessment of consumer demand and expectations. His point is that in assessing future consumer demand, they have assessed current global trends.  Now I am not saying that there is no value in knowing what’s going on in the world; however, the danger is in applying a marketing approach to church. Looking at historical examples, we can see that following cultural trends has not been that successful; in fact, often quite the opposite.  In fact, we don’t have to look back more than a few years to see numerous failures resulting from trying to be “relevant.” Five years ago the “emerging” church thought they were on the cutting edge of the church; but where are they now? Turns out “emerging” was not a trend, but merely a passing fad.

Next, a look at the 5 Trends discussed in the article.

I promise I will get back to my New Covenant Law series (and my “This I Know” series). First, however, I am posting an article in 3 parts just because I was up late thinking about an article a friend of mine posted a few days ago. It connected with a number of earlier posts I’ve written on the state of the contemporary evangelical church (not evangelical in the true sense, but using the word in it’s common use). I’m certain that I’ve made a few assessments I may disagree with a year, or even a week, from now, but that’s the way opinions go…

The problem of church trends

A pastor friend of mine recently posted an article by Sam Rainer entitled “5 Powerful Church Trends to Watch For This Year.”   I found the title somewhat provocative, causing me to spend a bit of time thinking before even reading the article (which caused more thinking).  While I am not necessarily disagreeing with many points the article makes, I think the title and subject matter raise questions about the potential defects in a certain segment of the contemporary church.

 Defining terms

I think it would help first to define what is meant by the word “trends.” Most definitions of the word use the word “general,” as in “a general direction” or “a general tendency.” Other definitions use “average” or “gradual.” Typically, in about the 3^rd listed use of the word, we find the words “current” or “vogue.”  While lately the word has been used to mean “fads,” those styles that come and go fairly quickly, typically a trend is a gradual change in long-term direction.

The 2 words in the title that really caught my attention were “this year.”  That would seem to rule out any thought of “general” or “gradual,” although that would depend upon your perspective. Considering that the Church is over 2 millennia old, anything to watch for “this year” would not seem to qualify as a trend; perhaps a better term would be micro-trend, or even nano-trend. I suspect that my Orthodox friends would laugh at any so-called trend that doesn’t involve a decade or more.  If someone were tracing a general change, say, over a generation or two, then we may have a real trend.

However, many of our contemporary American churches have not even been existence more than one generation, so they themselves may simply be a mini-trend, and may or may not survive into the next generation. For example, the so-called “emerging” church has proven to be little more than a speed bump, certainly not qualifying as a trend in the large scope, and having minimal effect on much of the more stable church.

 The significance of micro-trends: a sign of weakness?

I think it interesting that the 2^nd sentence in the article references “cultural climate.”  We all know too much (or way too little) about the so-called climate change. There, one of the big questions is whether what we are seeing (measured over the past 100+ years) qualifies as a true trend, or if we’re just witnessing a “blip” in a larger cycle. In other words, scope matters. When looking at the church, I think we need to ask the same question.

The fact that these micro-trends could be considered “powerful” enough to warrant watching seems to suggest a weakness in this segment of the church. Again, I doubt the Orthodox churches would have the same concerns; they are a large ship, able to withstand waves that would demolish a sailboat. I wonder if these 5 trends (without even looking at what they are) would have much of an impact on those churches with roots going back centuries. Are they indeed trends which can impact the future, or are they merely hiccups that themselves have no impact on the larger trends?

Part 2