New resource: Alphabet for an Evolving Church

This workbook can help pastors and lay leaders begin to find a way forward in this time of big shifts.

Church has always been significant in my life. As a child this was because I dreaded it all week long. I kicked, screamed, and schemed to avoid going to church, where the preachers and teachers told me that the life of faith was all about “no” and “don’t.” As a teenager I found a different congregation that held my big questions and offered an understanding of Jesus as full of love, wisdom, and welcome. I went to that church at every opportunity.

Truth be told, as a middle-aged adult I fall somewhere in between these two extremes. I very much believe that congregations are key spiritual, emotional, and relational supports for many people. Churches also have the resources and the message to impact individuals, communities, and the world for the better. At the same time, the pandemic fundamentally changed how I think about church. After so many months of physical distancing, I returned to in-person congregational life and found it wanting. I wondered, why are we here? How are we actually being changed and then sent out to embody the love of God in tangible ways? I began to relate to the people who re-evaluated their priorities during Covid and dropped church attendance to the bottom of the list. (It stings to admit this as an ordained minister who has served on multiple church staffs.)

As I wrestled with my newfound ambivalence about church, words started popping to mind as key aspects of a congregation that lives fully into its vocation as part of Christ’s body here on earth. The result was a blog series on an alphabet for an evolving church, which I have fleshed out to create a workbook called Alphabet for an Evolving Church: Reflections and Questions for Pastors and Lay Leaders. My hope is that it can be useful for ministers and laypeople, providing reflection points and questions about congregational culture and focus. I am using this alphabet in the congregations I coach as ways for thinking about transition and transformation.

Image is of the cover of the workbook.

Really, though, I wrote this workbook for myself. I wanted to reconnect more deeply with my love of and hope for the Church as it teeters between turning inward to protect itself and finding new ways to burst outward, celebrating the creative genius and overflowing love of God so boldly and concretely that the lonely feel seen, the hungry are fed, and the prisoners are set free.

The world needs us now more than ever, Church. Let’s respond to those needs, changing lives and being changed ourselves in the process.