When the Church Stops Working
Put this book on your list.
Seminary professor and author Andrew Root has written some incredibly insightful books about the challenges facing the modern Church. I started reading one and had two thoughts simultaneously: this is good stuff and this feels like the first time I picked up a Walter Brueggemann book for class and wondered if I was smart enough to be in theological school.
Fortunately, Root has co-authored a book with a congregational minister that synthesizes all those helpful observations in a more digestible format. The title, When the Church Stops Working, has a double meaning that highlights the book’s message. First, Church no longer works for many people. Root and his co-author Blair Bertrand do a great job of unpacking what the problems of our secular age are and how they affect the Church, and I refer you to their explanation. But the title’s other meaning points to the way we meet these issues: by no longer working so hard. We are trying to apply the worldly principles of a broken economic system to a spiritual sickness that only God can cure. In other words, we cannot effort our way out of the crisis of Church decline.
I commend the book to pastors and lay leaders. Here, though, is my own bare bones book summary of how we as Church meet this secular age.
Embracing humility. We are not in control. Our busyness changes nothing of substance. The world and the Church are God’s, and we must truly turn ourselves over to God and stop trying to save ourselves.
Slowing. We have crowded out what and whom are most important with anxiety and activity: delight, rest, our neighbors, the created world, and an awareness of how God is at work in, around, and through us. All of these are divine gifts, yet we are focused on what we lack. And so we must go back to how the Church started - not on the day of Pentecost, but on the day of Ascension when Jesus told his followers to wait expectantly on the Holy Spirit.
Connecting. All life is interdependent, despite what we tell each other and ourselves about the value of self-sufficiency. We are here to know and be known and to respond accordingly. That requires our ability to be fully present to one another, which means we can’t be constantly doing.
Storytelling. We worship a God of story. There is an arc of creating and re-creating that we are graciously invited into. When we share our own experiences and the story of scripture, we are better able to see the ways that opened when there were no ways, the overlaps, the resonances, the beautiful and purposeful divine designs. We rightfully recenter the One who made them all possible. And if we pay close enough attention, a particular theme or Bible passage can emerge as what Root and Bertrand call a watchword, a shorthand for divine encounter, for how a congregation has been and is being formed by God.
Discerning. This watchword can become an identity touchstone for the congregation that notices and embraces it. It informs how that church sees the world through a divine lens, what it does in response to God’s invitations to partnership. It’s more potent than a vague mission statement. It gives shape to the ongoing slowing and connecting and storytelling.
Obviously, this is not a strategic plan. But that might be why it could work in a Church that has stopped working and is currently working too hard to be able to see where God already is sowing seeds of life and hope.