Will Grandma's Church be there for the Grandkids?

WHY CLASSICAL CHURCH PLANTING IS FAILING

The increasing failure of traditional church models to engage the millennial generation, coupled with the reality that our churches’ memberships are literally dying out, is the new reality of the Christian religious environment in America. And so, as I have continued to take a look at the future of church planting while asking innovative questions about what it will look like, a couple statistics have stood out to me as particularly relevant:

• According to a study on church planting sustainability by the Center for Missional Research from 2007, only about 68% of churches are still around in their 4th year of operation.
• Congruently, in a recent Pew study, those who now self-identify as Christian have dropped nearly 8% since 2007, and those who self-identify as atheist, agnostic, or non-religious (the ‘nones’), have risen 33% up to 56-mil from 19-mil in the US in the same amount of time.

To be fair, although Christianity in America is by no means disappearing, with around 70% of Americans still claiming it and making it the US’ leading religion, the numbers themselves insist that the trend is unavoidably on the decline. Whether or not about 32% of new church plants are failing because mother churches drop their funding after year three is unclear, but it seems likely that it’s a root cause when coupled with a classical model of church that is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the up and coming generations.

One branch of the church wants to attribute the rising numbers of the “nones,” and the falling number of Christians to mere lukewarmness playing itself out. But, another hypothesis suggests that one of the more prevalent causes is actually an old and ineffective model of church that is attempting to engage a new generation in communities and practices that may have worked 40 years ago, but are no longer compelling.

MILLENNIALS AREN’T INTERESTED IN YOUR HOUR-LONG SERMON

The idea that you can preserve a 40 year-old model of church in a church plant in 2015 and give it a little money, hire a secretary, and parachute drop it in to a city, has become a tired methodology for our churches. The crazy thing is, people still try it! Again, to be fair, there will always be anomalies and places where this may work because the cultural consciousness is still 40 years in the past. However, today we need to ask more questions about what thriving communities with replication built into their DNA will look like. In other words, if our hour-long exegetical sermons are putting millennials to sleep (and that is not a knock on good biblical scholarship), how can we awaken an enlivened, self-sustaining, reproducing church model for the future?

3 SUGGESTIONS FOR A WAY FORWARD

Here’s a threefold methodology for the first year of a new plant that may point us in the right direction and offer us a way forward:

1. Take the first year to understand the community you are engaging. Ask questions and learn about the local people and their needs instead of expecting immediate results in the form of new baptisms and membership.
2. Become aware of the costs associated with your community coming in. This could be everything from the price of your housing to what it will take to make your community a viable financial option for you and your family.
3. Whereas church planting can often be a lonely scenario, instead plant in an area with a cohort of other innovators. This will remediate the loneliness-factor and give planters instant solidarity in a time where most pastors struggle to find deep community.

(Written by Spencer Burke, Founding Executive Director of Hatchery LA, an incubator for Common Cause Communities.  For more information check out http://hatcheryla.com)