Feeling a bit "off-side"

Just a few "wandering thoughts" from me as I contemplate my (emphasis to be noted) experience of how I see sections of the Church (read our denomination in particular) organising itself "in the world".

Spin is “in” and style is more important than substance. Management, evangelism, worship are blurring into one another.

Does it matter?

Yes, for me it does. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s an abandonment of reason. In the search for answers to our declining church base I feel we are swinging to the words or actions of the fashionable in places or with people who "matter" (?!). Reality is being lost and truth is being subordinated to a the plot-line of the "successful churches". it seems you’re either a trendsetter, a "wannabe" or a nobody. What perhaps worked for one congregation in one set of specific circumstances is inflated into almost sacred dogma.

There’s an enormous waste of time and resources involved in chasing some fashionable approach that is soon dropped or discredited. It’s fair to say that most vogues and fashions in church life later prove to be ineffective, instant nostrums for much more highly complex problems. Many fashions in church life are based on flimsy evidence. Changes in leadership personnel swiftly lead to sudden re-evaluations in strategy. Each newly-promoted leader/ leadership seeks to establish his or her territory and power through a new gospel: a fresh truism dusted off and brought out of the closet, then championed with as much vigor as was seen for whatever was the orthodoxy under the previous incumbent. Is it any wonder that, for many congregations, long-term strategy is less a focused progress towards an encounter with the living and gracious Christ than a series of unexpected U-turns and diversions.

In Ancient Greece, writers like Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides probed the causes of tragedy and the downfall of rulers and heroes. Their understanding was summarized in a single sentence: “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”

Some of our church planing & management today seems dangerously close to meeting that definition too. It’s time to slow down and allow the gentle presence of the Holy Spirit to take the place of mindless imitation, and reflection to take the place of “shoot-from-the-hip” action.