Telling the Truth

We had a seminar at our church Saturday. It is the Veritas Seminar from our denomination focusing on church revitalization. 85 people representing 14 congregations were there. It is the brainchild of John Wenrich who leads the efforts to revitalize our 580 established churches.

For our tribe the news is not good. The vast majority of our growth comes from churches that have planted in the past 15 years. The rest of us who have been around longer are shrinking or holding our own, but we are not growing. So this effort is receiving a lot of attention and energy. The seminar was good. John is an engaging presenter. The material moved along. But through the entire thing I was a bit unsettled.

There are ten metrics that the 580 established church are measured by, and how often these metrics are seen or experienced determines which into category the church specific church is placed. There are four categories: healthy, stable, critical moment and the at-risk churches. After some research they have discovered that in our tribe only 17% of the churches are healthy. The rest fall into the other categories. 18% are at the bottom and more than what we would like are under achievers.

I do not dispute the numbers or the categories. I do not dispute the metric that determine the results. What I wonder is how did we get to this place? If only 17% of the church are healthy what happened? There has to be a glitch in the system to end up 83% of your base in trouble. Is it theological problem, it is pastoral training problem, is polity or is it ecclesiological? Why didn’t we hear about this before now? I understand that the landscape has changed and we are not dealing with the same environment that existed when I was in high school. I get that we are post-modern and post-Christendom. But weren’t we paying attention?

If 83% of the church are sliding down hill, and that is the impression you got at this event – you do not stay static you will either get healthier or you will head down the other direction. So if 83% of us are rolling down hill, what does the future hold? Is it realistic that 83% of us are get off our duffs and do the hard work of turning this fleet around? Are we training pastors or more importantly retraining pastors to lead the churches into health? Have we “recruited” the types of pastors to take the stable or critical moment churches and lead them to health?

Veritas is all about truth and the truth is right now we just do not know.