ie:missional

Five or so hours sleep put the traveler into a stage of extreme fatigue; that’s five or so hours over 42 hours, thousands of miles and twelve time zones. Needing to stay up late, but totally unable to do so, he crashes to shuffle on his iPhone around 7:00 PM local time and, despite a high-volume conversation in the hallway, he falls into a deep sleep convinced that 6:00 AM will come too early. Unfortunately, 11:00 PM comes first and time zone insomnia with it. He opens the window and listens to the sounds of the city.

Some things are the same no matter where you stay. Cars in motion all night, car alarms, police sirens, conversations, and the thumping sub-woofer of local dance clubs. Tonight there is also some poor sap trying unsuccessfully to get a woefully out of tune car to remain starting. He guns it and gets a few feet before trying again. Over and over. Finally, it catches and he guns it in what can only be a cloud of smoke and an engine begging for oil.

Thoughts of the day come to mind.

Sheremetyevo airports. Any air traveler through Moscow has experienced the insanity that is Sheremetyevo 1 and 2. “1″ was built in 1959, about the time that eight people a day would fly while “2″ was built in time for the opening of the famously boycotted 1980 Moscow Olympics. While safety is rarely an issue, convenience always is. There are not enough seats for waiting passengers, not enough restrooms, not enough line space at Sharometyeva 1 and entirely too many assertive taxi drivers and both. The traveler wonders why both aren’t plowed under or completely renovated. He wonders if landing in an open field would not be better.

The international airport (”2″) is pretty clean and has designated smoking areas outside the main seating areas. The domestic airport (”1″) was built for about 1/10th of the traffic that it currently handles. The smoking area is pretty much gates 8-17, where the lingering blue gray second hand haze waits as a carcinogenic welcoming committee. By the time the flight leaves the traveler has smoked a pack without lighting up.

The traveler also never quite gets accustomed to the fact that lady custodians clean the men’s restrooms without ever fully closing them. This time was better, though. A mop across the doorway refused a goodly number of anxious men, but did not completely solve the issue. At least one fellow stepped over the mop handle to take care of business anyway, while even those who waited for the obstacle to be removed (like our faithful traveler) found themselves hearing the “swish, swash” of the mop whilst standing at the urinal. She never spoke and neither did he.

The drunk. Aeroflot is the official, though certainly not only, airline of Russia. With a significant number of Soviet era aircraft still in service (a few seem not to have been painted since Brezhnev), it always is a crap-shoot as to whether the plane looks and acts airworthy. Thankfully this was a Boeing 767, the plane secure and the flight smooth.

Alcohols tends to flow freely on Russian flights with many of the smaller bottles that Americans are familiar with giving way to flasks. The traveler remembers another Russian flight where flasks gave way to fifths before the plane ever left the runway and in-flight luggage rustling for another when the first bottle of vodka went dry.

About four hours from Moscow, one particular lush missed his seat by about twenty rows, settling beside a woman of about twenty who was playing video games by the seat light. Behaving as friendly drunks are wont to do, he made a boor of himself until two flight attendants herding him and his stupidity back to his seat. At landing the traveler was amused to see two green uniformed Russian policemen enter the plane and meet our friend Otis in the back. He was escorted, quasi-sober, to a waiting police van that surely had been used in the old M.A.S.H. TV series. No one really seemed to car since public drunkenness, though a problem, is not a crime in Russia.

The ticket exchange. The travelers’ companion had need in the afternoon to make a change on a return flight, thus both experienced the undeniable inefficiencies of Russian business, learned, no doubt, from Russian government. With the advent of the internet, heck, with the advent of the telephone, these type changes take fifteen minutes back home: call the airline or the agent, ask for another flight, put charges on the credit card, print out the new ticket (or have it sent to one’s PDA or smartphone) and live the rest of your day. Oops.

Russia is a cash society–no checks and not a lot of places that take credit cards, so few people use them. They two men arrive at the S7 office to find just four people in the “line” to be served, most for ticket changes or purchases. Two and a half hours later they were leaving. One lady behind the counter serving every customer. Three copies of this, two copies of that, “Do you have a passport and your birth certificate?”,”Can you sign here?”, cut this paper with scissors, tape these two pieces together, walk to the copier/printer/fax (the one for the entire office). If one did not know better, the temptation would be to think the entire process was intentionally designed to delay. A second lady in the “travel agency” section of the office who was incapable, unwilling or incompetent to help, spending only about thirty minutes of the total time working. The rest of the time she was talking or walking through a mysterious door just off the lobby which, ostensibly, housed more employees who were doing nothing.

The lobby waiting area was entirely too small, so people were constantly going outside to smoke (for which the traveler was thankful), make phone calls or go buy something to drink at the corner store. There being no actual queue or “Please Take A Number” gizmo, each new arrival simply asked, “Who is last?” and then assumed his or her place in the proceedings. The traveler noticed that no one ever got mad, ever stomped out, or cursed out the employees contrasting starkly with his homeland where threats would have been made, promises of a class action law suit would have been offered, constant, loud complaints would have been leveled and the only helpful employee would have likely been equated with her gender of canis familiaris. But, since there is no expectation of efficiency, there is no problem when none is experienced.

Traffic grid. The traffic in Krasnoyarsk cannot touch the traffic of Novosibirsk, another Siberian city several hours away by air, but is trying to match it in spirit. Lane cutting, poor street layouts, make-it-yourself parking and bold-beyond-brains drivers combine to make it an strange experience. The street layouts are such that you must constantly be watching the signs, rather than the road, in order not to miss your left hand turn. If you do miss it, there might be several blocks before the middle line breaks open to allow the correction. Inexplicably, the names of the roads are not on road signs, but are on the sides of buildings creating a situation in which drivers have to constantly be looking sideways for street information rather than straight-ahead for the automobiles, trucks and buses. Adding to the chaos is the strangeness of their only being one traffic signal facing the driver and it isn’t overhead, it’s on a sign post where the street sign should have been. The lighting sequence features yellow light in all directions with each change from red to green or green to red. The yellows are supposed to encourage caution from all drivers that the traffic flow is about to change. Instead it encourages those going from green to red to accelerate and those going from red to green to leave the line early. The traveler also notices an almost equal number of left and right hand cars, learning that Siberia is the used car lot for Japan.

12:46 AM. Eyelids are getting heavy. Perhaps sleep will return after all.

The Church as Missionary: A Global Networking Dialogue
January 12, 13, 2009-St. Louis, MO

The world is changing. Actually, it has already changed several times over in the past decade or two. Technology and globalization are creating quantum change instead of the linear progression of generations past. But, when it comes to the local church and mission, things plod along as they have for decades. Many churches still primarily engage in mission through sending their dollars off to a denominational agency or parachurch ministry while their own people remain passive in the task that God has given them. With the world nearing 7 billion people, the rise of the indigenous Church of the global South, and America emerging as one of the greatest mission fields in the world, we believe that the local church has a more vital role to play now than ever before in proclaiming and living out the gospel, both globally and locally. It seems, though, that few churches really step into the purpose of God in this area. What if local churches networked together to pray and find out where God was working, share opportunities and best practices, and encourage one another along in their God-given task? What if the Church became the missionary, instead of farming out our calling to others? What if we partnered together to directly engage in global missions and domestic church planting?

Some of us believe that this is possible. We believe that God is igniting the local church to step to the forefront of His work in the world. Each local church has gifts, talents, vision, and people who are already engaged in the world around them. Each Christian and church has a God-given purpose to fulfill. What if a network formed that encouraged each participating church in the task of impacting the world globally and locally by maximizing what is already happening the lives of the people in our churches? If churches in the network partnered together to share vision, people, and resources to impact lostness, couldn’t we do far more together as the engaged people of God to transform the world, than we could separately? We’d love to join with some other folks who are thinking about the same things.

On January 12-13 in St. Louis, MO, a group of pastors, leaders, and thinkers, will come together to engage in guided discussion regarding the possibility of networking to specifically engage in global and local mission by putting the local church on the forefront of the task God has given us: discipling nations. Some of us are Southern Baptists. We have our own missions agencies and cooperative giving program. This is not meant to take away from that, but we recognize that just sending money to denominational agencies and passively waiting for them to initiate work will do little to fulfill the Great Commission. Local churches must be engaged in the task in a more direct way. We’re thinking that we would be more effective at that if we partnered with others.

We are specifically inviting you to join a few dozen leaders to engage with this concept and see if God is wanting to link some folks together to help one another become more effective. This is not about starting an organization or collecting money-the last thing we need is more bureaucracy. If this goes well, the local church will be at the forefront and the network will exist in the shadows. We don’t have a name for what we are wanting to do. We might just call it, “that missional thing.” But, we believe that God is up to something and if we can help one another engage the world more effectively, then we will have accomplished our task.

This is not a standard conference or seminar where a lineup of speakers download terabytes of information to process later. Discussion initiators will be brief and on point leading to dialogues directly related to network building. Real value will be added to your ministry objectives and church mission as a result of your participation.

If this resonates with your heart, plan to be in St. Louis so that together we can help one another move our churches to the front line of Kingdom work in this world!

For more information, please leave your email address in the comment section (use this format: name[at]provider[dot]com to avoid spambots). You will be contacted in short order.

Grace and Peace,

Marty Duren, Lead Pastor
New Bethany Baptist Church
Buford, GA

Alan Cross, Pastor
Gateway Baptist Church
Montgomery, AL

The late minister and poet Thomas John Carlisle penned a series of poems based on the prophet Jonah, whose story is recorded in the biblical book of the same name. Writing from Jonah’s actions, attitudes and perceptions, this short volume of poems is as insightful as its poems are brief. The book, You! Jonah!, included poems that Carlisle had published in various newspapers and magazines both sacred and secular, as well as previously unpublished poems on the same subject matter. The book was first published in 1968, but has been out of print for 35 years.

Here are four of my favorites:

Coming and Going
The word came
and he went
in the other
direction.

God said: Cry
tears of compassion
tears of repentance;
cry against
the reek
of unrighteousness;
cry for
the right turn
the contrite spirit.

And Jonah rose
and fled
in tearless
silence.

Reprimand to a Naive Deity
I will not advertise
this crazy scheme
of Yours.

God, what a farce
that men should sin and find
escape.

I mean, of course,
not me
but all our mutual

antagonists.
Dear God, kind God, don’t listen
to their prayers.

Sunk
A man overboard
gasping and drowning,
does he actually look
at his own disappearing
identity?

Jonah could see
only an admirable
ambassador of God
sunk by his own
superior
opinions.

Personnel Problem
Jonah cherished chips
on both his shoulders.
He was in the wrong
business. On the accounts
he clamored to handle
he was calculating
to liquidate
the customers.
However, his Employer
computed profits
on another basis
and kept the dynamite
too readily
defusable.

Late on the evening of May 1st, I received a phone call from a former church member who had maintained some close relationships with folks inside New Bethany. He informed me that the house of two of our church members was on fire. I threw on some clothes, called to get some folks there ahead of me and started toward the site.

The couple whose home was involved are in their 80’s are retired from the furniture business and have traveled the world. When in his late 70’s, the man became a published author having written a collection of stories about his life beginning in south Georgia during the Great Depression. They are a good natured couple, quick to laugh and always been very appreciative of me.

I arrived on the scene about 25 minutes after the initial call to find the fire, for all intents and purposes, extinguished. The ladder truck’s primary attachment was extended and one of Hall County’s finest was raining down a full spray from about 30 feet in the air. One glance told the story: complete loss.

Tours and travels, years and years of accumulation of memorabilia and furniture that can never be replaced gone forever. The fire started in the HVAC system and spread so rapidly that the only things saved were the car, the truck, her purse and the clothes they were wearing. As I approached them standing in the neighbor’s driveway, he turned and said with a laugh, “Well, the bad thing is that we’d just got back from buying $109 worth of groceries!” I asked, “Are you guys okay?” He said, “We’re fine. Marty, it’s just a house and stuff. It doesn’t matter.”

I was amazed. We talk that, don’t we? Echoing a friend, I’ve often said, “All this stuff is just fuel for the fire.” But, dang, eighty years of accumulation? Needless to say, I was grateful to God for such a biblical outlook in the face of calamity. (After a day or two of sifting through the rubble, they informed me that my book, JOURNEYS, had survived both the fire and the water unscathed. Another reason that you should buy it: home protection.)

After waiting for the inspector and salvaging a few things from the basement, I took them to Wal-Mart at about 1:00 am to get some clothes for the next couple of days until the insurance settling could begin. Talk about a trip. Nothing like going clothes shopping with two senior adults in the wee hours of the morning. He and I were finished with his in about 5 minutes. When we went to find her she was still looking at the first housecoat she’d picked up. I tried to get her to buy some lingerie, but she said, “I might as well not wear anything at all!” He said, “I thought that was the idea!” Neither was she too up on my idea for a T-shirt that said, “I’M PREGNANT!!” We had a blast.

One family in our church owns a bed and breakfast where I dropped them off at about 2:00 am. One of their other guests, some guy from California, collected several hundred dollars and left his credit card number with instructions to let our newly homeless family stay as long as they needed. Another church member called the next morning and offered their second home (nearby on the lake) for them to stay until they could rebuild. In almost no time, they had living money and a place to stay.

This week we received a note from them. It started,

We were not surprised at the way our New Bethany family responded to the fire of May 1.

“We were not surprised…

I want to let you know that was music to this pastor’s ears. The expectation was that the church would respond and that expectation was not disappointed.

In a video that I recently watched, Michael Frost made the observation, “If your church went away, would your community notice?” Normally, when Christians think about that question, the emphasis is on how we would feel if our church went away. Missional churches, however, ask Frost’s question.

Is our church known for being a blessing to our community, or only a blessing to itself? There are very few more important questions for churches in 2008 and beyond. Do your local schools know that there are people inside your building? If they do it’s because those people have been inside those schools to be a blessing. Does your local government know that you exist? What about the Homeowner’s Associations nearby? Business owners?

This September, we will be hosting the first annual New Bethany Community Benefit Run, a 5K walk/run to bless the Hope Housing Initiative, a local organization that seeks to find housing for single parents, provide budget training for them and assist with mentoring needs. All the profits raised by the run will go directly to Hope Housing, New Bethany will receive nothing. We’ll even be donating money as the primary sponsor. Next year we’ll pick another community group to bless with that effort. Frankly, I can’t wait.

How great are the expectations of your community for your church? If we don’t consider and constantly address that issue, then we will miss the purpose to which God has called us and placed us where He has.

2. The network is the organism.

The late management guru, Peter Drucker, in Managing in Times of Great Change (1995), wrote:

Every few hundred years throughout Western history, a sharp transformation has occurred. In a matter of decades, society altogether rearranges itself–its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions. Fifty years later a new world exists. And the people born into that world cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born.
Our age is just such a period of transformation. Only this time the transformation is not confined to Western society and Western history. Indeed, one of the fundamental changes is that there is no longer a “Western” history or a “Western” civilization. There is only world history and world civilization.

And if I may borrow from Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat:

Globalization 1.0 took place when travelers came to the “New World” in search of religious freedom, Globalization 2.0 saw the rise of American Denominationalism, while Globalization 3.0 (or glocalization) is seeing the rise of the network.

The following things happened in 1917:

–The U.S. ended its search for Pancho Villa.

–The United States paid Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.

–The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany a day after Germany announced a new policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.

–The Congress of the United States passed a law banning most Asian immigration.

–The Selective Service Act passed the U.S. Congress giving the President the power of conscription.

–John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born.

–Arabian troops led by Lawrence of Arabia and Auda ibu Tayi captured Aqaba from the Turks during the Arab Revolt.

–In Nebraska, Father Edward J. Flanagan founded Boys Town as a farm village for wayward boys.

–The Southern Baptist Convention instituted the Executive Committee.

And 91 years, two world wars, the founding of the United Nations, creation and dissolution of countless countries, jet flight, a man on the moon, the technological revolution, and the digital age later, most of these are history and little about the last one has changed. In fact, in SBC life, most associations and state conventions utilize the same EC model adopted by the national body in 1917. So, multiple generations of humanity, countless innovations with spectacular results and incredible promise and the rearranging of the world’s structure have occurred with at least one major U.S. denomination still structured like it is yet 1917.

Not too many years ago, people with an eye to the times began to recognize the power of the network. Network theory began to be explored first as a discipline of mathematics, leading to further develops in areas like social networking propelled into the limelight by websites such as MySpace and Facebook. Organizations that really cared about efficiency began to look at decentralizing, using communication tools more and better, developing telecommuting and more, while the rise of the internet made it possible for people to develop deep, meaningful relationships with people they’d never met in person.

Networking, IMO, is the foreseeable future. It is the organism that will be the downfall of the rigid organizational structures that exist. As David Phillips put it in the previous comments,

The boundaries in place in denominations cannot survive; when the boundaries are not permeable, the organism becomes a parasite, and to survive it has to eat itself, thus killing itself in the process. Permeable boundaries allow the organism to take in fresh nutrients, integrate them into the system, and thrive and grow.

The rigidity, turfism, fifedoms and outright jealousy that exists in and between structures have closed them off to the future and, as Phillips suggested, they have already begun to turn on themselves and each other. The permeable membranes of networking take in the best ideas from each participant (sometimes the local government or art center) thus improving the functionality of the network and raising the chances of seeing ministry objectives met.

Churches do not need denominational structures to do exceptional ministry and to partner with other churches to do exceptional ministry. As more and more missional pastors jettison the archaic structures of decades (almost centuries) past, more and more vital ministry will be done through believers passionate for the kingdom and not willing to sit around waiting for a vote to change a committee name, a two year feasibility study or spending millions of dollars to pump life into a corpse.

Below is a simple chart of how easy networking is to accomplish (I know, no extra credit for artwork):

Each letter of the alphabet represents an autonomous, local church. Churches A-F have partnered together to start/fund/staff a crisis pregnancy center, churches G-I for a food pantry, churches J-L have adopted a school together, and M-P are planting a church. Then, churches B, E and G have joined together to do an after school ministry; I, J, M and N for a police and firemen outreach; D, E, F, J, K, N and O for a mentoring center; while A, C, H, L and P have networked to reach an unreached people group. Obviously their is no limit to the options.

What makes this differ markedly from the structured denominational approach is that every church chooses with whom it will network for each opportunity. There is no forced cooperation with those of divergent vision; contrariwise, the churches are networked together because of their similar vision. In the SBC the view has always been, “Well, it’s worth overlooking our differences to get about the main task of evangelizing the world and the CP is the best way to accomplish that.” While I believe firmly that mindset once was accurate, I no longer do. Networking is far better in both cost and, we will eventually find, results.

In the network suggested above, there is no bureaucracy, no need for a local office, no need for anyone to tell anyone what to do. Both the human resources and the financial resources lie in the churches. To continue to give money “because we’ve always done it that way” is poor stewardship at best and intentional ignorance at worst. I’m not saying that networks will never choose to have paid employees or an office building, but that those things will flow from the vision and strategy, not impede them. Acts 29, Glocalnet and The Upstream Collective are examples of some networks that have led the charge.

For many pastors who were raised in denominationalism, there is a guilt over leaving the system no matter how broken it is. For others there would be immediate resistance from the churches who cannot imagine any other way of collaberative ministry. But for some, there awaits the freeing idea that new wine skins must be utilized to handle new wine and that continuing to pay the “temple tax” whether exacted or only expected no longer holds any allure.

Well, you don’t know what we can find
Why don’t you come with me little girl on a magic carpet ride?
Steppenwolf

In this series thus far, I’ve attempted to demonstrate the reasons why I believe bureaucratic denominationalism in America is on a decline that will not reverse and will end with the disintegration of the structures that we know. For the purpose of clarification, let me say that I am not opposed to the efforts of denominations to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. Without a doubt, some major denominations have in the past been very effective at those attempts, but, owing to changes in our world, have lost the ability that they need to continue any semblance of that same effectiveness in the future. For that reason they will continue to decline. Therefore, my remarks have not to do with “saving” any denomination and should not be taken in the context of denominational renewal.

In this post and the next few, I will posit a way forward in the Post-Denominational era. Note that it is “a” way forward, not “the” way forward, as I make no claim of exclusivity of ideas since multiple sources have influenced my thinking. With that foundation I offer the following thoughts.

1. Fluidity is stability.
The problem with bureaucracy is that it is inherently inflexible. The multi-layered construction can only be supported by the rigidity of a virtually inflexible skeleton. The larger the organization the more complex, almost without fail, its inner workings. In fact, the exceptions become the examples of how things should work, but most companies cannot make make the recalibrations necessary to achieve the kind of flexibility that everyone agrees would be better for both the company and it customers.

Though the actual definition of bureaucracy refers to a system of government in which the most important decisions are made by employees rather than elected officials, the dysfunction of a preponderance of those systems has virtually made it a synonym for an organization marked by inefficiency and waste, while bureaucrat equals a person who is completely unqualified for the position held and whose decision making is marked by incompetence. (The truth of that is seen with the popularity of Dilbert and The Office.)

Bureaucracies develop as a result of a search for organization and distribution of responsibilities in a time of expected or actual growth and/or expansion. Once reaching a critical mass, however, they begin to repeat the very issues the multiple layers were instituted to solve. In a flat world, rigidity is not stability; it is death.

Going forward, the only stability that an organization can seek is fluidity because that is what it will take to remain in existence. The ever increasing flow of information in our age is almost beyond comprehending, bringing us to the point of needing to make accurate snap judgments (what Gladwell calls the “blink”), while advances in technology have made it possible for immediate communication between decision makers. Entities that have structured themselves for fluid decision making will be seen as the ones upon whom you can depend. An example:

Envision a denominational entity that has resources for a project in Boston or Bangladesh and there is a church (or small network of churches) that has resources for mission projects. The denominational structure has been created for the purpose of providing stability, while the network has been created to bypass bureaucratic inefficiency by enabling quick decision making. The request works its way up the denominational structure, through levels one, two, three, etc and finally back to someone who has the authority to either “okay” or “veto” to the proposal. The M on the field has spent an interminable amount of time waiting. Could be weeks, could be months and could end just as unfunded as when it was first proposed.

On the other hand, a request goes to a church or network of churches that have already committed to Bangladesh or Boston as a place of specific ministry. The request comes to them, it is affirmed for the M (there doesn’t have to be much home base discussion because the M is trusted to make the decisions; that’s why there is a relationship with them in the first place). Within a week or two, the money is wired and the project has begun.

When the M has another need, who do you think he/she will go to first? The second group, of course. Fluidity necessitates that enough trust is placed with the M that requests made on the field are not second guessed by people an ocean and half a continent away.

Consider partnerships at the local church level as well.

A local school needs supplies for a project that the district cannot afford. A creative teacher suggests contacting a couple of churches for help. Church A receives the request, funnels it to the pastor who brings it before the deacons who then take it before the Finance Committee who have a couple of questions, so it goes back to the deacons who have a few more questions for the pastor, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

The pastor of Church B send it to the Community Missions Leader who, knowing that the function of his/her team is to create or find partnerships, fires off an email to the team with a 48 hour response time, gets approval, calls the principal of the school and takes a check by three days later. Again, when the next need comes, the school will call Church B without a second thought.

The reason that fluidity is stability is because the fluidity of the church or network of churches provides the stability needed for the person in need for the ministry to continue in a timely fashion, while the “stability” of the b’cracy provides only uncertainty for the person waiting. The provider of blessing needs to be fluid so that the need of blessing can actually receive it.

Next up: The network is the organism.

Last week my friend Matt McGee of the Duke Law School emailed me with an interesting chart tracking the total membership of SBC churches as a percentage of the United States population since 1971. After seeing his work (the top line in the graph), I asked him to check the total attendance figures for the UMC (US members, second line), the ELCA (yellow line), and the PCUSA (purple line). It is plain to see that, as a percentage of total US population, the SBC has been in nearly unceasing decline since about 1985. Keeping in mind that “active membership” is only about twenty-five percent of reported membership, it appears that current active SBC membership represents about 1.3% of the U.S. population. With that as a backdrop…

By most reputable accounts we are entering or are already into an economic slowdown that will almost certainly turn into a recession. The housing market collapse in much of the country, the burst of the sub-prime mortgage bubble and related financial market uncertainty will take our country into places unknown to people under the age of 20. Writing in the March/April 2008 issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Nouriel Roubini gives five falling dominoes which will lead to a “financial pandemic”: a drop in trade, the weakening of the dollar, worldwide bursts of housing bubbles (already happening in France, Greece, Hungary and Italy, on the verge in Britain, Ireland and Spain), falling commodity prices (projected to happen as the economies of the U.S. and China slow, though drops in oil and grain prices would be welcomed), and faltering financial confidence. He summarizes,

During the last recession, the United States underwent a nearly 6 percent change in fiscal policy, from a very large surplus of about 2.5 percent of GDP in 2000 to a large deficit of about 3.2 percent of GDP in 2004. But this time, the United States is already running a large structural deficit, and the room for fiscal stimulus is only 1 percent of GDP…President Bush’s fiscal stimulus package is too small to make a major difference today, and what the Fed is doing now is too little, too late. It will take years to resolve the problems that led to this crisis.

The Economist seems to agree. A lead story in the May 3-9, 2008 issue says:

The malaise that started the crisis-the American housing market-is still getting worse. The month-on-month decline in the Case-Shiller index of house prices in 20 large cities is accelerating; on the latest reckoning, it was down by 12.7% over the 12 months to February 29th.

Also, this:

After a long period with scarcely any bond defaults by companies, there have been 21 failures this year, according to Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency; some 122 issuers, with debt of around $102 billion, are deemed vulnerable to default. Ominously, corporate debt is the shaky foundation for trillions of dollars of derivative contracts.

Consumer confidence is in the tank and both individuals and churches will soon begin, if they have not already done so, making the difficult choices about which budget items will stay and which ones will go. Add to this (at least in the SBC) Dr. Frank Page’s warning that 1/2 of all SBC churches will close by the year 2030. Do we really think that 22,000 churches will suddenly call it quits on December 31, 2029? No, there will be a consistent downward slide as aging churches, refusing to move to a missional mindset, simply die away with neither pastor nor members to keep them alive. This recession may prove to be more than scores of small churches of all denominations can weather.

Many churches that do survive will, for the first time, begin to scrutinize their support of their denominational structure. They will begin asking about waste, mismanagement, bureaucratic overlap, and redundant ministries concluding that far, far too much of their donated funds are not making it to benevolent ministry, education or missionaries, but are going to support a structure. Many will conclude, as many already have, that if the only vision offered is to “keep Denominationalism alive” then it will no longer hold any appeal. (I recognize that giving has bounced back from recessions of the past, but during those times there were no legitimate options for “doing missions” except the denominational structures; that has now changed.)

Denominations’ tenuous relationship with technology will exacerbate the situation going into and leading out of the economic downturn. Most denominations would be satisfied to have their annual sessions broadcast live via streaming video and that would be fine…for a year or two. Why is it so stinkin’ difficult to grasp the concept of satellite feeds to multiple locations?

Way back when Dr. Jimmy Draper alerted the Southern Baptist Convention that the “younger leaders leaving the SBC” was at the “Severe” level, one of the commonly seen online suggestions was the exploration of multiple meeting sites and the ability to vote either online or at a satellite site. The ignoring of the money saving suggestions will come to haunt any denomination as a generation arises that is hardwired for efficient spending of Kingdom dollars. Through a video conferencing website called Genesys, I simulated an SBC meeting being held in Denver. The total estimated costs of video conferencing 7,000 delegates was about 17% of the cost of flying from various U.S. cities to Denver, saving an accumulated 31 years of cumulative travel time and 8,555 metric tons of carbon footprints.

The former print mag, Business 2.0 (now online here), in an August 2007 article entitled, “The Rise of the White Collar Nomad,” told of Anthony Page and Simon LePine, among others, who had ditched their offices (and sometimes homes) to spend the majority of their working hours out of doors. Armed with a laptop and a few hundred dollars worth of wireless connectivity equipment, these folks have taken moofing to a whole new level. Their offices were the entire outdoors. Mountains, lakes, London, Canada, India, they simply live where they want at the time, get paid through Pay Pal or other online account and see as much of the world as they desire. Sure, most of them are in consulting or sales, but it is technology that makes this wireless lifestyle possible. The same kind of technology could, and should, be helping denominations make better use of kingdom funds.

The Siemens corporation, as reported in Fast Company, September 2007, is working on a wireless check-in system for airports by which there would be no paper ticket, no kiosks, no boarding passes, only a bar code downloaded to your cell phone scanned at the gate and presto, you’d be good to go. Wouldn’t that be nice at the annual meeting? New Bethany’s partnership in Siberia is going to be strengthened as the M there takes advantage of a satellite connection that will allow video conferencing. Last year we hosted, via Skype, our missionary in Eastern Europe who actually taught three sessions through the video hookup and cost us absolutely nothing. Completely free. This while many M’s routinely have monthly meetings requiring multiple day excursions from their country of ministry. Some Regional Leadership even fly back to the states for meetings that could easily be held online or via satellite saving their denominations thousands and thousands of dollars.

Trustee meetings, board meetings, Executive Committee meetings (state and national) could all be streamlined and made much more efficient if advantage was taken of existing and developing technologies. In the Southern Baptist Convention alone, the six yearly meetings of one entity’s trustee board costs $500,000 of Cooperative Program missions giving. With almost no effort, change could take place immediately. But it will not and we all know it.

Instead, denominations will hunker down and try to ride out the coming economic storms. (In fairness, per capita SBC giving has been increasing over the past few years. IMO, that trend will change within five years.) As they prove more inflexible structurally and wasteful economically, churches of all sizes will conclude that money given to support the inherent denominational bureaucracies is no longer good stewardship of God’s money.

The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning. The fact of change itself is undeniable: it has happened, and will continue to happen.
Philip Jenkins, The New Christendom

Change brings fear and fear is the wrong state of mind to provide leadership. Where denominations are concerned, fear and limited perspectives put behemoth organizations at risk. In our day there is a shift of tectonic proportions taking place, but if we do not see it in the light of history it can provide a basis for fear instead of faith. It should not.

Consider these facts from Exploring World Mission: Context and Challenges:

–The Christian era began in the Middle East with largely Jewish believers, but within 100-200 years had expanded to Asia becoming largely Gentile in the process.

–By 600 AD, the church had spread to North Africa and southern Europe. It’s language was primarily Greek.

–By 1,000 AD, the church had been mostly displaced from by the influx of Islam shifting the center toward Western Europe where it was solidified by 1,500 AD. Theology and mission became largely European.

–By the mid-20th century, the church was declining in the West and this decline has continued unabated.

–At the beginning of the 21st century the center of gravity for the church on planet earth is in Latin America, South America, Africa and Asia. The church is now non-Western and its theology and mission are rapidly following suit.

–By 2050, only about 20% of the world’s three billion Christians will be non-Hispanic whites.

What do these last statements demonstrate? They mean that the center of gravity of the church (or, as Jenkins terms it, “the Christian heartland”) is moving. Most American Christians have no idea what is going on around the world and many seem to think that without the American missionary force the world would go straight to hell. While it is true that by the 1950’s America was supplying 2/3 of the Protestant missionary force to the world, it does not follow that converting the world’s population to Christ was dependent on Western missionaries. African scholar John Mbiti has said:

It is utterly scandalous for so many Christian scholars in [the] Old Christendom to know so much about heretical movements in the second and third centuries, when so few of them know anything about Christian movements in areas of the younger churches.

Consider that the number of Christians in Africa grew from an estimate 10 million in 1900 to a mind-boggling 360 million in 2000. This means that there are more Christians in Africa than there are people in the United States. Adrian Hastings, in his book The Church in Africa, said:

It sometimes startles [them] to see that the three combined bodies are from Europe, and along with them there is a title “Christendom”…If [Africans] had power enough to communicate [them]selves to Europe [they] would advise them not to call themselves “Christendom” but “Europeandom.”

Africans are dynamic about sending missionaries. While in Kenya in 1995, I met a young believer named David. David was 23 years old and served as a translator for one of the preachers in our group. In addition to English and Swahili, David already spoke four tribal dialects and was learning a fifth. Not only could he speak them, he was equally proficient at translating between any two of them! It was truly amazing to hear this soft spoken man who was passionate to get the gospel to all peoples in Kenya. He did not need a Western missionary to tell him what he ought to be doing in the kingdom.

We should not forget that South Koreans are sending missionaries, as are eastern Europeans. According to the East-West Church & Ministry Report, Summer 2005 newsletter, Hungary, Poland and Romania are slowly rising up as missionary sending nations having learned from western missionaries in their midst. “One Nazarene church in Bucharest consists of only six families, each with five or more children. Nevertheless, it fully supports a missionary family in Ethiopia because it has a vision to see that country reached for the gospel.” New Bethany’s strategy in Russia includes the possibility of sending Ukrainian or Belorussian, not only American, missionaries as they are the best adapted for the culture and the language. These opportunities will only continue.

As far as American denominations go, we should be assured that the King is well able to take care of His kingdom and that the passing of the era of Denominationalism poses no threat to either of them. Because we tend to view history through the myopic lens of our own lives, many do not realize that the West has not always been the center of God’s working in the world. From the Middle East to Asia to Africa and Southern Europe to the West and now to the South, God has always been at work. In the February 5, 2001 issue of Christianity Today, Philip Yancey notes:

As I travel, I have observed a pattern, a strange historical phenomenon of God “moving” geographically from the Middle East, to Europe to North America to the developing world. My theory is this: God goes where he’s wanted.

If Yancey is correct that God goes “where he’s wanted,” then that is a warning to Denominationalists in American: if we are not alert, we will find ourselves striving to save a denomination while claiming to be in pursuit of God.

Philip Jenkins warns of this mindset:

Southern Christianity, the Third Church, is not just a transplanted version of the familiar religion of the older Christian states: the New Christendom is no mirror image of the Old. It is a truly new and developing entity….If we are to live in a world where only one Christian in five is a non-Hispanic White, then the views of the small minority are ever less likely to claim mainstream status, however desperately the Old World Order clings to its hegemony over the control of information and opinion.

As the Kingdom moves, our temptation will be to find security in our institutions, the same institutions that are themselves fighting to maintain control and importance. Our denominational structures are a primary place of such security. Without an ability to envision a future without denominations, some will continue to put forth extraordinary amounts of energy to re-animate that which is dying or already dead. Such folks are not able to envision a future without denominations; I cannot envision a future with them.

One of the more replayed video clips over the last few years was that of NFL head coach Dennis Green of the Arizona Cardinals. Following a loss to the Chicago Bears in 2006, which his team had led 24-3 in the fourth quarter, came the inevitable press conference. An obviously ticked Green exploded like a man who’d been celebrating Cinco de Mayo for a month. “The Bears are who we thought they were,” has become a favorite line for sports fans ever since. What Green was saying was, “They had nothing on us. They were the team we prepared for and we let them off the hook. We should have won the game.” It was slightly more colorful in the original language.

In thinking through this series, the word “disintegration” was intentionally chosen over the word “collapse.” I do not think that we will wake up one morning in the next year to find that the United Methodists, the Lutherans, Episcopalians (in their various stripes) or SBC will have closed the doors and shuttered the windows. I do think that we will continue to see decreasing viability of meaningful gospel influence in these organizations to the point that, like water against a rock, the slow erosion results in an unstable foundation and eventual cessation of denominational existence.

Linked in Ed Stetzer’s warning shot were two papers by J. Clifford Tharp, Jr. one with the following chart indicating “Total Membership” and “Resident Membership.”

Tharp’s brief analysis included these three points: 1. Trends in Membership (both Total and Resident) are becoming very flat; 2. Total Membership is dangerously close to beginning to decrease; 3. The gap between Total Membership and Resident Membership is widening. Observant readers will notice that if the top line flattens and the gap between the two widens, then necessarily the bottom line is beginning or continuing a downward arc. On this chart, that means that Resident Membership is decreasing. As we know and will soon reconsider, Resident Membership itself is a misleading measure of biblical membership and should not be considered an accurate accounting.

We’re not who we thought we were.

A second chart (below) tracks SBC baptisms from 1950-2004.

As you can see, baptisms have remained virtually static for more than 1/2 a century (there is a minuscule increase of 45 per year). The US population in 1950 was 152,271,417. Non-stop growth brought us to 281,421,906 by the year 2000. In a non-scientific but well thought through series of observations, Nathan Finn suggests that the Southern Baptist Convention is probably reaching no more than 100,000 “unreached Americans” per year while in their book, “Who Will Be Saved?,” Paul House and Greg Thornbury write:

Statistics compiled by the North American Mission Board…reveal that as many as half of all adults baptized in Southern Baptist churches are rebaptisms of persons already baptized by Southern Baptist pastors. Another 40 percent of adults baptized are Christians from other denominations who have never been immersed. Only ten percent of all adults baptized in Southern Baptist churches are making first-time professions of faith.

And this from what is widely considered the most evangelistic denomination in the U.S.

We’re not who we thought we were.

In her new book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, Christine Wicker takes both Southern Baptists and evangelicals to task for their faulty reporting of their actual membership totals. She notes, for example, that:

Only 7 percent of members who’ve been in a Southern Baptist church five years of less are true converts, meaning sinners who weren’t raised in the church but came through a profession of faith in Jesus. If you took out the Southern Baptists who married unbelievers and brought them to faith, hardly anybody would be left.

Behind the thesis is that there are not nearly as many committed, Bible believing, Bible following Christians in American as we have all been led to believe, the former Dallas Morning News writer (and former Southern Baptist) pegs SBC active membership at just north of four million. Though Wicker finds herself somewhere between an agnosticism and an reluctant atheistism, her understanding of what genuine church membership should be is decent. She refuses to acknowledge that the SBC consists of 16+ million members, stating, “How many members a church has is a pretty worthless measure of reality…[only] about two-thirds are even residents of the same town as the churches they belong to.”

We’re not who we thought we were.

Not content with exposing the SBC’s lack of clothing, Wicker also points out that the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) does not have its claimed and oft trumpeted 30 million members. There are sixty denominations that make up the membership of the NAE including the Assemblies of God, Church of God, Church of the Nazarene and the Evangelical Free Church of America. According to Wicker’s research, the total membership of the fifty member denominations listed in the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches 2007, the American Religion Statistical Archives and the denominations’ own Web sites the grand total of the members is 7.6 million people. Active membership would be much less–less than half actually. So, what of the elusive 30 million count we’ve all heard. No one, not even NAE president Leith Anderson knows for sure. The 1990 NAE record listed only 4.5 total members.

We’re not who we thought we were.

What does this mean? Is the issue a matter of simple math? No. The issue is that, not only have we been well behind the population growth curve, we didn’t have as great a number in the starting blocks as we had been led to believe. Since every age group of baptisms is decreasing except those who are under five years old and since the number of those graduating from high school and leaving church is increasing and since the ranks of admitted unbelievers is the fasted growing “faith” category in the US, there simply are not going to be enough people to keep denominations, which are dependent on heavy financial investment, afloat. As denominationally oriented church members age and die (and they already are) younger people will not give tithes to churches that insist on supporting failing bureaucracies, thus leading further down the Post Denominational road.

We’re not who we thought we were.

Ten months ago when I began this blog, I purposed not to engage in discussion about the denomination in which I have pastored, the Southern Baptist Convention, unless it crossed paths with a subject about which I was writing. This is one of those times.

A recent report from missiologist Ed Stetzer of Lifeway Christian Resources indicated that the Southern Baptist Convention, once characterized (because of its cultural dominance) as the Roman Catholic Church of the southern United States, has entered a downward trend of growth which, he predicts, may not turn around. If you are among those who haven’t yet, you can read the initial report here and the follow up article here.

As would have been expected, the report was hailed in some places (see Ed’s comment threads) and questioned in others. The question that does not seem to have been asked during this is simple: Has the time for heavily organized, bureaucratically inefficient denominational structures passed? My thesis is a simple one and flows from what I see happening:

The era of denominationalism is ending, therefore, time and energy spent attempting to revive them is not redeemed time.

Rather than reviving them, we should be having a planned euthanization. I will not be arguing “post-denominational” in the sense of personal preference or lack thereof, but “Post-Denominationalism” in the sense of no SBC, UMC, PCUSA, etc.

Though Stetzer’s commentary is specific to growth patterns in the SBC, all other denominations in the United States are and have been in decline with the single exception of the Assemblies of God which counts but 2.8 million members (2005). Even the respected National Association of Evangelicals has lost some of its luster since the fall of Ted Haggard, though, as we will see, it never had quite as much luster as was thought. Regardless of the denomination none have matched, via conversions, the growth rate of the population (excepting possibly the AoG), so in percentage of population terms all American denominations have been in decline for decades. At best, a few denominations have grown at the expense of others, the common scenario known as “swapping sheep.”

Is the motivation to “save the denomination” a good enough motivation to go into hyper-drive in funds promoting or doomsday scenarios? I don’t think so. When Jesus said to the people of Jerusalem, “Behold, your house [the temple] has been left to you desolate,” He was warning them that there system of belief was coming to an end. There were no more sacrifices needed, no more pouring out of animal blood, no more Day of Atonement; it was over. Their mistake was that they continued to cling to a structure that God Himself had abandoned. Shall we repeat the same mistake?

Writing with an eye to the Southern Baptist Convention, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary prof, Nathan Finn, recently asked:

So does the SBC have a future? It depends upon what you mean by “future.” I suspect the name will be used by some Baptists until Christ comes back. I also think the people called Southern Baptists will always have denominational entities that they financially support. So in one sense, I remain confident that Southern Baptists are here to stay. But if by “future” one means a vital existence in God’s economy, I have my doubts. Collectively, I fear we are too insular, too sectarian, too pugnacious, too “Southern,” too reactionary, too pragmatic, and for sure too proud to have any real future.

While I appreciate Nathan’s balanced thinking, I, for one, am not convinced that any denomination is here to stay and am convinced that the era, like the telegraph, is passing into the historical record and that we have entered the Post-Denominational (PD) era.

Commenting on Ed Stetzer’s original post, SEBTS prof Alvin Reid noted,

For several semesters I have asked our students “how many of you came from an SBC church?” The vast majority. Then I ask, “How many of you want to go back and serve a church just like that?” Almost none. These are seminarians, the ones we still have, and they see a serious need for change. Again, this is anecdotal and simplistic, but here is another idea–have someone do a survey of current seminarians to find out who they listen to on podcasts? Might be revealing.

This is not merely true of the SBC as other denominations are dealing with the same issues. No one is important enough to have cornered the market here.

Also responding to Stetzer was SEBTS president, Danny Akin, who said,

I could not agree with your assessment more! I go to bed thinking about this every night and wake up the same.We are in serious trouble. Our denomination is at a crisis moment and we will either repent, seek the forgiveness and mercy of God and perhaps experience a true and genuine revival from our Lord, or we will continue our present course and simply fade away with the Lord Jesus justly removing His hand of blessing.

But what if no amount of repentance and seeking of forgiveness will bring revival and revitalization to the SBC or any other denomination? What if, like the sacrificial system, their time has run it’s course and God is preparing a new thing? I pray that it will be embraced rather than feared.

Over the next few posts, I will be exploring why I think we will continue down the road toward a Post-Denominationalism world. We’ll see that the SBC and evangelicals have not had either the numbers or the power that we’ve thought and will continue to lose both in the US; that the Kingdom of God is shifting again (as it has before) this time from dominance in the West; and that technology has rendered the need for heavily bureaucratic, densely centralized, financially profligate organizational structures obsolete and that the lessening of the influence of denominations in culture will be inversely proportional to the influence of local churches networking in culture.