It’s all about an attitude of transformation

Reflections on the church

It’s about attitude, and attitude is what I have been experiencing along the path of conducting charge conferences this fall.
The New Church Development Commission sponsored an event at which Dr. Steve Compton, director of church development for the North Carolina Conference, spoke about the natural life cycle of congregations. As with human beings, churches will normally experience decline that can lead to death. The dominant factor in stopping this natural cycle is whether or not a particular church is willing to change.
Whether or not a church is willing to change depends on having an attitude of transformation rather than an attitude of preservation, Compton said. An attitude of preservation focuses on the past, buildings, finances, programs, traditions and members. This attitude takes a church right down the rosy path of decline and death.
Ah, yes. I know that attitude well from my years of service as a local church pastor, and now I can experience it over and over again in a short, intense period of time as I travel to charge conferences.
In the dialogue portion of time that I have reserved during the conferences, I ask two questions:
> “What would you want to say to me about the present in your church?”
> “What would you want to say to me about the future?”
Many times this fall, the responses I have heard to the first question are around issues with buildings, finances and members and may include a longing for a more glorious past. Then in response to the second question, there is silence.
It may shock you to hear what disturbed me most among the responses I heard to my questions. In some cases, the most significant thing that attendees at the charge conferences could lift up about their congregations was “we have such a warm fellowship here.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m urging all our churches to become welcoming congregations, so I would sure rather guests at our services find warmth when they attend than coldness. But after one weekend of hearing that from five churches in a row, I came to the conclusion that warm fellowship may be killing us.
Why I challenge that is because warm fellowship is about the folks who are already attending our churches, and both survival and transformation depend on our reaching others in the community beyond the families already in our churches.
An attitude of transformation, according to Compton, includes focus both on the present and the past as well as focus on the community, unchurched people and changing the world. Progress in any of these areas might change the warm fellowship currently existing in churches as lots of new, different people pour through our doors who know nothing of our past, our traditions or our problems.
An attitude of transformation begins with our willingness to first be transformed by Jesus Christ into new creatures capable of setting aside our own desires and our own comfort for the sake of participating in God’s transformation of the world.