BLOG 3/6/16. IS THERE A FUTURE FOR OSSIFIED, OR MORIBUND, CHURCHES?

This is as painful a subject for ostensible church communities as is terminal cancer for an individual. It is the question of the future for church institutions that have long since lost their dynamic purpose and declined into a state of ossification, or of being moribund in the mission of God. It also is not a rare phenomenon. Church institutions (of whatever Christian tradition) may start out well, but with a generation or two begin to live on their past momentum, or on the presence of a colorful preacher, or on their status in the community … but not on the mission of God.

In the era of Christendom, when the Christian faith was a dominant force in the culture, there arose different traditions, each of which wanted their traditional or denominational franchise in each new community. Some had a very strong sense of God’s mission, and some were more on the order of ‘comfort-zone’ communities of those who preferred this denomination to that one, or a church community with which they were socially, ethnically, and culturally comfortable. This was especially true for us in North American as the church expanded vigorously after World War II. But the emerging generations have challenged the traditions, and the culture has undergone a diastrophism in which all of those traditions and institutions have not only been victims of this shift in the tectonic plates caused by post-Christendom, … but more and more ignored.

The landscape is now littered with impressive church sanctuaries of those communities that have now not only aged, but are fading into obscurity … but too proud to admit it. Many in major cites are living on endowments, but not on any self-conscious sense of dynamic faith in Jesus Christ, or his mission.

Here is is the question that few are honestly willing to face: Is there a future for such church institutions that have ossified into essential fruitlessness? or become immunized to the demands of the gospel? Or become moribund and incapable of reproduction? And what is more distressing is that it is difficult to find any models or examples of such ossified or moribund churches that have come back to life again, notwithstanding all kinds of programs and conferences that propose hopeful solutions. Churches that have become so ossified over many generations do not respond to costly changes proposed by some new ecclesiastical elixir. Very few examples, or models exist, and they so rare that they are very difficult to find.

A generation ago the Roman Catholic Maryknoll Order realized that it was declining precipitously, and in danger of ceasing to exist. They asked Gerald Arbuckle, a theologian and cultural anthropologist, to research the reasons for such decline, and to propose some solutions. His conclusion was that any such community (or order) is started with a very clear founding myth, i.e., a clear sense of its calling, its mission, its disciplines … in other words: its raison d’etre. But over time that founding myth become diluted, displaced, or forgotten and the order reverts (in his words) into chaos.

And what was his proposal to the Maryknolls? He insisted that mere renewal was quite too inadequate a solution to their downward path into chaos. Rather, he insisted that what was required was was refounding, by which he explained that it needed to forsake its chaos, or ossified/moribund status, clear the ground, and then with those who were willing to reclaim their founding myth to start all over again. (He wrote this up in several books still available). I have appropriated his word in the title of one of my own books (Refounding the Church from the Underside). It is a painful process. Or perhaps I could quote missiologist and friend Howard Snyder, who told us that if we wanted to know how vital our church was as a missional community, to sell our church buildings and become an intentional and incarnational colony of the Kingdom of God, but that’s an almost impossible ‘sell’ for such ossified entities. Is there a future for ossified/moribund churches? Not without much pain, and refounding is painful!