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Q1W1 2026: How the Church is Stuck
Your ministry fits within a context.
The landscape of the North American denominational (and non-denominational) church in today’s world is the background - or the foreground! - of the ways in which you personally bear the sacraments, Scripture and traditions of the Christian faith.
As we think about our own specific ministries, we first need to orient ourselves to the larger church culture as it exists today.
This week’s question: Do you see what’s happening in the church?
I mean really see it.
Looking around you, do you notice the ways you’ve felt constrained in your ministry, or see things that just aren’t working the way they used to (or maybe never did)?
Do you recognize them not just as roadblocks to sharing the Gospel, not just as particular and frustrating stories and circumstances, but also as examples of a systematic shift?
The organizational and administrative systems that thrived in the 20th century are collapsing today. And that collapse is crushing ministry.
You know this. That’s why you’re here. And that’s why you’re serving your calling the way you are (or why you want to be serving it in a new way).
Before we move into where and how your ministry fits within this context, let’s linger a moment in what’s not working.
In the ‘stuckness’ of the current church system.
Because this is the seedbed - the seminary - of the future of church.
This is where we see clearly what is broken - so that we can move into new ways of ministry that are more agile and life-giving (you might say ‘Cage Free’).
One of my most-read blog posts is about why I’m not sorry to see the 20th century organizational and administrative structure of the church collapse: Church Stats and a River in Egypt.
I’m not sorry because I think we need to clear the way for how the Christian faith thrives in new ways.
I think a lot of us see this. I think you see this.
But still we struggle as the church. Because the collapse is scary. We don’t know what to do about it - how to respond. We see just the loss and not the possibility - the invitation into something new.
So we ‘keep on keeping on’ with ministry as usual. This is denial.
It’s hard to break out of.
So this week, I invite you to join me in contemplating two questions:
What do I see? (What’s the actual evidence of collapse around me?)
What do I not want to see? (What do I suspect is true about the institutional church that I push back on internally? What do I not want to be true?)
I am convinced that this is where the future of church begins.
Right in those places where we see past our fear, into possibility.
We can’t build something new until we’re willing to acknowledge what’s dying. We can’t locate our ministry within the landscape until we can see the landscape clearly.
This, I’m convinced, is our where our calling lies. This is where God wants us to leap.
Do more than read along from the sidelines
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We’re even starting a denomination.
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Bring your own questions - and where your ministry is ‘stuck’.
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