The eCrozier

When I was first ordained in 1983, we were still living in Christendom. What I mean by that is Christianity was still, but just barely, the dominant cultural ethos. That means we could build a new church, hire a reasonably gifted priest, unlock the doors, and the people would come. Our evangelization strategy was akin to putting an empty fish tank on the beach and then waiting for the fish to jump into it. It worked then, but it won’t any more. The fish are not jumping into the fish tank. And that’s the case in nearly every Christian denomination.

In previous generations our de facto, but unstated, theology of ordained ministry has been that of the chaplain who would take good care of the people who showed up. Our clergy have been quite good at chaplaining individuals on their spiritual journeys and providing pastoral care to individual parishioners during times of joy, like baptism and marriage, and times of hardship, like sickness and death. As a parish priest, I very much enjoyed that part of my ministry over the years. It was personally rewarding. But in my judgment it’s not what the church needs now. We need more leaders, and fewer chaplains. Or maybe more accurately, we need a skilled combination of both.

This is not easy news for many clergy to hear. Clergy like myself have had rewarding ministries in the chaplain paradigm. But when congregations decline, we don’t need clergy who will chaplain these congregations to their death. That’s simply “ecclesiastical hospice care.” But some people in declining congregations are clear that’s exactly what they want. They’re tired of the struggle to thrive as a church and they’ve simply resigned themselves to death, even if takes awhile and at great cost to the Church’s mission. If the unspoken congregational ethos is that of the hospice, who would want to join a community of disciples with that sort of resignation to death? “Come and join us at St. Swithen’s. We’re slowly dying and we’re pretty much satisfied with it!”

So, what can we do? To be honest, I think it’s probably unrealistic for us to expect that some people in our congregations will get enthusiastic about mission. We can hope they will and celebrate it if they do, but they’ve already resigned themselves to death, if not consciously, certainly subconsciously. They, however, will still want the church to be all that it has been for them and they probably will resist giving anything up in their church for anything new to happen. They will want to maintain what they have.

This is where leadership comes in. We need leaders who can with loving care chaplain those folks in their resignation while also engaging others who have the spiritual energy and excitement for mission to make new disciples. In congregational development terms, this is called “parallel development,” where leaders continue to provide chaplaincy care to one group while working with others on the mission of making disciples and making a difference for Jesus’ sake in their communities. For this to work, each congregation needs consensus and cooperation from enough people. We also need clergy who are skilled enough to serve both of these roles (chaplain & leader) at the same time. That’s a huge challenge, but we can do it if we have the leadership.

+Scott