Shaping the Church of the Future – Part 3

This series of posts has us considering how to future-proof churches when we see COVID and other factors eating away at the resilience and viability of many. So far, we have looked at some overlapping elements of tailored discipleship, the development of systems, and the intentional generation of leaders, where usual biblical, prayer, and community foundations are assumed. In this final post, we look at two more of the essential practices of healthy churches, regardless of size, which will guard against demise and actually facilitate health.

Shaping the Church of the Future – Part 2

Yesterday, we began looking at the seeds of decline in churches sown over the last thirty years. Not all churches, mind you. Many have bucked the trends around them to maintain cultural relevance without cultural accommodation. I would suggested that there are five important keys that naturally assume prayerfulness, biblical foundations, and faithful commitment to a church family, but they are perhaps the intangible essentials that will future-proof any ‘centred’ church that is seeking to maintain or reclaim its edge.

Shaping the Church of the Future – Part 1

In 2008, Washington Post journalist, Julia Duin, wrote about why churches were experiencing decline. Her insightful conclusion was that ministers’ lack of leadership skills, diminished commitments to core beliefs, and an increase in consumerism, were exacerbating an exodus. To what degree are such observations still valid in future-proofing today’s churches? What have the last two years of COVID disruption revealed about way in which churches might best maintain their relevance and impact?

Easter and our Renewed Optimism

The start to 2022 has brought various sources of discouragement through the Ukraine invasion, the fallout from vaccination and reopening issues, and now the fall from grace of another megachurch leader. Our response to whatever may disappoint us becomes critical, though. Expectations of people can easily be dashed, so it is helpful to remind ourselves of the hope of Easter that fixes our eyes on Christ as a source of faith amidst difficulties. Some helpful lessons come from a timeless story.

The Religious Discrimination Bill – Who Needs Protecting?

The religious discrimination bill was hotly contested in Australia last week, but social debate seemed to overlook some of the key reasons it was first proposed. Introduced to strengthen protections in the face of state-based discrimination laws, it has more recently become aligned to fears that school students who are same-sex attracted or gender dysphoric will be marginalised. A key to better understanding what is at stake here is been found in consideration of the various freedoms, rights and responsibilities that need to be balanced for all stakeholders, including people of faith.

Tips for a Better ‘Now’

Being ‘present’ is quite a challenge for our distracted generation. For example, our focus can become easily drawn away from surrounding contexts to the digital world in the palm of our hands. Of course, much of our daily lives is helpfully managed on our phones, but life’s intrusions can often rob us of many important ‘now’ moments, sometimes simply because we prefer, or feel constrained by, alternative ones. What can we do to become better at seizing the present so as to optimise our future?

Four Causes of COVID Anxiety and How to Combat them

The impact of a world-record 247-day COVID lockdown in Melbourne has clearly been unsettling and disconcerting, no matter how resilient any of us might be. People’s levels of anxiety are, however, a matter of degree. Contributing factors can include external stressors, health concerns, financial instability, relationship problems, and more. Identifying and remedying even the more controllable factors, though, is still not easy. What are some tell-tale signs that all is not well internally and what can we do about the anxieties we might not even realise we are experiencing?

Vaccination passports: a ticket to freedom?

As the COVID lockdown continues in Melbourne, an understandable level of anxiety appears to have been rising. People without work for weeks or months on end, and businesses under threat, are just some of the many effects of the protracted measures testing everyone’s patience. So, what are we to make of vaccine passports as the possible ticket to the desperately-sought return to relative freedom, and something of the life we once knew?

Tools for Greater Resilience

A famous song, ‘Tubthumping,’ written about resilience, was used several years ago to promote the Melbourne Storm rugby team. Do its words, “I get knocked down but I get up again,” depict your own capacity to rebound during successive COVID lockdowns? We may well ask what the alternative is, anyway, as we power on unflappably, working from home (yet again). But in our reflective and self-aware moments, we do well to recalibrate our capacity to endure beyond the limits of tolerance we might think we have already reached.

When Corporate Thinking Fails the Church – Part 3

In concluding this series on the governance and some of its key structural problems in churches, it should be recognised that it is not always possible to adopt the ideal arrangement. Some people function as elders despite not being especially gifted for the size and scope of the role required. Similarly, boards might include certain people out of necessity, simply because a role has to be performed. The need for volunteerism (often from a small starting pool) means people serve for a time to facilitate a function. Some churches just prefer alternative approaches to those that others advocate and what actually works sometimes does so because it is adapted to the unique blend of people available and involved. Often, though, churches don’t question their existing structures and inherit avoidable problems.