To continue probing the question about the extinction of the church on the blog this week, I wanted to share one sure way to kill your church.

Again, I don’t believe the church itself will die, but I do think yours might (and ours could, if we’re not careful).  Here’s one sure way to kill it:

Change the message, not the method.

When things start to slide in the church, I have seen more than a few churches and even entire denominations decide that the problem is the message.  So they start suggesting that maybe there is more than one way to God other than Jesus.  They doubt the authority of scripture.  They stray from the historic message of Christianity.

I can’t say this strongly enough – that’s a huge mistake.  The problem is not the message of Christianity.  The problem is the method.

Many of these churches change the message but keep the methods of past generations.  They question Jesus while keeping the choir.  They change the message while doing kids’ ministry in a creaky basement with mould in the corners.  They change the message while offering purposeless pot luck dinners that have little to do with the message of Jesus.

The problem isn’t the message – it’s the method.

The message is eternal.  The method is temporal.

The message shouldn’t change.  The method should.

Every growing church that is reaching unchurched people that I am personally aware of holds the message sacred but is incredibly innovative in the methods they use. Their services, student ministry, kids’ ministry, programming and even facilities look little like church twenty years ago.  The way the message is delivered has changed too.   But the message itself?  Pretty much bang on orthodox Christianity.

Here’s what I believe: churches that change the message don’t grow because they have nothing to say.

Sometimes I think that for some in this generation, the method has become more sacred than the message.

The best way  to kill your church is to change the message and hang on to an outdated method.  If you want to grow it, start by trying the opposite:

Change the method, not the message.

If Christianity is declining in influence, which it arguably is in Canada, the larger question is – will it become extinct?

It’s been engaging to watch the response to Monday’s blog post (lots of off line dialogue and some great stuff on my Facebook page – love to hear more!).   But here’s the bottom line.  The church won’t die.  And here’s why.  It’s Christ’s church, not ours.  Jesus has far more invested in it than we do and we have been promised in scripture that even the gates of hell won’t prevail against it.

But here’s what’s equally true.

While the church itself won’t die, yours might.

While the church will always exist, God might simply choose not to use you to lead it.

This has happened more than a few times before.  Witness the 19th century church buildings that used to house thousands of worshippers that are now museums or community theaters.  The church itself didn’t die – but their church did.  And that will happen again.

I’m with 2500 church leaders at the Drive Conference today.  This weekend I’ll be with hundreds of church leaders in Canada and a month from now with 5000 leaders at Orange.  And every weekend I’m home at Connexus where we are seeing 68% of our growth come from people who didn’t previously attend church. The church is not dead.  You can actually see the church that will be taking shape in front of our eyes today.

Here are some marks of the kind of churches I believe will survive in Canada and the US well into the 22nd century:

They will be Christ-centered.

The truth of scripture will be evident in the lives its members live daily not just in the notes they take on Sunday.

They will use the culture to reach the culture – their music, style of communication and approach will make it easy for a completely unchurched person to access everything and begin following Christ.

They will lead people into authentic community.

They will exist not for themselves, but for the people who aren’t there yet.

They will think more about outsiders than insiders.

They will drop a posture of arrogance and think of others as better than themselves.

They will be relentlessly committed to sharing the unchanging truth of God with an ever-changing culture.

They will be far more selfless than the last generation of Christians

When you have people living this way, the church won’t die.  I believe it will flourish.

Those of some of my thoughts about the church that will be here decades from now.  What would you add?  What do you see?

This study profiled by CNN last week suggests religion might be extinct in Canada within 100 years.

More and more people are affiliating themselves with the category called “unaffiliated”, which I think is the technical term for ‘no thanks’ when it comes to Christianity and religion.

The study doesn’t surprise me, but it does distress me.  I thought we’d unpack this on the blog a bit – the implications are huge.

When tough things occur,  I’ve seen church leaders approach the issue from four principal positions.

Blame

Justification

Resignation

Repentance

The blamers deride minor hockey games on Sunday, Sunday shopping, the kids who left who just weren’t loyal, the government, the education system, the growth of the ‘mega-church’ (which is a bit of a misnomer in Canada anyway) – essentially anything and anyone that moves who isn’t them.  The future is rarely built by people who blame.

The justifiers explain why our demise is inevitable.  They sound a lot like the blamers, but they’re not as angry.  It’s not their fault that the church is dying – clearly it’s someone else’s issue.  And there’s a thousand reasons for it (none of which are their fault in case you didn’t catch that).  They’ll tell you all about it.

The resigners are the least passionate of the bunch.  The demise of the church, while regrettable, is almost logical.  In a post-modern, post-Christian, pluralistic world, the church really can’t compete.  Perhaps it’s just best to plan a quiet, dignified funeral.

The repenters are the rarest group.  They see the problems and the cultural shift, but rather than point blame outward, they assign responsibility inward.  They confess the sins not of the culture, but of the church.  Or more specifically, they confess their own sins.  They realize the problem is that when we have a sacred truth that isn’t connecting, the problem isn’t with the sacred truth, but with those who bear it.  They pray, fast, weep and then they do something even more remarkable.  They change.  They reform.  Did you ever notice the Reformation started first with confessing the sins of the existing church? People repented and out of repentance came renewal.

When you adopt the mantra of repentance, anything and everything can change.  If you start with repentance, it never ends there.  Blaming, justifying and resigning yourself to things ends possibilities.  Repenting releases fresh possibilities.  I believe a church that confesses will be around 100 years from.  They might even reverse the trend completely.

What do you think the predominant response of the church has been to our pending demise?  What would it take to move more leaders to repentance?