Are You Recession Ready?

This article by Tom Sine in Christianity Today is worth a read.

The question needs to be raised about whether or not the way we do church is too dependent on sizable wealth. It is true that the very large churches have an economy of scale that can make them actually less expensive to operate per attendee than the small church. But the professionalization of ministry in the larger church makes them much more dependent on staff and buildings, and those very things become suddenly very important during an economic downturn. Witness the cancellation of Christmas Sunday services at Willow Creek. The reality is that they could not pull off the Sunday service. They require so much to do it that a significant downturn in attendance means that their usual menu cannot be offered, not even a worship service.

I think that in our gut we know that something is wrong with the model we follow. It is too dependent on economic climates.

The coming evangelical collapse

iMonk has an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor that is a good summary of his posts at his blog. The editing tightens it up and presents his assertions in a shorter and more easily read format.

The center is no longer holding for evangelicalism. It is fragmenting and can’t find its way back to its former energy and assurances. It’s leaders today no longer remember the self-assurance of evangelicals in the 40s, 50s, 60s, at which time the movement began to be more self-reflective leaving some deep disatisfactions. The charismatic movement, less doctrinaire neo-evangelicalism and the emergence of the church growth movement began to pick its bones. Today’s emergent church movement with its high suspicion of institutionalism, the collaboration of evangelicalism with too conservative political movements and the failure of evangelicalism to come up with charismatic spokemen are toppling a leaning wall. Rick Warren does not qualify to be a spokesmen for the movement, though he is often referred to as heir apparent by the press.  They wonder aloud if he is the new Billy Graham – “I knew Billy Graham. Billy Graham was a friend of mine. You’re no Billy Graham” to borrow a Lloyd Benson phrase. Everyone likes Warren, but I don’t think he has enough gravitas to wear that mantle, and he is too atheological.

I think iMonk’s prognostications are about right. I just don’t see evangelicalism coming back as a major movement. It will morph but whatever form it takes it will not have the power of the Billy Graham years. I do think iMonk undersells the strength of the return to “Deep Church”, churches rooted in the ancients that promise to give the church a place to be without preoccupation with constantly changing forms of church in rapidly changing cultures.