Apples and Oranges

The oversimplified version of a conversation yesterday in a meeting at church: It often seems this church is stuck between two models of what churches are supposed to do and act like, and I wonder if this isn't the problem that faces most mainstream churches these days?


Now the overcomplicated version: We, like many mainstream churches, have tried to operate the way we have for five hundred years, with a few modern influences. (Blogging, for instance.) We still have committees (renamed 'teams') that do the majority of the work of the church, and the work itself has changed very little. And yet we struggle to attract and keep members in the 20-40 age range, which means that eventually this church will, like so many of its neighbor churches, die.


This is not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose. There has got to be a Darwinian element to this that says that social organizations that cannot evolve with the times should die. Except that the social organizations that too often are taking their place are dogmatic, conservative, judgemental, factional. There has to be a place in this society still for a place of faithful searching for life's answers that is a liberal thinking outpost that rewards inquisitive thought, doesn't there?


So here then was the gist of the discussion - how do we, as a church, honor the old way of doing church business... 'apples', if you will ...while exploring what the liberal church should look like in the 21st century... 'oranges'? How do you make that shift from what is tried and true for the 50-year members of this church to what is needed and untested for the 20-year-old members? I sure don't know the answer, but I'm here to keep looking for it.