Hope Blossoms: Pondering the Future of the Church

In the third movie of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, “The Return of the King,” the white tree of Gondor[1] sits in a fountain outside the palace. This tree has lain barren for centuries awaiting the return of the true king of Gondor. When the movie begins the tree is barren, but when Aragorn (the true King) arrives in Gondor, we see a brief scene where the long-dead tree now has a single white blossom—signifying hope. At the end of the movie, at Aragorn’s coronation, the same tree is now covered with an over-abundance of white blossoms, a veritable shower of joy for the true King’s return and the beginning of a new era of peace.

Since 1968, the United Methodist Church, of which I am a member, has been declining. That means that I’ve never really known a time when my denomination’s “tree” was in full bloom.

Like the people of Gondor who waited for so many years for their king to come, after 41+ years, I sometimes wonder: Can Methodism’s tree live again? I want to believe that, one day, against all odds, our “tree” will bloom again, and we will see revival. But year after year, I peer out into the “courtyard”, and see little or no new growth on our tree. In fact, if anything, each year, a few more blossoms fall off. Our attendance continues to decline, our congregations get a little greyer (as we struggle to attract youth and young adults), and it gets harder and harder to find enough resources (be it people, money, time, or energy) to do effective ministry in our communities and our world.

There are wonderful exceptions to the rule to be sure, but in general, a state of spiritual malaise seems to have settled over the people called Methodists[2]. We are a denomination in decline, and far too often, we act the part.

The Prophet Ezekiel once faced a similar question concerning the fate of Israel. He was standing looking over a grim site at the time—a valley full of the dry bones of his fallen countrymen—and he heard God ask: “Mortal, can these bones live again?” God wasn’t necessarily talking about these dead bodies so much as he was about the spiritual malaise of the people of Judah. Ezekiel’s reply was brutally honest: “God only you know.” (Ezekiel 37:1-14) Maybe it should be translated: God I hope so!

Ezekiel cared deeply for the people of Judah. He wanted to see his people strong again. But, honestly, he wasn’t sure if it was too late for them to turn back to God. Had they let themselves decline for so long that there was no hope for them to return? He simply didn’t know if their “tree” had any life left in it or not.

Church leaders surely relate to the Prophet’s angst here. We too hope our “dry bones” can live again; we hope that, despite outward appearances, our “tree” is still alive—merely lying dormant awaiting the spark of hope ignited by the coming King. We so much want to claim that future with hope (Jeremiah 29:11), abundant life (John 10:10), and goodness (Romans 8:28) that Scripture claims are possible for those who follow God.

But if we’re honest, we’re not sure what the future holds for us? We want to believe the best but struggle with unbelief (Mark 9:24). After all, how can we have realistic hope for the future when all we’ve ever known is decline?! After one is part of a declining church long enough it impacts how we think, even how we live.

Even the most spiritually zealous people among us are not completely immune to the spiritual malaise I spoke of earlier. It is contagious—it “infects” you if you are exposed for too long.

Many of our churches seem to have adopted a sort of “bunker mentality” to survive. We hunker down in our churches hoping to ride out another winter of discontent far from certain that we will ever see another spring of hope. We don’t share our resources with the world around us because we’re afraid that if we share with them, at some point, we might not have enough for ourselves.

While we can certainly survive for a time in our “bunker”, we will never thrive living that way. We will continue to decline, contract, shrivel, and ultimately—we will die. Surely God’s heart breaks as he watches the Body of Christ wither. This cannot possibly be the life God intends for us, his beloved People…

The upcoming season of Lent is a time for self-reflection, a time to ask: How has our current approach to life been working out? What changes do we need to make to grow closer to God? We can also extend that to our “life together” as the People of God, the Body of Christ—the Church. We can—and we must—ask ourselves: How has our current approach to doing church working? What changes do we need to make as a community? That’s a very difficult question to tackle, but if we are to be faithful to our call to be the Church today’s world, we must continue to wrestle with it until we get some satisfactory answers!

Lent not only calls us to ask hard questions, it also demands honest answers. We can never hope to change if we’re not willing to humbly admit our present reality. And the evidence (I believe) is clear: Our present approach to church is, by and large, not working. We need to consider a different way.

Considering a “different way” doesn’t mean we have to give up on God’s Church or the Kingdom of God. No, but it may mean we have to give up on Church as We Know It—or, to say it another way, “the way we’ve always done it.”

And, yes, in some cases we will need to reckon with a painful reality: Some churches have declined so much that they cannot “live again” in their present configuration. I honestly believe the faithful choice in those cases would be to direct the church's remaining life essence into the birth of something new.

In pursuing this vision of a “different way” to do Church, we would cling to a promise that the Prophet Isaiah once made to the people of Israel: A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,
 and a branch shall grow out of his roots. (Isaiah 11:1). This is a risky approach; not everyone will like it. People get attached to the way things have always been; change frightens us and we lash out at the change agents. (They did it to Isaiah and the other Prophets in the Bible!)

Friends, just as it did for the original recipients of Isaiah’s message, on the surface of things having this kind of hope for the future of the Church seems utterly foolish. We haven’t seen many “shoots” recently, much less any “blooms”. Nothing but lifeless “stumps” as far as the eye can see. We wonder: Can hope possibly blossom here?!

But as people of faith we trust that even though our eyes can’t see it yet, the King is indeed on the move, hope is rallying, and things are happening behind the scenes, under the surface. Preparations are being made for new life that will emerge come spring. God will be faithful to God’s promise—hope will soon bloom!

In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;


In cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!


In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be,


Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.



—Hymn of Promise, verse 1

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[1] Photo Credit: Photo of a tree resembling the mythical White Tree of Gondor taken at Aleppo Citadel in Syria— www.trekearth.com/gallery/Middle_East/Syria/North/Halab/Aleppo/photo1180665.htm.

[2] The experience I describe is certainly not unique to the United Methodist Church. The statistics show and personal experience confirms that most “mainline” denominations are experiencing similar decline and uncertainty over what the future holds for them.

Should Christians Be Normal? Part I: Who Defines Normal

Our American culture is structured around an academic year. Colleges typically have Fall and Spring Semesters, and most of our culture seems to have embraced this schedule. Activities tend to start up sometime in late August or early September (when most kids go back to school and students return to college campuses) and run through the winter, taking a break for a month or so around Christmas and the New Year, and then resuming in late January and running through mid-May. Even if we aren’t students ourselves, or parents of students, we still tend to conform to this kind of schedule. We kind of do it without thinking about it—we’ve just done in the past month or so… Taking the summer “off” is what our culture considers normal.

Our churches tend to conform to this schedule. Most activities we do in our churches start up in the early fall and end in late spring—resuming in the fall when the world goes back to work and school. It’s pretty much the norm in our churches for activity to slow down during the summer—just it does in the world around us. We take it for granted that worship attendance (and thus giving) will tend to go down as different people vacation each week. Whatever activities do continue during the summer will probably note a drop-off in participation—we accept it as the ways things are. In light of this reality, church leaders often plan vacations during the summer. In some ways the decision is practical; our kids aren’t in school and many others are also away and thus won’t notice our absence. It’s usually a safe time to be away—we know things will get busier come fall when the schedule gets back to normal.

I suppose in some ways it’s inevitable that the summer doldrums is now normative in most churches—churches after are part of the culture. But it also raises an interesting question: Should our churches be conforming to what’s normal in our culture or should we be setting the standard for what’s normal and challenging our culture to follow us?

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul says that as followers of Christ, we should not be conformed to this world… Now I don’t know about you, but that’s a tough command for me. I’m an introvert by nature, I don’t really like standing out from the crowd, much less trying to convince others that they should follow my lead. (I would never make it as a cruise director on a ship!) Even if I believe something different from the crowd, most of the time, it’s unlikely that I am going to say anything. People might not like me anymore if I make too many waves, and I want to be liked. They might think I’m weird if I share my opinion too loudly.

I want to be a follower of Christ, but I also like the safety and anonymity of being just another face in the crowd. And in today’s world it seems perfectly possible—and acceptable—to live that way. For the most part, you can conform to this world and still call yourself a follower of Christ. You can believe what you want in the privacy of your own home but just keep your personal views to yourself in public—you can go far in the world if you do it that way.

But I confess I find myself haunted by a nagging question: Is this the way it’s supposed to be for Christians? And after studying the Gospels and the history of the Early Church recorded in the Bible and other sources, it seems clear to me that the answer is an emphatic “No!”

So then how have we gotten to this point where most Christians conform to the world around them? That will be the subject of my next post...