Six Urgent Challenges + Opportunities That Will Determine the Future of Your Congregation

This was a fast book. I don’t just mean that it was a quick read (which it was, at 111 pages) but that Thom S. Rainer got this thing written and published in 2020, even before the year of craziness was over! When churches across our country started closing their doors and moving to online services, Thom S. Rainer saw an opportunity, and he capitalized on it! I found this book in a thrift story for a quarter, so he didn’t necessarily capitalize off me, but still: he saw a need, recognized the opportunity, and went after it. Not a bad move.

We all remember 2020, even if we did spend much of it locked away from everyone else in our living rooms…or closets. It’s that weird year that will stick with us for a while, so I can understand in part some of the drama that’s at play in Rainer’s book, like when he says, “It could be a few years before we arrive at any semblance of a new normal.” (86) I’m pretty sure things are back to the old normal, and COVID-19 will forever live as just a blip on the screen. But man, going through it was weird, and so publishing a book about it whilst in the very midst of it will carry some of that weirdness too.

Rainer’s six major points make up his six short chapters, and they are titled as follows:

• Challenge 1: Gather Differently and Better
• Challenge 2: Seize Your Opportunity to Reach the Digital World
• Challenge 3: Reconnect with the Community Near Your Church
• Challenge 4: Take Prayer to a New and Powerful Level
• Challenge 5: Rethink Your Facilities for Emerging Opportunities
• Challenge 6: Make Lasting Changes That Will Make a Difference

Throughout the book, Rainer emphasizes that the North American church especially is facing changes that we’ve long needed to face. Rather than being so inwardly focused on our own culture and programs and properties, we’ve needed to look up and look out at the community around us and to explore what it is that keeping them from darkening our doors. About this he says:

Here’s something important we need to understand: The relatively stable times that churches in North America have enjoyed over the past two centuries are an aberration—certainly compared to other parts of the world and down through the history of the church. (91)

Another major change that many churches have needed is getting updated to the modern age. It’s not that we’re trying to target those folks across the street who’d rather YouTube church than attend in person, but that we need to take advantage of the power that technology offers to reach the world. Many churches did move to online, outdoor, and blended services, advancing their impact in ways that surprised them, and they did this not because they wanted to, but because quarantines and regulations forced them to. In fact, my own father at age 69 became a YouTube sensation (well, he peaked at 75 views for one of his sermons, but that’s more people than attend his church on any given Sunday).

The changes that were thrust upon churches during that strange summer of 2020 weren’t all bad, and Rainer’s point is that most need to recognize this and take advantage of it. About church buildings, for example, he writes:

We have seen that the church can survive, even thrive, without the everyday use of buildings. And though we certainly advocate the importance of gathering in person, we also see the opportunity in the post-quarantine era to use our facilities for greater and more efficient purposes. (14)

About getting our eyes back to where they belong, meaning on the people that live within a few blocks of your church, he writes:

For most [American] congregations, it is not a matter of getting beyond Jerusalem—that is, going beyond the borders of our local communities. It is first a matter of reaching Jerusalem. We must focus our outward vision on the people who are right around us, in our neighborhoods, cities, and towns. (49)

Much of the book came as an encouragement to pastors and other church leaders who might have been discouraged by the goings on 2020. Certainly, most churches saw a dip in their attendance rolls that has yet to recover, and yet: shouldn’t this cause us to wonder why people were attending in the first place, if catching a cold suddenly keeps them from attending church in person even today? Such shifts are not necessarily the fault of the pastor or the programs and certainly are not the fault of God or His Word. It’s all in the hands of the people who quit church because they finally had a good excuse to. Pastors shouldn’t get glum about this but rejoice that all was ordained and allowed by our omnipotent God 9and maybe for the purposes of cleaning house). Rainer writes:

Be excited and encouraged. Don’t let the unknown become a source of fear. You are not entering this new era alone. Not only is God with you; he has gone before you. (8)

If you find yourself wavering at this point—or even if you’re fully on board and ready to roll—allow me to point you back to how the apostles responded to a time of tremendous change in the earliest days of the church: They devoted themselves to prayer and the Word of God. Whatever may come, prayer and God’s Word must be front-and-center priorities for the path ahead. (86)

Overall, this was a helpful little book to get a new perspective on the changes that many churches experienced during the COVID-19 era. It may be a book that’s quickly outdated, but it might help a pastor wrap his mind around why his church’s culture has shifted, and why it’s not quite the same church that’s come out of COVID as went into it. This book might still be of some use to you, though for the most part, I think it’s more of a flash-in-the-pan for such a time as that than anything.

©2023 E.T.