The traditional church model (churches that meet in buildings, have paid staff, etc) worked as long as a few things were in place:
- A baseline of people who were brand loyal to fill the pews and make budget
- Low cost of real estate, salary, maintenance and other expenses
- A pipeline of people to fill the paid staff positions
But today…
- There are fewer brand loyal people…people will “try out” all kinds of churches, not just the one they were raised in.
- Costs are high and cost of living is high = need for higher salaries while the attendance/budget are often lower than they were a few years ago
- The pipeline for preachers is drying up so that the staff positions are sitting vacant for years
This means we need new approaches to continue to have flourishing churches.
How Home Churches Help
Home churches help solve these issues because they:
- Aren’t about a denomination or brand loyalty. There is no brand.
- They alleviate the hurdles of higher costs of the traditional approach (the host already pays their rent/mortgage and power bill)
- Don’t have to have paid staff to have a home church or the preacher pipeline.
I believe we need both approaches but what made the traditional approach the traditional approach is shifting and we need to be smart, spiritually sensitive, scriptural and flexible.
Thoughts on how we got here and where we are going?
3 Responses
Books like Pagan Christianity and others document how we got here. Where we’re going is in my opinion a lot more complicated. Personally, I believe that we’re likely to see more hybrid models appear, as many traditional churches close due to “aging out” and financial issues. I believe that we’ll also see more bi-vocational ministers in proportion to full time professionals. Only time will tell.
I have little to no problem with the disappearance of our clergy. When congregations spend between 60-80% on payroll and facilities, something had to give. Especially when too many congregations think we need extremely ornate meeting places.
We have changed are missionary methods from going to hoping they come in automatically when we open the doors. As a former professor said, about FIVE decades ago, “Vacuum cleaner evangelism: Open the doors, and hope they get sucked in.”
We have cut mission budgets in order to remain in our edifices. And now the piper wants to be paid…
We have also succumbed to the “silent treatment.” I worked for a large school district, and rules abounded. One was: Religion is a taboe subject. Of course, when you are a new employee, and they all want to know what you did before you started at the schools, telling them about having been a missionary for two decades, somehow the door was opened…
Most conversions happen by friends, neighbors, coworkers… and then, for some strange reason, the minister needs to baptize them, which sometimes gets in the way of the personal relationship which has been built…
So, let’s go back to the home church. We have sort of practiced that with the Small Group idea…
Your posts and Dave and Jana’s come into my inbox at the same time
https://substack.com/home/post/p-165263897