Online technologies and strategic church development consultant Cynthia Ware suggests five trends that will affect local expressions of the body of Christ in the coming year. A quick look through her list (borrowed, she says, from media guru Guy Kawasaki) and I smile--these are things we've been recognizing and embracing at Christ's Church over the last couple of years. It's interesting to me that these are also the very things that have wound up conversation fodder at the weekly local pastor's meeting these last couple of months. "What's a Facebook?"
Give this article a read. What do you think?
The shifting demographics paragraph has been a reality for the better part of the last decade in our little corner of the world, for my thinking. We tend to be a generationally minded body--and thankfully that has pretty much always been a norm for Christ's Church. But where the local churches are feeling this now (it seems all of the local congregations are experiencing the same thing in our area) is in an area I've referred to as "season of life" shifts. Simply, the families that made up the core of children and youth ministry in the past, who attended every church function offered over the last decade--they're now traveling weekends to visit their now grown children at college, or perhaps to go and spend time with their new grandchildren, or even to care for their own aged parents. In our specific case there are also a number of men and women who have shifted a tremendous amount of their "church time" in the direction of ministries of their own--traveling to minister at a seminar, or lead a conference, or fill a pulpit, or to lead ministry endeavors--new to them over these past few years. The end result: largely itinerant congregations. Things we should concern ourselves with: (1) Who is sharing the gospel? (2) Where are new young adults and young families? (3) How can we better resource a body that is more and more "along the way?"
Under technological advances, social media is the main thrust of Ware's article. I smiled as I read this--literally each of the last three weeks of our weekly pastor's meetings have spilled into all out discussions (dare I say 'debates') over the place of social media in ministry. I absolutely love the sentence "We must accept the reality that conversations are going on whether or not we're participating in it." That is almost word-for-word the sentiment that I've taken to those debates. A significant (and exponentially growing) number of people in our congregations live in social media streams. What are you going to do? It's also interesting to me the fear that is expressed in this article--the perceived threat of opening a back-channel--is exactly the concern expressed in pastor chats. What if someone pops off? What if someone spreads lies or heresy? What if someone does something... wait for it... outside of our control? One of my all time favorite television lines comes from the show Cheers--bar regular Norm walks in as the bar-tender Sam asks, "How's it going, Norm?" Norm's classic reply: "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there Sammy, and I'm wearing milk-bone underwear!" Scary world we minister in! I've often said, ministry would be great were it not for people.
Those are my (very) initial thoughts on the first couple of trends to stimulate some conversation. I'll come back to points three thru five later. What do you think? You seeing any of this in ministries you're connected to?
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