Why are Christian congregations important today?

We believe congregations are important, both to those involved in them and to their neighbors, and we want people to know that about our work. It is part of the reason we changed the name of our ministry from Leadership Education to Forum for Congregational Life. 

With that new emphasis and in a season of rapid societal change, we are also considering the impact of AI, cultural polarization and numerous other factors on the work and meaning of congregations.

When Dave started in ministry more than four decades ago, many denominations acted as if one of the primary roles of a congregation was to be an outpost of denominationally developed programs. Today, the activities of a congregation are often determined by its people and shaped by the opportunities and challenges in its particular context.

Given all that is shifting, Alaina believed that our team needed to consider why congregations matter both historically and in our day. We needed to speak the questions on our minds as we launch the Forum.

Christian congregations are the primary social and institutional manifestation of Christian faith today. In Christian congregations, individuals and families gather to receive, affirm and celebrate the transformation they have experienced through faith in the Triune God. In congregations, persons of all ages are formed together in seeking God’s purpose for their shared lives across many years.

This communal expression and experience of faith grounds individuals in God’s redemptive story. The shared work of communal worship gives congregation members renewed imaginations to see God at work in their homes, neighborhoods, workplaces and beyond.

A thriving congregation is firmly grounded in the story of God, continually retold through communal, family and individual practices such as worship, study of Scripture, prayer and discernment. A thriving congregation has integrated its sense of mission and calling into all aspects of its organizational life, including its formational programming and decision-making processes. A thriving congregation is deeply rooted in its place — invested in the culture and history of its neighborhood, faithfully interpreting its theological tradition and commitments within the life of the community beyond the congregation.

Finally, a thriving congregation has a thoroughly Christ-shaped and Spirit-led life, sharing an inextricable connection to the Triune God while remaining fully present to the needs, joys, sorrows and opportunities of the community. Healthy congregational leadership is not limited to pastoral and professional leadership; it includes laity and clergy working collectively to live as Christ lives.

Over the years, we have witnessed many congregations develop a mission or vision statement. In the end, those statements are remarkably alike. Often, the gift of such a process is for the participants to go back to the fundamentals of the faith life and the role of the congregation in that life.

It can be difficult to hold onto these foundational ideals in this season of rapid social and cultural change. All of us are trying to adapt to this environment. Technological advances have made remote work, virtual health care and online education possible. Artificial intelligence is transforming almost every sector of life. Geopolitical and environmental instability raise anxieties and fears for many.

It is not surprising that people may feel overwhelmed. Some attempt to turn back the clock, while others choose to trust in the latest innovation. Some may be paralyzed by the situation. In the midst of these changes, trust in institutions of all types is eroding.

Congregations, naturally, need to adapt to the changing circumstances. In a 2024 survey for the Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations (EPIC) project conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, 46% of respondents reported that they regularly participate — in-person or virtually — in congregations beyond their primary one, and 7% identified as having more than one “home church.” What does this information mean in terms of church membership? What should any of these respondents’ congregations expect in terms of participation?

Leaders of congregations are considering a host of distinct and interrelated questions: How do we lead others to live a life of faith that matters? What is the role of technology in facilitating worship? How do we support Christian discipleship for families who seldom attend services and frequently access content on their phones? How do we measure the impact of our engagement with the community?

These shifts raise basic organizational questions about what a church staff and building should do: How do we determine the adequate size of a church staff? What is the role of a church building? What does it mean if a church is in a neighborhood? Some leaders are not sure where to find information and ideas beyond their friends, colleagues, peers and perhaps their denomination.

One way to see the new situation for congregations is to remember the effectiveness of the mid-20th century’s most commonly used metric for church life: average weekly worship attendance. Lyle Schaller, a highly regarded church consultant of that era, considered a congregation’s size to be the most crucial variable in predicting its culture and work. This measure helped gauge adequate programs, staffing, location, buildings and land use. Attendance still matters today, but it does not predict revenue or requests for support in the way it once did.

We can see another shift in expressions of congregational life through programming. In Schaller’s time, congregations offered a host of programs, ranging from youth groups to Bible studies. Even worship services were often planned like program events. The program-planning model has been slowly shifting, but these changes became much more widespread during the stay-at-home phase of the pandemic. Programs were generally shut down for months or longer. Worship, prayer and fellowship, however, continued in new and old ways that are still evolving.

Another shift is away from the congregation as a “voluntary association.” Since the same period when programing became central, congregations have generally been organized like civic organizations, such as women’s clubs or Lions Clubs. But all of these associational forms are shifting as we approach the mid-21st century. At the moment, few groups of this kind are attracting younger adults, who often connect instead through social media and are more likely to affiliate with a movement than a formal association. Yet the bonds of a movement are often not as long-lasting or consistent as those created in many voluntary associations, particularly congregations.

These shifts and changes invite us to wonder: How should congregations evolve to offer their gifts in new ways? The mission of congregations is not changing, but the expressions of congregational life are evolving. This transition can be difficult to track and notice across various Christian traditions. There are places for a congregation to go for help — like a denomination, a school or a consulting firm — but those places may not have the time and energy to develop networks so congregations can learn from each other.

We want the Forum for Congregational Life to be a place that supports the exploration of today’s pressing questions and any new questions that may emerge for congregations. We believe that the variety of Christian traditions and their congregations will likely respond to the times in many different ways, and we aspire to facilitate ways to learn from each other.

Participation in congregational life has been significant to Christian persons and families throughout the church’s history. In different seasons, congregational life has evolved to include many expressions: house churches, small rural congregations, megachurches, cathedrals and more. Alongside all who care about congregations, we are excited to discover how these forms are evolving and the impact congregations are having in this age.

Pastors and my garden plants could have a lot in common, to the benefit of the clergy.

This occurred to me recently when a denominational leader lamented that pastors feel they are unable to be vulnerable in denominational spaces. The denomination supervises too many elements of pastors’ professional lives for it to be a safe space for mental and spiritual health conversations.

No single organization can provide pastoral leaders with all of the support they need. Instead, pastors need a network of institutions committed in distinct but collaborative ways to their thriving.

As with clergy, my garden plants need more than a variety of components in their soil to grow; they need a network that shares these resources effectively and collaboratively. Front yard gardening — a high-maintenance and high-reward hobby — has provided me with a window into how plants network.

I didn’t set out to turn my entire front yard into a garden. I started with a 4-by-4-foot raised bed to grow some cherry tomatoes and basil. Seven years later, I have a yard filled with raised beds, grow bags and a perennial pollinator garden.

Vegetables, flowers and weeds comingle to produce food for my household, the birds, the squirrels and the bees. It’s chaotic and joy-creating for me while providing meaningful neighborly connections.

Slowly, over the years, my understanding of soil science has grown. Initially, I mixed bagged garden soil with homemade compost and declared it good enough. The plants grew as long as I remembered to water them and paid attention to pest and mildew problems.

Gradually, through gardening missteps and lackluster harvests, I began to learn about the complex needs of the many plants I attempt to grow. Dramatic plant failures have led me for advice to the local cooperative extension office help line more than once.

Carbon-rich soil feeds sugars and nutrients to plants and acts as a sponge, holding much-needed water for hydration. Mineral-dense soil provides potassium and phosphate. Bean and pea plants can pull nitrogen from the air (magic!), making crop rotation an essential part of successful gardening. And when the soil doesn’t have what the plants need, there is an entire cottage industry of soil amendments to help our green things grow.

But in between the compost and clay and the worms and grubs lives my favorite part of soil: the fungus. That white web uncovered in an overturned pile of mulch is garden gold, the mycelium network that acts as the fiber-optic communications channel for the plants.

Through these tiny strands, plants share resources and information with one another. The network also breaks down matter left by humans and other creatures, improving the soil’s quality and ability to support plant growth.

The importance of the mycelium’s invisible contribution to our daily well-being cannot be overstated. Working in my garden this spring to nurture the conditions for the mycelium to thrive, I have pondered how this network is a meaning-rich metaphor for pastors.

Each faith-based or church-related organization has a mission and strengths that define how it supports clergy, congregations and communities. It creates and provides a vital resource, but no single entity can offer all of the support needed for thriving communities and pastors.

We are more effective in our ministry when we understand our particular organization’s unique contributions to a thriving community — how we connect to other groups to support our people. This requires all of us to shed fears of economic scarcity and adopt a theology of abundance and collective wellness. It requires us to trust that a Creator God who has imagined a tiny fungal network into existence has imbued us with the capacities to share resources and wisdom needed to thrive together.

This eco-theological imagination complements Scripture’s many stories and metaphors that encourage us to think collaboratively about the work of being faithful in the world: the body of Christ, the sending of the 72, the formation of the diaconate in the early church. These biblical references bring meaning to local congregational and communal life, as well as the larger ecosystems surrounding pastors and faith communities. They, like the mycelium network, challenge us to share our resources and creativity with one another.

The economic realities of life in the 21st century require each of us at the personal and organizational level to ask hard questions about who we are, who we are not, and how we connect and share with others who have distinct offerings.

Our wealth is not financial; it is the relational trust we have with one another that we will not abandon one another, that we will show up to celebrate and support, to share and care. That is not to discount the need for fund development and viable economic models. Rather, the mycelium network challenges our culturally pervasive posture that economic thriving is a zero-sum game best won through resource hoarding.

The tiny, interconnecting strands of the mycelium reflect the sacred call to be in community with one another at every level of our life, work and ministry. This crucial network teaches us that we are not alone in growing thriving communities, congregations and ministers but live in a world full of living connections and relationships that make us healthier, stronger and more abundant.

As I laid out my nativity scene collection this year, I was struck by the odd gathering of poor Galileans, shepherds, magi and maybe a few animals. There’s no earthly reason for this group to be together, except that they each experienced an encounter with the divine that they could not deny.

In the young adult, biblical fan fiction graphic novel that exists only in my mind, I like to imagine that this divine encounter bonds them in a kind of friendship that lasts for a lifetime. Every year, they write one another Christmas cards, fondly remembering the hilarious things that happened when Jesus was born, and they conspire to meet in Bethlehem the next time the magi are passing through. I imagine the shepherds and their families some 30 years later hustling to Jerusalem to make sure Mary is eating when Jesus is imprisoned.

This sort of enduring friendship is a rare gift, but truthfully, any kind of friendship has become difficult for us.

The pandemic and accompanying social tumult has changed the ways we relate and congregate. During the past three years, many of us experienced profound change in our social and intimate relationships. We stopped attending worship services and large social gatherings; family estrangement increased; the friendly barista at our favorite shop lost her job and moved away before we had a chance to say goodbye. Our close ties and our loose ties all came untied.

Some of us were experiencing isolation before the pandemic began. In early, pre-pandemic conversations with pastors, many Thriving in Ministry project directors discovered that pastors were experiencing deep loneliness in ministry. Some researchers of adolescent social behavior argued that the declines in iGen (born in the mid-1990s to mid-2000s) teen pregnancy had less to do with access to information and mature decision making and more to do with less time spent in the physical company of peers as socialization moved online.

The social isolation of the pandemic exacerbated these trends. In 2021, Americans age 15 and older spent less than three hours a week with friends, a 58% decline since 2013. These lost hours were not replaced by time with partners, families or even co-workers; they were replaced by time alone.

Our aloneness is a social and cultural phenomenon, not any one person’s doing. The loneliness many of us experience is a physical, mental and spiritual public health crisis.

Christmas and Advent can be particularly difficult seasons for prioritizing our well-being. Family and cultural expectations crowd out opportunities to reflect upon the meaning of a virgin mother, an incarnate and infant Christ child, an angel chorus, a star in the night. I find it incredibly difficult to slow down enough to join the shepherds in the field or the magi in their journeys and to experience the awe of an incarnate God.

Thankfully, Epiphany is one of the few Christian feasts celebrated in the United States with a meaning that has been spared the vampiric effects of capitalism. It remains a refuge of spiritual care.

The church quietly celebrates the appearance of the star of Bethlehem that beckoned Gentile magi to go and seek out the King of the Jews. The star, much like the infant Jesus, miraculously manifests and changes those who encounter it, drawing them closer to one another as they dream of the new ways of being this child is bringing to the world: sight for the blind, rest for the weary, freedom for the enslaved, hope for all.

The shining star of Epiphany beckons us to gather with others whose lives have been forever changed by an encounter with the divine. We cannot dream these dreams alone. We cannot become these new ways of being on our own. We need friends and community, with all their unlikeliness and messiness.

We don’t always feel like being with friends, or we may find it complicated to do so. After fulfilling all the obligations of the Christmas season, many of us engage in a kind of emotional hibernation, cocooned in our homes, recovering from a month of overstimulation. Many in our community are not well enough to bear the risk of exposure to illness. Others among us find the vulnerability and trust required of friendship incredibly difficult.

Back in the fan fic nativity scene, I imagine that the original Epiphany crew, too, had seasons when staying in touch became difficult, when their feelings of connection and love suffered. But the brilliance of the stars in the winter night sky pulled them back to the wonder of Jesus’ birth and the miracle of enduring love and friendship. Those stars reminded them to keep dreaming, to keep believing in the promised new ways of being, to keep creating transformative and healing community and friendship.

I plan to keep my nativity scenes out a little longer this year as my own kind of Epiphany reminder that spending time with friends is sacred and divine work. It can be challenging; it is countercultural and can counter my own intuition. But it is in our being with others that we encounter the Spirit and our dreams of full freedom and healing come alive.

A colleague recently lamented that a potential donor had expressed skepticism about the need for pastors to get away.

“Peloton instructors don’t need to get away to better take care of themselves to do their job! Why do pastors?” the donor wondered.

This conversation is the first time my personal curiosity about Peloton instructors, users and culture became professionally useful.

“WRONG!” I blurted out. “Peloton instructors see physical therapists and acupuncturists on a weekly basis. They exercise with one another and other top fitness professionals in private gyms all the time! Getting away from the camera and focusing on their well-being is part of the job.”

Plus, those instructors are fit!

The workout videos that we can stream at home are not the whole story of Peloton instructors’ well-being. I can barely breathe during one of Alex Toussaint’s rides. Meanwhile, he is dancing, joking, singing and motivating me to keep doing a ridiculously hard thing — evidence he does even more ridiculously hard things on a regular basis. Other instructors share stories of running ultramarathons and post their personal exercise routines to social media.

I am generally disinclined to look for advice on how we care for pastors from a highly polished fitness and media company, but my time as a Peloton user has surfaced a few insights that resonate with themes we are observing in the Thriving in Ministry projects.

Spiritual self-care is not selfish — it’s sacred.

During her workouts, Robin Arzón regularly says, “Self-care is not selfish — it’s sacred.” The same is true of spiritual care. For a pastor to tend to her soul away from the pressures and distractions of congregational ministry is not selfish. It’s sacred.

We don’t have to rely on Arzón’s observation, though. Jesus’ proclivity for slipping away to a quiet place to pray is a strong biblical justification for this soul care.

My hunch is that pastors struggle to find or create spiritual self-care space because there is a strong cultural assumption that they already have the spiritual resources they need. They are already “the most spiritual person in the room.” Yet just as a Peloton instructor’s most important self-care happens off camera, the deepest spiritual care for a pastor often happens in the quiet places away from the needs of the congregation.

Many pastors do not feel that they have the agency to say yes or no in their lives and ministry, leaving them overwhelmed and spiritually exhausted. Pastors need support to get away for the sacred work of spiritual self-care.

Much like caring for pastors’ physical well-being, caring for pastors’ spiritual well-being looks like supporting them in the development of a concrete plan with accountability and resources.

There is real joy in having a community of people who understand your weird job.

Flourishing in Ministry research calls this a relationship with “similar others” — people with whom we can share jargon and knowing glances without explanation. Having similar others helps us feel known and supported when we work through challenges as well as when we celebrate accomplishments. Similar others can provide us with critical feedback about our work.

It’s impossible to know whether the Peloton instructors are the kinds of friends they portray themselves to be on social media. But their presentation of their connection with one another reminds me that my life is better when I have people who yearn for the renewing of the world as I do, who understand the quirky ups and downs of my daily life, and who nerd out on the same very specific things that bring out my inner nerd.

Meanwhile, we continue to hear stories of lonely and isolated pastors — ministers who yearn for connection with similar others but have no space in their lives to nurture these critical wisdom-sharing friendships.

My strong singular recommendation on how to care for pastors in this season of a receding pandemic, based on my listening to many who are caring for pastoral leaders, is to help pastors befriend other pastors.

Congregational ministry is particularly idiosyncratic and unpredictable right now. Economic supports may solve one set of challenges but are not able to address a multitude of other, adaptive challenges facing ministerial leaders. Whether a congregation thrives, decides to close or attempts something in between, pastoral leaders need friends to help them navigate this difficult new terrain and determine their next most faithful steps.

Wisdom and friendship are renewing resources that can accompany pastoral leaders and all who care for them through what lies ahead, whatever it may be.