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.

Last week, our ministry changed its name from “Leadership Education at Duke Divinity” to “Forum for Congregational Life.” Changing every word in the name after 18 years feels risky to me. Why is this a good idea?

For about 10 years, I fretted that the name of our ministry said very little about our actual work. When explaining what we did, I frequently acknowledged that the name indicated nothing about our mission, goals or audience.

At our start, the name was accurate. Our work was continuing education for leaders, so Leadership Education worked fine. Our home was Duke University Divinity School, so that part was clear if you knew much about the school and its commitments. However, the name never explicitly identified our mission to strengthen the institutions that serve congregations. It did not communicate our hope to nurture congregations through building up their support systems.

At a deeper level, the opportunities and challenges facing congregations aren’t served well by one-size-fits-all programs. Leaders need peers with whom to trade ideas and share what’s working. Leaders need time to reflect. Organizations need collaborators from various communities and disciplines. We all need encouragement to think long-term and base our decisions on our theological convictions.

We found that not many people had the opportunity to ponder the realities of congregational life. Not many groups could invest resources to study, experiment, reflect and try again. Leaders found what we were doing meaningful but did not refer to it as education.

Still, changing the organization’s name was a huge step. There was much to consider before we made the change:

• How important is the message embedded in the new name? For five years, our website homepage has said, “We believe in the difference congregations make in the lives of people and communities.” A new name could make that belief clearer.
• Are the resources available to “be” the new name? A forum is a kind of network, which is seldom a self-supporting ministry. Ongoing philanthropic support is usually required for any such effort. Leadership Education was launched and sustained through grants from Lilly Endowment Inc. The Endowment asked Duke Divinity School to consider changing Leadership Education to the Forum and invited a proposal for substantial support. Because Lilly Endowment previously asked us to support their initiatives with Thriving Congregations, Thriving in Ministry and Ministry in Rural Areas and Small Towns, hundreds of organizations have developed relationships with us and with each other. These connections are the bases for the network.
• Do we know how to do the work? About 80% of the Forum’s activities will be built directly from the activities of Leadership Education. We will host Lilly Endowment grantees. We will write stories and amplify the stories written by others. We will reflect practically and theologically on ministry. We will offer grants to support practices of reflection. All of our publications will continue, and we will add a new one. In short, we have the resources and experience to do this.
• Is the work different enough to justify a new name? Yes. Congregational life will be so central to our ongoing efforts that we want to identify it explicitly in the Forum. We will host conversations about congregational life that will connect scholars and practitioners. It will connect experiments funded by philanthropy with congregations and their leaders. Over time, this work of nurturing meaningful connections will grow.

A forum is a place of deliberation that is outside the normal rhythms of life. A forum is not a center or an institute. It is a place of connection that supports the development of insight and action.

One concern with changing a name is the impression that the old goes away. But everything that Leadership Education did lives on through the Forum. In fact, several of our grant offerings will grow exponentially, especially our Reflective Leadership grants. In the next year, we will offer grants to individual leaders and teams that support congregational life. While we are setting up for that growth, we are pausing a few specialized programs, like our Foundations of Christian Leadership course.

No name can do everything we would want it to do. “Forum” is not in common usage. We will have to work hard to prove that a forum is for all people and all types of congregations. The word “congregations” excludes some faith traditions that don’t use the term. Nevertheless, we want to hear from these traditions and that they will share their insights with those of us who think in terms of congregations.

Hopefully our name will prompt reflection on what you think is happening with congregations in the United States. I have devoted my entire career to congregations, and they have always nurtured me. My earliest job was as a custodian at my family’s church. That congregation licensed me to ministry as a teenager and ordained me as a young adult.

My kids believed that no matter where they were, if they ever needed help, I would always know someone from a nearby a congregation who could provide it. (The advantage of spending more than two decades as a church consultant is knowing many churches.)

Congregations are significant contributors to the spiritual formation of individuals and supporters of families. Congregations impact their neighborhoods and beyond, from participating in shared community events to addressing daunting regional needs.

Congregations and parishes are complex. Like families and other such systems, they can do harm. No simple description contains all the truth. We hold congregations to higher standards because they should reflect God’s beloved community. When they don’t, we ask for forgiveness and hold them up for correction.

But have you ever tried to explain how a congregation gets things done? Have you tried to explain a Baptist congregation to a Catholic parish or introduce either one to a Pentecostal or Quaker congregation? The beliefs of these groups impact worship, decision-making and more.

People with experience in business or government or medicine can only use some of what they know about organizations to understand the living organism represented by a congregation in any of its forms. There is some specialized knowledge and experience that is transferable, but other aspects are specific to a tradition.

Leadership Education has changed its name because we want to be part of the conversation about congregational life. We want to encourage congregations to learn from each other, and we want congregations to reflect on God’s purposes for Christians. At our core, we believe in the difference that congregations make in the lives of people and communities.

Touch the pews with your hands, the Rev. Troy K. Venning told the crowd of grassroots activists gathered at Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church on a November evening.

“It has been said that the oils of our ancestors are on these pews,” Venning said, quoting the chief architect working on the church restoration. “You never know who was sitting where you’re sitting.”

It’s an illustrious roster: Quinn Chapel has hosted figures such as Ida B. Wells, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass, in addition to all the faithful who have been part of its long history. It is the oldest African American congregation in Chicago, dating back to seven people who gathered for prayer in 1844.

Under the leadership of Venning and his predecessor, the congregation has undertaken a restoration of its historic building and its connection to the neighborhood, revitalizing itself in the process. Quinn Chapel is not only a place to learn about the past but also a place where people can find connection in the present.

“There’s a West African teaching that urges us to reclaim what the past offers so that we can walk into the future with clarity and courage,” Venning said to those gathered for the November meeting about the city of Chicago’s budget.

The meeting was convened by United Working Families, an independent political organization funded by labor unions. Several members of the city council attended, as did Mayor Brandon Johnson. For all of them, UWF is a source of grassroots political support.

“This church is no stranger to the fight for the moral good,” Johnson said, recounting Quinn Chapel’s role as a stop on the Underground Railroad. “Thank you for understanding the collective assignment of liberation.”

Operation Midway Blitz

In the weeks before the meeting, federal agents were swarming the city and detaining thousands of Chicago-area residents in immigration-enforcement raids as part of Operation Midway Blitz.

Groups formed across the city and suburbs seeking to prevent their neighbors from being taken, actions that recall the role of Quinn Chapel members in resisting the Fugitive Slave Act in the 1850s. The congregation was part of a group of Chicagoans who formed patrols to thwart catchers trying to return people to slavery.

“There was a group of people from this church who started a vigilance society,” Venning said, “to keep people free.”

During the Great Migration in the first half of the 20th century, the church building was a welcoming center for people leaving the segregated South. The late Timuel Black, a historian born in Alabama and raised in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, said when his family arrived in the city, their first stop after Union Station was Quinn Chapel. They had been told that people at Quinn would tell them where to go next, Venning said.

Venning emphasizes that Quinn Chapel’s story is not only Black Chicago history but U.S. history. Susan B. Anthony spoke at Quinn about giving women the right to vote. A two-seater pew from the sanctuary is at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“Quinn Chapel has always been more than a church: It’s been a landing place, a launching place, a liberating place for generations seeking freedom, safety and belonging,” Venning said.

Vision for restoration

Even with its historical significance, by the late 1990s Quinn Chapel was in danger of closing.

Not only had the congregation shrunk, but the grand building in the South Loop neighborhood near downtown urgently needed repairs. Rain and snow were seeping in and damaging the interior, among other problems.

The Rev. James Moody became pastor in 2002 with a vision for restoration. Under his leadership the congregation grew not only in numbers — from 35 to 400 — but in energy. With concerted effort from his wife, First Lady Corlis Moody, and the restoration team, the congregation began to repair the historic building.

Corlis Moody oversaw grant writing and connected with historic preservation groups. James Moody, who is now a presiding elder for the AME denomination in the Chicago North District, stressed that it was not only the leadership of the church who aided in their success but “specific members with connections and courage.”

Charlotte Flickinger, a church trustee, guided the Moodys through making connections with the state legislature.

“She worked tirelessly and walked those halls and knocked on those legislators’ doors,” James Moody said. Flickinger’s efforts helped Quinn Chapel have $9.4 million earmarked from the state of Illinois for the historic restorations.

Many of the grants received over the years could not go to religious institutions, so Quinn Chapel set up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit specifically for restoration, Moody said.

And the Rev. Sheryll Brown-Venning, first lady and a minister of Quinn Chapel, sees a constellation of stars when she looks at the bright spheres dotting the stained-glass windows that have graced the building since it was constructed in 1892. It reminds her of those who fled north following the drinking gourd, also called the Big Dipper.

Hearing the creak of the wood and touching the pews “is majestic to me,” Brown-Venning said. When her husband encouraged her to preach, she felt honored “being able to stand behind the same pulpit that Martin Luther King stood behind.”

Architectural and aesthetic value isn’t the only reason to restore historic church buildings, said Robert Jaeger, president of Partners for Sacred Places, a Philadelphia-based organization. It also has economic and social benefits.

The average urban historic congregation generates $1.7 million annually in value, with 87% benefitting the community beyond its members, according to a 2016 study by Partners for Sacred Spaces collaborating with the University of Pennsylvania. (For rural congregations, the figure was $735,000 annually, a separate study showed.)

That includes employment of staff and drawing visitors who may also patronize local businesses. There is ecological and recreational value in the green space around churches, Jaeger said. Overall, the study looked at more than 40 factors.

Preserving historic sanctuaries also allows them “to do new things for those who are in need,” he said. He believes most congregations want to do that, but repairs can feel like an obstacle to starting programs.

“If you can help invest in that building, invest in accessibility,” as well as in repairs and maintenance, he said, “it benefits outreach.”

Without its restoration efforts, Quinn Chapel could have closed, Jaeger said. “Now it’s a strong congregation that has done a lot of good for that neighborhood.”

Leadership for the future

When Moody began preparing for a leadership transition, he thought of Venning, who had grown up at Quinn Chapel and was an intern there while a student at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. Venning then served as a pastor of three congregations in Florida.

Moody kept in touch and heard about Venning’s style of pastoral leadership, including at spoken-word poetry events and other venues beyond traditional church settings.

Moody also looked around at Quinn Chapel’s leadership and saw they were mostly people older than 50, he said. Leaders began the transition process with the steward board by inviting more laypeople in their 30s and 40s into leadership roles.

“Those leaders, those baby boomers, actually embraced the idea because they could see Quinn existing years later, decades later,” Moody said.

After a five-year transition process, the congregation asked Venning to come back to be executive pastor in 2019. Venning and Brown-Venning trusted God’s call through a difficult transition for their family, amid a period of deep personal loss and the start of the COVID pandemic. The AME district’s bishop appointed Venning to be senior pastor in 2021. There are still 400 members on the rolls, with 80 to 120 people at Sunday worship.

Building on the work the Moodys had done, Venning helped the finance team make necessary updates, including moving to online banking, with checks and balances in place. This was especially important for receiving and managing grant funds they had been awarded.

Venning sees the congregation as being like a train station. People arrive from different places and need a moment to rest before going to their next destination.

“Whether this is your final destination or you’re headed somewhere else, at least you should be able to find the things that you need to keep moving,” Venning said.

Train stations are also places where different people cross paths, bringing everything they’ve carried.

“We’ve always been a place to bring the haves and have-nots together,” Venning said. “I’m a firm believer that when people get to Quinn, they’re here because Quinn needs something that they brought with them, and they need something that we have now.”

The joy of a historic church

Plans involve looking to the past and the future.

The surrounding neighborhood was once the location of a large number of railroad depots and stations. There were also several public-housing developments located nearby. In recent decades, developers have built a lot of high-end housing, along with retail.

In addition to the church, Quinn Chapel owns a lot across the street and five adjacent lots on a nearby major corridor, State Street. In a dense area of the city where there is not much parking, those lots have been generating revenue for the congregation.

Another source of income has come from being a filming location for television and movies. Chicago has a multimillion-dollar TV and film industry, and studios pay restaurants, hospitals and other buildings to film scenes there. Recently, Quinn Chapel’s fellowship hall was used as the setting of Al-Anon meetings in the television series “The Bear.”

The congregation plans to turn property it owns diagonally across from the church building into a mixed-use development with housing, office space and parking. In the church, the first floor will have a bookstore that will sell books that are banned or “someone said you shouldn’t read,” Venning said.

Blocks away from the historic Chess Records studio where some of the greatest blues and R&B artists recorded their music, Quinn Chapel will have a recording studio for artists such as Adrian Dunn, Quinn Chapel’s director of music, worship and arts.

Christopher Wilson, associate music director and administrative assistant, studied audio design and engineering and does audio editing. Now a trustee as well as a staff member, he joined in 2015 as a college student.

“We’ve stood the test of time and continue to do ministry,” Wilson said. “To grow from a seven-person prayer band into a church that has birthed other congregations — I think that’s pretty remarkable.”

The congregation’s role in the Underground Railroad and the Great Migration will be a highlight of a new museum in the building. Excavating the basement will add 4,500 square feet of additional space. It will have an archives room, another meeting and arts space, and a museum that they hope to open to the public in 2027. It will include artifacts and stories from how the congregation has intersected with broader history.

“For folks who have the joy of being able to pastor in historic spaces, it’s about finding your story and being able to tell it,” Venning said.

The meeting about the city budget in November was one of the many Quinn Chapel hosts. Their main-level event space hosts art installations, movie screenings, educational events and more. Larger events, such as a mayoral forum in the last election, have taken place in the historic auditorium. Some weeks there are events most weeknights and Saturday as well; Venning said that it’s a mistake to focus on Sunday only.

Connecting Quinn Chapel’s legacy and present, Venning recalled the West African teaching of embracing the past’s lessons to move into the future.

“The Sankofa bird looks back while its feet face forward,” Venning told the crowd that evening in November: “We embody what our ancestors practiced: faith in action.”

Change isn’t easy. But it can be made easier, says Kara Powell of Fuller Theological Seminary.

Powell and co-authors Jake Mulder and Raymond Chang blend theology, original research with diverse churches, and business literature to offer guidance for congregational leaders in their new book, “Future-Focused Church: Leading Through Change, Engaging the Next Generation, & Building a More Diverse Tomorrow.”

“We are optimists about the future of the church. We’re very aware of some of the really discouraging data about the fatigue of pastors, churches shrinking, young people disengaging,” said Powell, who is executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute, founder of the TENx10 Collaboration and chief of leadership formation at Fuller.

“But fundamentally, we’re optimists because of what we believe about God,” she said. “God is always working and redeeming.”

The book describes four phases — called “zones” — in the change process and includes stories, research findings and reflection questions. The book ends with a chapter called “A Suggested 18-Month Change Journey,” in which they describe a step-by-step process to implement the learnings of the book.

“It includes our research with 1,000 churches, our literature review of really great organizational and leadership and change research, and also Scripture,” Powell said.

Powell spoke with Faith & Leadership’s Sally Hicks about the book and why she is excited about the future of the church. The following is an edited transcript.

Faith & Leadership: How do you hope people use “Future-Focused Church”?

You’ve highlighted a second type of diversity that we encourage, which is diverse viewpoints. It’s so much easier as a leader to spend time with people who agree with us. But the flip side is, first, we often learn from those who disagree with us. Usually people who disagree with us have important insights that we need to factor into our change process.

The second reason to keep building relationships — even with those who disagree with us — is our change principle. People support what they create. The more we can involve people [so that they are] being heard and feeling like they are helping shape the change, the more they’ll tend to support it.

In general, people want to be listened to more than lectured to, and so we recommend that for leaders across the board.

F&L: The inclusion of young people isn’t just the goal, it’s the process, right? Why do change leaders need to engage young people?

KP: First, I try to start always with theology, and there’s so many examples in Scripture of how important it is to bring the generations together. That’s what the early church was, all generations coming together. I would say it’s theologically grounded.

Second, it certainly is vocationally grounded for me. I feel a calling to young people. And even as my roles keep expanding at Fuller, I’m trying to spend at least 50% of my time on young people because that is the tree trunk of my calling. I have other branches, but young people are the tree trunk.

But the third level that comes to mind for me is that if we don’t engage young people, our churches are going to die. There’s just an inescapable reality to that. It’s not just placating young people and getting them to come join what we’ve always done. It’s handing the keys to young people and co-creating with them.

That’s part of what’s really exciting about this generation, specifically Gen Z and Gen Alpha; they want to co-create. They don’t want to be spectators; they want to be participants. They’re created in God’s image with amazing gifts and have expertise that we need.

F&L: Listening is often recommended for various reasons, but you say that one of the reasons you listen to people is to understand their “mental model.” What do you mean?

KP: Our colleague Scott Cormode has helped us understand mental models.

We have limitless mental models. We have a mental model of what a car is: When you and I think of a car, we have a picture in our mind. When you see something that’s markedly different from the cars you’re used to, it’s startling. You usually reject it.

It’s only as we spend time with people that we understand, What is it they think church should be? What is it that they think worship should be? What is it that they think youth discipleship should be?

As we spend time with them, we understand, Oh, they think of worship as two hymns and then a sermon, and then a hymn and response. If we’re going to change that, we need to understand where they’re starting from and then offer them different mental models.

Maybe instead of two hymns and a sermon and then a hymn and response, we might integrate five minutes of discussion time where people turn to each other in their pews or seats. Because we want a mental model where we’re not just listening but we’re building community with each other, not just engaging with God but also engaging overtly with each other. Listening is so key for mental models.

Another reason listening is so important is because of the lack of trust people feel toward institutions. If you look at data in the U.S., trust in institutions is declining; trust in religious institutions is declining. Young people’s trust is especially declining.

The research on trust shows we don’t rebuild trust through a grand heroic gesture. We rebuild it through everyday acts of integrity, of listening, of caring, of following up when somebody shares a need with us. I think listening is how we’re going to rebuild trust with people who are understandably a little skeptical of the church based on what they see these days.

F&L: Is there anything I didn’t ask that you’d like to add?

KP: A leader can read this article on their own, but they can’t bring about change on their own. Even if it’s two other people who can be part of your transformation team, whatever size church you are at, can you please involve a few other people in your change? Because we’re meant to lead in community, and change happens more effectively in community.