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.

Learning to preach is a lifelong vocation with fresh challenges to face and new opportunities for growth. Beginning to learn the preaching art is a big job, with many skills to develop in sharing God’s word with God’s people: exegeting biblical texts, discerning and framing theological themes, addressing cultural issues, acknowledging congregational dynamics, grounding contemporary relevance in Christian history, offering authentic personal witness without becoming the center of sermon attention. Each of these dimensions in sermon crafting is learned only in incremental steps and over time. Integrating them all requires effective orchestration — a skill of its own.

In introductory homiletics courses or in early attempts on their own, beginning preachers may inevitably focus on generating one sermon at a time. This practice tends to produce a series of “one-offs” — each independent of, or even in isolation from, each other. The preaching that results does justice neither to the organic evolution of parish community life nor to rich elements in the unfolding trajectory of salvation history.

What can preachers do in sermon crafting to foster in listeners a tangible sense of communal spiritual continuity? How might they develop a “Spirited” conversation that enables members, on returning to church each week, to pick up where they left off (even if they miss Sundays here and there)?

Here are some strategies we’ve sought to employ in service of that objective:

• Rather than taking the lectionary readings assigned as disparate texts, we try to think about what precedes and follows each text and how, on a given day, they may be in intertextual interplay. We look for themes we can focus on for a month, a liturgical season, even a year.
   
• We seek to be open to the Holy Spirit in the lives of our church communities, making connections with the sacred texts. This is different from eisegesis or reading something into the text.

  We don’t decide, for example, “Well, it’s the pledge campaign season, so we need to throw stewardship in somehow,” or try to tie in how to raise money for a new air conditioning unit when the Old Testament reading is Nathan confronting David about Bathsheba. Instead, as we prayerfully consider the collection of the day’s readings and seek themes, we pray about what’s going on in the life of our church — individual instances and broader patterns.
   

• We try to be aware of, and open to, the Spirit in the lives of individual parishioners. We try to avoid finding a story to “plug in” to a sermon for that Sunday. Rather, we pay attention to how an encounter with a community member or an event in our own lives or the life of a parishioner might beautifully illuminate a text. Of course, when telling someone else’s story, especially if recognizable to others in the congregation, we need to have received their consent.
   
• Some teachers of preaching advise against reading old sermons because it could constrict fresh vision. We find, however, that such rereading can have the opposite effect — sending us in a different direction entirely or deepening a dimension that was implicit in the sermon preached before. With multiple lectionary texts, every Sunday offers many thematic variations and angles of approach.

  Reading old sermons can be especially helpful when difficult pericopes arise. Some of us were taught that if one of the readings is difficult (such as Jesus talking about divorce), we “must” preach on that, because it is what people will hear and wonder about. When preaching to the same people for a decade or more, however, that would mean never preaching from other readings for that Sunday or other themes present in the collection.

  When we are with people long term, we can be open to what the Spirit nudges us toward, acknowledging when that does not engage the difficult text and perhaps letting people know that a previous sermon on that text is available for those who want or need it. Copies or recordings of such sermons can be made available for later reference.
   

• Weaving in the developing story of the parish — especially when viewed in light of an unfolding issue in the ministry of Jesus, an Old Testament drama, or an early church issue wrestled with in Acts or the Letters of Paul — can bring together broad connections rather than simply making a point.

  It can convey the sense of spiritual growth as a process both extended and communal, whether it’s the struggle with a building program, the investment in a local food bank or tutoring ministry, the progress of a Christian education program, or a socially/politically challenging local issue in which the parish has a stake.
   

• We find it often appropriate and helpful to briefly reference previous sermons and to point ahead to what forthcoming sermons will be addressing — all aspects of a story in process.
   
• Being candid about our own vulnerabilities and challenges as well as pressing but unresolved issues in parish life can serve as an invitation to reflect on the physical and emotional layers of experiential problems and theological principles. When done with care, such preaching can reframe what may feel insurmountable when faced alone as occasions for mutual insight, support and resolutions, however partial or temporary those may be.

While most preachers know that it is inappropriate and ineffective to preach at their congregations, not all preachers know that they are not so much to preach to but rather with and for their congregations.

Professor Fred Craddock often reminded his fellow preachers that good preaching does not tell listeners what they want to hear; it enables people to say what they most deeply need to say. When strategies like those listed above are regularly worked into the sermon preparation process, listeners will experience preaching they hear as a window on their shared world, as a voice that resonates with and validates their own individual and communal voices.

Preaching becomes not so much a series of points to ponder as a set of reference points for shared spiritual journey — an invitation to participate in continuing Spirited conversation.

It has happened repeatedly in recent years. On Saturday afternoon, around 3 or 4 o’clock, my phone’s screen flashes alive with a news alert from The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. Some of the alerts seem trivial, hardly worthy of the title “breaking news.” Others, though, are so staggering that “breaking news” hardly expresses what is world-shaking, gut-wrenching, terrifying, heartbreaking.

I have friends whose anxiety is so elevated on a day-to-day basis that they have disabled all notifications and alerts on their phones. They simply no longer have the emotional or spiritual capacity to process another tragedy, and for them, this disabling is an act of self-care. One empathizes.

For those of us who regularly find ourselves in a pulpit on Sunday mornings, though, this is seldom an available option. If part of the work of preaching is bridging the distance between the world of the Scriptures and our world today, if we are interpreting the meaning and weight of eternal promises for contemporary life, then preachers must at the very least be conversant with the world as it is and as it is becoming — even as that is unfolding in the moment.

But this raises an inevitable question: When does the preacher change Sunday’s sermon in response to Saturday’s news?

This is a favorite discussion among preachers on Twitter and Facebook on Saturday afternoons when shocking news has yet again broken. Someone tweets or posts, “How are you going to preach about this tomorrow?” Several people then offer constructive suggestions, often with deep insight into Scripture, the tradition or the situation.

Because this is social media, though, it does not take long for the quality of the help and the conversation to devolve. Someone starts preacher shaming: “If you don’t talk about this on Sunday, you shouldn’t be in a pulpit.” Or someone makes an appeal directly to laity: “If your preacher doesn’t preach about this on Sunday, you should find a different church.” Then someone retorts that his or her preaching continually addresses racism or sexism or violence or social injustice so perhaps the “shamer” should just worry about his (it’s almost always a man who first throws shame in these scenarios) own sermon.

In these exchanges, what is inevitably lost is the most significant question: What does the gospel have to say to a broken and brokenhearted world in this moment, and does that gospel message necessitate changing what I had planned to preach tomorrow?

There is no perfect answer, of course. So much depends on our own prayerful and pastoral discernment. So much depends on the congregational and community context.

What I am learning through this extended season of shocking Saturdays is that I have to examine my planned sermon through four questions.

If I do not change a word, will this sermon still speak honestly and sufficiently about the world where this news happened? Does this sermon offer a description of sin and brokenness that can begin to account for pernicious prejudice and pervasive violence? Does the sermon’s description account for “the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf,” to borrow a prayer of confession from the Episcopal Church’s “Enriching Our Worship” liturgical resource? Does it speak to the way the Spirit stirs people to respond generously and self-sacrificially in the most difficult of circumstances? If it does not, then it must be changed.

If I were to change the sermon, would I be offering something other than mere punditry? For better or worse, there is already a Sean Hannity and a Rachel Maddow. My deep conviction is that people do not come to church to hear sermons that sound like the commentary offered by either. In ways deeper than words, people come to church to hear that there is, in fact, a balm in Gilead that can heal the hurting soul. If I do change the sermon, how can I offer that good news in the wake of this news?

Am I the one who can say something about this, or is there someone else whose voice should be heard? As a white man, I already enjoy more than my share of privilege in this country, and to stand in a pulpit regularly is to exercise yet another kind of privilege. In the wake of some Saturdays, the gospel may call me to give up some privilege by letting another voice be heard. The answer may not be about changing the sermon at all but about intentionally giving up the pulpit for a week.

What can be said? Nadia Bolz-Weber may not have been the first to say it, but I heard it first from her: “I only preach from my scars, not my wounds.” Though these Saturdays are coming frequently, they still catch us off guard, and they leave us hurting. But the pulpit is not the place for my own therapy or for venting frustrations with mealy-mouthed politicians or complicit lobbyists or a racially bigoted judicial system. What can be said is what is most true, words that come from William Sloane Coffin: “God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”

It will happen again. Pray God, not this week. But some Saturday soon, breaking news will light up my phone, and yours too. The next day, I will step into the pulpit, and you will too. My prayer is that together our words might be a part of how God is repairing what is broken and binding up the wounded.

That would be good news indeed.