The Faith Communities Today
research project has released a new report probing factors that
influence church participation. In many ways, their conclusions are very
familiar. The two leading obstacles are school and sports activities
and conflict with work schedules.
The observation I found most helpful was made by Lovett H. Weems Jr. in this week’s Lewis Center For Church Leadership Update e-newsletter. He draws attention to the distinction Gil Rendle makes between problems and conditions. “Our
normal inclination is to see everything as a problem that we can fix.
Sometimes we face a new context that is not a problem susceptible to our
repair but rather a new condition we must engage.”
Clearly
many of the things we in the church tend to define as obstacles to
getting the church back to what it should be – as defined by our youth –
are more accurately termed conditions, part of a new reality.
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