When you don't get the answers, change the questions

I must be in the mood for a change. Maybe I am being prepared for a change. Last week I thought about how a little change can do you good. Then this week I saw something about change that caught my attention.

In a post on a United Methodist group page, clergy coach Val Hastings challenged readers to “Change Your Questions, Change Your Church.” He had heard a statement on the radio that had caught his attention. History changed when a single question changed; when we stopped asking, "How do we get to the water?" and started asking, "How do we get the water to us?" What a significant turn for human beings.
Hastings thought about how this relates to ministry. How would our churches change if churches were to change our questions?

This reminded me a lot of a class I took earlier this year. The instructor was enthusiastic that we need to change our slogan from re-thinking church to unthinking church. The required texts for the course and presentations during the course suggested that we need to change the questions we ask about church and our plans in order to move toward the future with more effective ideas. Traditional church growth and development strategies no longer work for the 21st century church and we must be prepared to make changes or be prepared to watch the institution of the church continue to become irrelevant in our culture.

God is always calling us to be more than we have been. If we change our questions, can we open new possibilities? Are we being called to redefine the mission and life of the church? Are we ready to change?

What needs to change? The basic mission of the church has not changed, but the means by which we carry out that mission have to change because the methods we currently use are in many ways no longer effective. The challenge is for the church to move in innovative ways without losing our values.

We constantly hear people lament over the current state of the church. We read reports and articles on the decline of Christianity (and religion in general). Leaders worry over the decline in denominational membership. People see the growing population who claim no church affiliation as an insurmountable obstacle. But the mission is not impossible. Our biggest obstacles may not be the ambiguous society, but our own church structure and our resistance to change. Change the questions. There are many questions that should be changed. We could start by reversing the water question. Stop asking, "How do we get people to church?" and start asking "How do we get to people?"