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by Marlene Gasdia-Cochrane
August/September 2005
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Clergy gathered to listen to author, researcher and professor Diana Butler Bass explain how different churches grow and fail and their need to welcome change if they are to succeed. |
“This is a time when church cannot stay the same,” says author, researcher and professor, Diana Butler Bass, who addressed a packed audience at the Friday morning Clergy Gathering. “Rather than consulting a pastor or clergy person, these days people are turning to Oprah or Google to get answers to their questions of how to have a good life or be a good person. We are no longer living in the fifties where there was only one voice of authority and few places to get information. We now have access to many resources and live among a variety of voices and cultures. And our churches need to adapt if they are to grow.”
Bass has been conducting a research project specifically examining the relationship between Christian practices and congregational vitality among several Protestant denominations. Bass has seen that some congregations are happily ig-noring the cul-tural changes that have happened over the years. These congregations act as a village, trusting that all those within the village will listen to one authoritative voice. “But that is no longer the case,” explains Bass. “We no longer live in a village structure. We belong to clusters of different people sharing different views.”
Bass insists that in order for congregations to survive, the leaders and local pastors need to be aware of the differences within their congregations, and embrace changes that will help welcome more people.
Those congregations that grow are ones that are pushing into the deep water, those “practicing Christianity in ways that are dynamic and organic, reconstructing tradition in terms of experience and wisdom rather than program and absolutes, emphasizing contemplation in action, faith in daily life, finding God in all things,” says Bass. “By joining spirituality to social concerns, they are constructing a theological alternative to both conservative evangelicalism and classic Protestant liberalism, and those are the congregations that will grow instead of fail.”