Congregations can become so focused on formalities and outward appearances that they forget the importance of seeking connection through stronger relationships, said Andy Hale, author of Mending the Fracturing Church: How to Navigate Conflict and Build Trust for Thriving Communities.
“We’ve confused churchiness for what it means to be the church, and oftentimes that’s how we express ourselves in worship versus cultivating opportunities for people to actually share their lives together,” said Hale, associate executive director of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina and a veteran pastor and congregational coach.
Andy Hale
His new book presents a psychological and sociological analysis of church divisions, then delves into theological reflections, stories and exercises designed to help congregations reestablish belonging and trust.
Polling shows about 12% of adults are leaving the church each decade, yet many of them are maintaining their faith and becoming even more spiritual and faith-focused than ever, Hale said. “That tends to indicate there’s something diagnostically wrong with what’s happening in our local churches, how we relate to each other, how we talk about our convictions, how we interact with the things happening in our world.”
Those who remain in dwindling, aging congregations in turn feel a sense of abandonment and despair as people continue to leave, he said. “There’s a sense of frustration and judgment and condemnation. There’s a sense of insecurity, and all those things are culminating together.”
Outside issues also are taking a toll on churches, including increasing distrust of institutions and rising dissonance around political, social and theological conflicts, he added. “This creates this fracturing, the lack of belonging, that people feel within their churches.”
Angst also emanates from holding tightly onto a particular iteration of institutional life and failing to see this “incredible moment” in which the church is reshaping and reforming into something new.
“We think we are defending the faith, but really we’re defending our comfort.”
“At times we become so stationary in our perspectives that we think we are defending the faith, but really we’re defending our comfort, we’re defending what we can control, we’re defending what we know to be true for a certain period of time in our lives,” Hale said.
“And as we deal with the grief of what we have known to be the church, we see that fracturing and become so worried about maintaining those things that we are not oftentimes open to the new possibilities of what is coming through this process right now.”
Hale cited the growing house-church movement in Europe that has taken root decades after churches and cathedrals famously dwindled and closed. That development can serve as a source of inspiration and hope to the U.S. church shifting into a new era, he suggested.
“People there are still centered in their faith and still participating in community life in something that actually looks quite remarkably like the early church we see in the book of Acts, chapter 2 and chapter 4, in which people were sharing their lives with other people, supporting each other and worshiping together and growing together in Christ.”
The key is to embrace change, scary as it can be, rather than ignore or deny it, to resist labeling those who disagree as enemies and to remember people have more in common than it may appear, Hale advises.
But the internal and external resistance to those ideas may be strong: “Right now, we’re told there is this dichotomy where you have to pick a side, and anytime there is an us-versus-them mentality within our churches, naturally that’s going to contribute to division and animosity.”
One of the goals of Mending the Fracturing Church is to equip clergy and laypeople with the tools to develop or increase the emotional capacity needed to help rebuild trust and belonging within their congregations.
Hale compares the effort to the concept of repentance as Christ used it in the Gospels. “That word literally means to change your way of thinking and living. It is an invitation from Christ to the renewal and transformation of our minds, and here it can mean the renewal and transformation of our churches.”
To do that, people must first come to better understand themselves and recognize how their own cognitive processes have contributed to the divisions roiling their churches, he said. But reforming isn’t only about doing difficult work.
“Congregations that play together stay together. They need to imagine and be creative, tell stories and have fun together. We’ve confused churchiness for what it means to be the church, and oftentimes that’s how we express ourselves in worship versus cultivating opportunities for people to actually just invest in life together.”