By Mark Wingfield
Is it possible that America’s evangelical churches have merely traded one form of uniformity for another?
One of the criticisms of the old model of churches driven by denominational identity is that they were all the same. Whether located in a large city, rural hamlet or small town, you could walk into a Southern Baptist church anywhere and feel pretty much like you were in a Southern Baptist church anywhere else. The hymnals were the same, the curriculum was the same, even the bulletin covers were the same. Pastors came from the same seminaries and learned from the same textbooks and commentaries.
Ditto for the Methodists and Presbyterians and Lutherans. Denominational identity transcended congregational identity or geography.
And there were downsides to this model. The one-size-fits-all worship template didn’t really fit all sizes and locations. Not all churches could pull off what was sent down the denominational pipeline with equal effectiveness. But the expectation was that they should. This was sold as the winning formula.
Over the last 30 years, we have seen this denominational identity model disintegrate. More and more congregations have gone their own ways, have adapted their worship practices and curriculum. It would appear that in bucking the denominational templates these congregations have become independent.
Except they haven’t really.
What has emerged instead is a new kind of uniformity. Let’s call it generic nondenominationalism.
As a result, it’s hard to differentiate most Baptist churches from Bible churches and nondenominational churches today. They’ve abandoned hymnals for the same praise choruses and contemporary songs projected on the same kinds of screens with graphics downloaded from the same vendors. They’ve got praise bands that look just the same and sound just the same. The pastors share a hip casual look and preach similar kinds of sermon series inspired by the same reading lists. Their websites look just the same. Small groups use curriculum from the same cluster of publishers and celebrity pastor-authors. Training is offered via webinars and events that function a lot like the old denominational training events. Increasingly, governance is shifting away from Baptist-style committees, deacon bodies and church councils to small groups of elders or complete staff management.
And now comes the latest iteration of genericization along a nondenominational model: The clergy executive search firm. With roots in the Bible church movement, these organizations act as head-hunters for pastors and top-level staff in churches of all kinds. These hired guns do the work lay search committees used to do, narrowing the pool of candidates and making recommendations for hiring. The implication, at least as I’ve seen it play out, is that all evangelical churches can draw from the same pool of clergy without regard to denominational experience or theological training. If you’ve been an executive pastor or children’s minister at a large Bible church, you’ll fit right in a similar role at a First Baptist Church down the way.
The implication is that all evangelical churches have plug-and-play generic parts. It’s like believing every car can be built or rebuilt with Chevy parts, even if the car is a Ford or a Honda.
I recently visited with a senior staff member of a booming suburban congregation that was started as a Baptist church but nowhere reveals its Baptist roots. This staff member came from a Bible church background, and the way he described his current church, both in practice and in theology, sounded just like any of a number of generic nondenominational churches found all around our metro area. And so I asked him, “What’s the difference between your church and a Bible church?” He paused for just a moment and said plainly, “Not much, really.”
On its face, this is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, just a really interesting thing.
It is true that forcing a denominational model of doing church on congregations of all shapes and sizes wasn’t sustainable. That worked for a while in an era that is forever gone. In time, the same fate will befall this new nondenominational denominationalism. We have traded one form of uniformity for another, once again on the basis that this is “what works.”
What is a bad thing is that the Walmartization of the evangelical church, even if it “works” for drawing a crowd, is not sufficient to reach all people. Just as denominational identities once upon a time captured different preferences and interests among churchgoers, today’s culture remains more diverse than this one-size-fits-all-churches model comprehends.
What we need now are more churches willing to be the outliers, not following the generic trends but instead putting their unique stamp on congregational identity under the leading of the Spirit. That would be revolutionary — as long as every other church doesn’t start imitating it.