What will the next 10 years of the North American church will look like? We’ve learned from people like Alan Hirsch and Philip Jenkins to look to the global South for megatrends, and to Western Europe for early indicators for how these waves will wash up in the United States.
John Chandler
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Mike Breen now lives in the U.S., but once led the largest indigenous church in England. He has consulted with innumerable U.S. congregations, and is the intellectual center of the European Church Planting Network.
Here’s what Breen sees and says is coming:
• The explosion and continued growth of the mega-church.
• The church seems to be getting smaller and larger. Either decline/stagnation or rapid growth in larger churches with very little in between. (Interestingly, this is happening economically for Americans as well.)
• Increased polarization of theological pockets within the big “C” Church.
• Increased outworking of social justice.
• Church budgets in crisis and churches starting to explore alternative revenue streams and economic engines.
• Language of “Missional, Attractional and Emerging” that may already be wearing out as a fad and not as a way of life.
• An uptick of interest in the discipleship conversation (This is the single most exciting trend I am observing!)
• Continued assault on the nuclear family; growth in the church of creation of the extended family or “oikos.”
• Huge drop in attendance at worship services for Gen X and Gen Y.
• Rise in charismatic expressions (the fastest growing segment of the American church right now; this is also a megatrend emerging from the global South).
For what it’s worth, my experience in Virginia churches leads me to believe that Breen’s observations about the U.S. church are generally accurate for Baptist churches in the Mid-Atlantic.
If so, here's my question for church leaders: Where do we begin to unpack this list? How do we confront seismic changes with appropriate concern but without a kind of anxiety that forgets we are people of resurrection hope? As Henry Blackaby used to say, “Where is God already at work, and how do you hope to join God there?”
Trending is written by John Chandler, leader of the Spence Network, www.spencenetwork.equip.htm.