Church Alive: Anchored but Adaptive


After an arduous 15-month-long journey, Meriwether Lewis arrived at the headwaters of the Missouri River.  As he took a drink from the cool spring there, he thought he would climb to the top of a nearby hill and see a slope that gently descended to the Columbia River.  He thought he and his men would carry their canoes on their backs down the slope for less than a day and reach the river.  Then they would ride that river downstream to the Pacific.

But when Lewis climbed that hill, he couldn't believe his eyes.  Instead of seeing the gentle slope descending to the Columbia, he saw. . .the Rocky Mountains!  

In this book Canoeing the Mountains, Tod Bolsinger compares the challenge of Lewis and Clark at the Lemhi Pass to that the of church in America today.  We've gone off our map.  The landscape we're in is totally different from what we've known.  Our "canoes," our past paradigms and programs, worked great in the past.  But they don't work in our postmodern, post-Christendom, and post-denominational world.  

Like Lewis and Clark, we have two options.  We can try to paddle our canoes through the mountains.  Not likely to work well!  Or we can start a new adventure!  We can adapt and continue our mission.  

Lewis and Clark chose to start a new adventure!  The adapted their mode of exploration.  River rafters learned to be mountaineers!  They completed their mission.

Many churches are trying to canoe through the mountains.  They're in denial.  Some of them are growing by taking in people from other churches.  But most are stable to declining. Even the growing ones will decline eventually because the pool of church members continues to decline.

Other churches are starting a new adventure.  They're adapting by reframing themselves.  They're moving from being institutions to being incarnational/missional bodies.  As they seek to fulfill their mission of making disciples, they experiment with new ways of engaging people with the good news of Christ.

Lewis and Clark faced many uncertainties at the Lemhi Pass.  Churches today do as well.  Like them, we can adapt, continue our mission, and find new life to God's glory!

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