“The constant mantra that we must grow, indeed that we are going to grow if we follow the strategy, the deliberate setting of targets to increase the number of worshippers, the judging of a church’s success according to its size — all this is putting undue pressure on clergy who are overstretched and congregations whose morale is low. . .
.. The whole model is unsustainable and yet it keeps marching onward.
German Sociologist Hartmut Rosa suggested that [we] need to develop a model based on what he called ‘Resonance: the space to engage with others whose ideas are different…to learn and adapt… to reflect and appreciate… to connect more deeply and allow for the possibility of transformation…
Christianity already has those spaces, or at least at our core still strive to provide them – and that’s why society so desperately still needs the church: spaces to paise, slow down, listen to one another, and to God.
Crucially we should provide those resonant spaces without trying to predict what will emerge. If the church believes that it already knows what is right and what should come out of it, then it’s no longer a resonance institution, but a resonance killer.
That in a nutshell [is the problem with] the vision and strategy approach. It has already defined the outcome as being one of growth and increase. But what if God is saying something different to us about being a new kind of community? What if we have things to learn in a season in which we are smaller, more marginal and less influential?
In our drive toward an agenda of growth might we be missing something essential in our Christian identity and calling?”