How Can Your Church Be More Ready for Tomorrow?

Wayne Gretzky, world famous for more than 1,000 professional hockey goals and 2,000 assists, was once asked his secret. 

“I don’t go to where the hockey puck is, but to where it will be,” he replied, according to oft-repeated popular folklore.

Likewise, I’m writing to help your church face tomorrow with greater hope about “winning” in the future. Following the Gretzky strategy, I want to take you to where the world that you want to reach with the gospel is going to be in the years to come. Together with Daniel Yang and Adelle Banks, I wrote a book about eight impending shifts that every church needs to process. By navigating these forks in how to approach its ministry, your church will be in a better place to achieve its God-given mission. 

Our book is titled Becoming a Future-Ready Church, and one of its most important goals is to help you process the following questions: 

“Have we built institutions that don’t work for the next generation of believers and their leaders? And, if so, what should we do about it?” 

Warning: While today’s churches can indeed help create a better society for a promising future, doing so will require their leaders to think about how they are setting up the next generation.

The Problem with 1950

Have you ever given serious thought to how much the years around 1950 have shaped your approach to ministry? That is, how closely aligned is your church or ministry with American Christianity in 1950, when it was building toward a heyday? At the time, Christianity was America’s dominant, growing faith. Chances are, you don’t think your church’s ministry model traces its roots to that era, but our book suggests otherwise.

The TV series Leave It to Beaver looked at life through the eyes of Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, initially eight years old when the series launched in 1957. Each episode showed some aspect of Beaver’s growing up with his athletic older brother, Wally, a mom who always wore pearls, and a dad who always knew what to do. The show resonated deeply with many viewers since it reflected the best of white, suburban, middle-class America – or at least the family-focused, loving, wholesome approach to life that many idealized and aspired to for that era.

If you could imagine a church designed to reach, serve, and disciple a family like the Cleavers, you might find many churches that would fit this profile today. Yet present-day America is far more urban and multiethnic than the world of the Cleavers, with more families fractured and also stressed by mental health challenges. Too many adults, both single and married, are living paycheck to paycheck, among other issues.

Indeed, the American church after World War II did seem to be strong and flourishing: “The period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s was one of exceptional religious observance,” wrote one pair of scholars.1

For example:

• In 1952, a record 75 percent of Americans said religion was “very important” in their lives.2
• In 1957, a record 82 percent said that religion “can answer today’s problems.”3
• Nationwide, church membership grew faster than the population, from 57 percent in 1950 to 63 percent in 1960.4

Others have noted that by the late 1950s, a record-setting half of all Americans were attending church regularly: The highest historical level of church attendance, about 47 percent of the U.S. population on an average Sunday, was reached in 1955 and 1958.5

Religion flourished, it seemed, in every class, race, region, and denomination, from Catholicism to the African American church. This was also the era when the unprecedentedly successful ministry of Billy Graham was galvanizing a new movement called evangelicalism. As pioneering church planter and apologist Tim Keller observed:

Mightiest of all was mainline Protestantism, consisting of the Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, American Baptist, and the United Church of Christ (congregational) denominations. Their buildings were at the center of nearly all historic downtowns, their schools and institutions were of the highest prestige and their endowment funds were enormous. And even their theologians, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, were respected public intellectuals, prominently appearing on the cover of Time magazine and on network television.6

Many denominations, parachurch ministries, and mission organizations likewise took off before and during the 1950s and flourished. Examples of this golden era include the founding of Wycliffe Bible Translators (1942), World Relief (1944), Missionary Aviation Fellowship (1945), Every Home for Christ (1946), CHRISTA Ministries (1948), Greater Europe Mission (1949), Awana Clubs (1950), Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (1950), World Vision (1950), Cru (1951), Compassion International (1952), Fellowship of Christian Athletes (1954), MAP International (1954), and Christianity Today International (1956).7 Yet all that forward momentum soon went into reverse, initially for mainline churches. They went from the late 1950s, when more than 50 percent of adult Americans were part of a mainline church, into years of rapid decline, plummeting to 19 percent in 1988 and 11 percent in 2018.8

As the late National Council of Churches executive Dean Kelley summarized:

For the first time in [the] nation’s history, most of the major church groups stopped growing and began to shrink . . .  Most of these denominations had been growing uninterruptedly since colonial times . . .  now they have begun to diminish, reversing a trend of two centuries.9

However, today this decline in church involvement is no longer limited to the mainline church. The way the church expresses itself is not working as well as it once did, especially with younger generations. Examples range from the public’s loss of confidence in the American church to the rapid rise of the “nones” (people who select “no religious preference” or “nothing in particular” on surveys). These are explored in various chapters of our book.

Economist and futurist Paul Saffo of Stanford University says that if you want to tell the future, you have to look twice as far back into the past.10 So, as we look back, our take is that the modern practice of church in North America – including even its vision for mission and its approach to leadership – is shaped by post-World War II culture and ministry models that were birthed during the 1950s (and sometimes the 1960s). By understanding this background, readers can gain a better grasp of how our models of church are entrenched in a context of an America that is either quickly fading or perhaps no longer exists.

Our sorting through the data has led to eight research-based, illustration-rich chapters built around eight ways the church is shifting or needs to shift. Each is aimed at a discussion you should begin now, starting with the “why” behind the changes. In each chapter, we try to help you walk your church “from this . . . to that.” We also hope to move your discussions from an outdated question to a better question.

Saul’s Armor Still Doesn’t Fit

The challenge of how best to prepare your ministry to face the future gets more complicated when you realize that you need to lead both your own generation forward and also the generations to come. That is, while it’s important to anticipate what’s ahead, it’s equally essential to process the change of guard needed as a new generation rises into leadership over time.

This dilemma is represented by the Bible’s young David. Full of faith, he was eager to fight the battles of his day, but was uncomfortable with the armor King Saul gave him (1 Sam. 17:39). Instead, David asked permission to use different tools – an alternative approach that was more about agility and accuracy, and not position and power – to address the challenge of defeating Goliath. Saul agreed, and just as God used David’s sling to overcome the giant, so today’s ministry leaders will be wise to see the vitality of the future church in America through the eyes of the next generation. These leaders can empower that generation to take more leadership today and bless them to use, in new ways, the diverse ministry approaches anchored in Scripture. The challenges ahead for today’s young Davids – the women and men taking over leadership from previous generations – include the change in felt needs among the rising generations, which are shaped heavily by anxiety, skepticism, and fragmentation; the increasing religious disaffiliation of younger generations; and the resultant shrinking percentage of Christians in America. In short, the social narratives shaping Gen Z and younger Americans today are vastly different than the ones from which many churches and church cultural traditions have emerged.

These trends accentuate the urgency for church leaders – starting now – to evaluate whether the churches they lead are overly entrenched in a culture and society that worked effectively in the past but may not be adapting fast enough for the future.

How Optimistic Are You about Your Church’s Future?

You may be fearful or even pessimistic about the future of faith in the United States. Indeed, bad news about church decline dominates the headlines, and much of it is both true and sobering. Many indicators of spiritual vitality are down, prompting painful headlines like “Big Drop in Share of Americans Calling Themselves Christian” in the New York Times.11

By contrast, Becoming a Future-Ready Church offers both hope and optimism rooted in Christ. Regardless of where your church is in its life cycle, we affirm that you have many viable options for the coming days and years. 

Did you know that . . . ?

• 100 percent of “dechurched mainstream evangelicals” are actively willing to return to church, and 51 percent of dechurched evangelicals think they will indeed one day return.12
• Nearly three in four Americans (71 percent ) are curious about the Bible and/or Jesus, according to a major American Bible Society survey.13
• Americans give roughly $500 billion to charity annually, with Christians among the most generous givers, and up to 75 percent of all U.S. charities could be considered religious in nature.14
• Financial giving to churches is up, even after the COVID-19 pandemic. One study that compared 2020’s median church income to 2023’s found that giving saw “a remarkable increase of over 25 percent since 2020,” even after adjusting for inflation.15
• The majority of American churches now offer a hybrid of both in-person and online worship services (73 percent as of 2023), which greatly expands many churches’ reach.16
• 64 percent of college freshmen attended a religious service frequently or occasionally during the past year.17
• 81 percent of Americans say there is something spiritual beyond the natural world.18
• While a sobering 80 percent of U.S. adults say that religion’s influence in American life is declining (the highest percent in the 22-year history of this ongoing survey), an amazing 57 percent lament the decline and want to see religion’s influence grow!19
• Millennials now form the largest demographic of weekly and monthly church attendees, outpacing Gen Z, Gen X, and boomer attendees.20
• Nearly nine in ten churchgoers (89 percent) agree with the statement: “In conversations with my friends, I am proud to say that I am associated with my church.” An equally high percentage (88 percent) agree that “I am generally satisfied with the current leadership of my church.”21 In fact, most churchgoers (84 percent) are optimistic about the future of their church.

Scripture is full of warnings about thinking we can predict or control the future. Indeed, we can’t determine what happens next. We affirm that only God knows what’s ahead and only God controls today, tomorrow, and all of eternity. But we believe the outcome of our research and writing will give you insights and tools you need to responsibly and proactively use as led by God’s Spirit.

No Better Time than Now

Today’s American church is deeply shaped by a particular time in history as well as a culture that no longer exists. Most churches in North America have more in common with 1950 than with 2050. However, even if your model is currently flourishing, your church can’t stay where it is if it hopes to be ready for ministry in the future. Your church’s best days could well be ahead, even if those days look drastically different from the heydays many of our Christian forebears experienced in the 1950s.

Today is a great day to start preparing your church for an even better future. In fact, there’s no better time than now to identify what’s around the corner and to begin talking about the changes needed to be ready.

This matters because the future is a lot closer than most of us realize. Plus, you need time to navigate appropriate conversations and to develop the next generation necessary for a healthy transition into the future.

We want to tell a better story of how some people are moving from hand wringing to hope. For those who have fallen into apathy or despair, we want to inspire dreams of a future for your church that is far better than today. We want to remind you that the best is yet to come, yes, but also that the Best has already come!

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This material is adapted and excerpted from the Exponential Next book, Becoming a Future-Ready Church: 8 Shifts to Encourage and Empower the Next Generation of Leaders, by Daniel Yang, Adelle Banks, and Warren Bird, copyright 2024, Zondervan, used by permission.

NOTES

1. Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 83.
2. George Gallup and D. Michael Lindsay, Surveying the Religious Landscape Trends in U.S. Beliefs (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1999), 7, 19. See also Robert Wuthnow, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 80.
3. Frank Newport, “Majority Still Says Religion Can Answer Today’s Problems, Gallup, June 27, 2014, https://news.gallup.com/poll/171998/majority-says-religion-answer-today-problems.aspx/.
4.  Eileen Lindner, “Church Property in a Diminishing Religious Footprint,” in Gone for Good?: Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition, ed. Mark Elsdon (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024), 24. See also Putnam and Campbell, American Grace, 82–87.
5. Robert S. Ellwood, The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a Decade of Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 1.
6.  Tim Keller, “The Decline and Renewal of the American Church,” 2022, https://rpc-download.s3.amazonaws.com/Quarterly-Tim_Keller-Decline_and_Renewal_of_the_American_Church-Extended.pdf?button/, 4.
7.  These are all part of some three thousand Christ-centered ministries and churches currently accredited by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA).
8. Ryan Burge, “Four of the Most Dramatic Shifts in American Religion Over the Last 50 Years,” July 10, 2023, https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/four-of-the-most-dramatic-shifts/. See also https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/just-how-bad-is-denominational-decline/.
9. Dean Kelley, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing: A Study in Sociology of Religion (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996), 1.
10. Paul Saffo, “Six Rules for Effective Forecasting,” Harvard Business Review (July–August, 2007), https://hbr.org/2007/07/six-rules-for-effective-forecasting/.
11. Nate Cohn, “Big Drop in Share of Americans Calling Themselves Christian,” The New York Times, May 12, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/upshot/big-drop-in-share-of-americans-calling-themselves-christian.html?searchResultPosition=1/.
12. Jim Davis and Michael Graham, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Get Them Back? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2023), 62, 120.
13. Jeffery Fulks, Randy Petersen, and John Farquhar Plake, “State of the Bible: USA 2023,” American Bible Society, https://1s712.americanbible.org/state-of-the-bible/stateofthebible/State_of_the_bible-2023.pdf, 21.
14. Warren Bird and Jake Lapp, ECFA 2023 State of Giving, 14th ed. (ECFA, 2023), 14, https://www.ecfa.org/stateofgiving/pdf/SOG_2023_FINAL.pdf. See also “Giving USA: Total U.S. Charitable Giving Declined in 2022 to $499.33 Billion Following Two Years of Record Generosity,” Indiana University Indianapolis, June 20, 2023, https://philanthropy.indianapolis.iu.edu/news-events/news/_news/2023/giving-usa-total-us-charitable-giving-declined-in-2022-to-49933-billion-following-two-years-of-record-generosity.html/.
15.  Faith Communities Today and Hartford Institute for Religion Research, “Back to Normal? The Mixed Messages of Congregational Recovery Coming Out of the Pandemic,” August 2023, https://www.covidreligionresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Epic-4-2.pdf, 2–3.
16.  Faith Communities Today and Hartford Institute for Religion Research, 8–11.
17.  “2022 CIRP Freshman Survey,” Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA (Los Angeles: Regents of the University of California, 2023), https://heri.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/DATA-TABLES-TFS-2022.pdf.
18. Becka A. Alper, Michael Rotolo, Patricia Tevington, Justin Nortey, and Asta Kallo, “Spirituality among Americans,” Pew Research Center, December 7, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2023/12/PR_2023.12.7_spirituality_REPORT.pdf.
19. “8 in 10 Americans Say Religion Is Losing Influence in Public Life,” Pew Research Center, March 15, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/03/15/8-in-10-americans-say-religion-is-losing-influence-in-public-life/.
20. “Attendance at Religious Services,” Pew Research Center, accessed March 15, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/attendance-at-religious-services#attendance-at-religious-services/.
21. “Religion and Congregations in a Time of Social and Political Upheaval,” Figure 18, Public Religion Research Institute, May 16, 2023, https://www.prri.org/research/religion-and-congregations-in-a-time-of-social-and-political-upheaval/.