A Call For A New Paradigm

In our last post, we proposed the idea that the dominant Sunday morning service model of the church is neither Biblical nor unbiblical, but rather abiblical. If “church as we know it” is just one of many viable models of “doing church,” what might new, alternative models look like?

Historically, radical innovation on the existing framework of the Sunday morning church model has been largely absent. To be sure, tremendous strides have been made in the last few decades in shedding the unnecessary traditions of the past as the “seeker sensitive” revolution has taken hold. However, even these advancements have left the existing Sunday morning service paradigm of the church intact. Though the surrounding culture has undergone dramatic change over two thousand years since the current model of church was instituted, the basic framework of the church’s meetings, such as the “worship set”, the sermon, and even the order of service, has been largely unaltered since.

Even the most progressive attempts at change in the church today focus on tweaking the existing structure: more cutting edge music, more relevant messages, and more attractive outreach events, to name a few. However, nearly all these attempts leave the underlying assumptions of the nature of church intact. Namely, this main underlying assumption is that church is not an organic people movement, but an institution, consisting of a weekly attractional Sunday morning service in a specially dedicated building conducted by paid religious professionals lasting 70-90 minutes. This institutional paradigm is almost completely fixed in most churches today, even in those that would consider themselves the most progressive.

This underlying assumption that church is an attractional institution is why true, lasting change is so hard to come by in today’s church. Unless this underlying belief is exchanged for a new one, a very limited amount of change will be possible. Though initially a church may attempt to change its way of doing business, these efforts generally produce only temporary change. After the novelty of these measures wear off, however, inertia takes over and the church tends to fall back into its previous state. This is true for any organization, church or business: lasting change cannot occur if the underlying assumptions and paradigm stay the same. More than any other, this institutional paradigm in the minds of many observers is the chief reason that the vast majority of Christian institutions throughout history are nearly incapable of significant growth and change. As Bill Easum says, “it’s futile trying to revitalize the church, or a denomination, without first changing the system.”

But what might a new paradigm for the church, a new “systems story”, look like for today’s church? We’ll continue this discussion in our next post.