The global financial crisis triggered last September has changed the game. I have followed trends and world changing events for 35 years. I don’t remember a year like 2008. It will take several years for the effects to settle and to fully recognize the shape of the new landscape. If 2009 unfolds with similar unpredictability and turmoil, how will your congregation adapt?

At the heart of last year’s meltdown are trends that emerge. There was a shift away from unbridled growth and a movement towards shedding old structures to adapt to a digitally-driven world. One message from last year’s financial collapse is that traditional institutions are not built to navigate in a rapidly changing world.  

When events are stable and predictable, institutions emphasize good management and clear vision. When times are changing, rules are uncertain and the horizon obscured, leadership is more important than management. Today that leadership needs to separate romance from reality.

Unfortunately, in the current crises we have received wishful efforts at positive spin or blame-shifting.

Last to see the shift

Historically, leaders insulated within any paradigm are typically the last to see a shift in the wind and least able to recognize a failed strategy. Recent Gallup polls reflect the eroding effectiveness of our institutions with the declining trend in public confidence.

• The media is less than 25 percent
• Big business and healthcare management organizations are less than 20 percent
• Congress is less than 15 percent
• Churches and their leaders show a 40 percent confidence rating
  

Could the real issue behind these trends represent that the rules have completely changed? Could that also explain recent blunders in economic, foreign and military strategy? If we simply change the names of those leaders, can we expect any significant improvement? How then is the church as an institution, fundamentally different?  

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First, let’s face facts: Mainline churches have declined in membership since 1950. Despite the rhetoric and volumes of books on the subject, the basic structure, culture and operation of mainline churches has changed little.

A few mainline churches have shifted to a contemporary church growth model but this may also have reached its peak. Willow Creek Community Church, considered the originator of the church growth model, last year released the results of its “Reveal” study placing the very premise of the model in question.

The interest, conferences, books and efforts at change more often produce marginal and short-lived results. If a person were locked in a behavior pattern or context that was increasingly harmful and dysfunctional any counselor would first try to get them to see and accept that fact. Leaders have yet to recognize or embrace similar advice. The institutional church and our nation are well past reaching for quick fixes or buying time.

Institutional obsolescence

Industries that confront obsolescence experience growing strain and stress to maintain or attempt to grow; the talented and gifted leave to find a better platform of effectiveness. Clients (or membership within churches) and revenue decline, overhead and infrastructure becomes an increasing burden rather than a tool; organizations become less stable and the industry begins a cycle of consolidation spurring new forms of effectiveness with new growth.  

One economist describes the current era as a “Soap Bubble Economy.” In other words, our economy has been and will continue to be driven by a series of bubbles and collapses — each increasing in size and disruption.

With declining institutional effectiveness and crises on many fronts, it is not surprising that the emerging generation has a different worldview and set of priorities. A pastor for a large church recently told me that the young families joining his church want to make a difference in the world, whereas our generation (we are both boomers) focused on making sure people had a personal relationship with Jesus and a weekly experience with the Lord.

What do our churches say?

Millennials, who will make up 50 percent of the work place by 2018, want to know how churches are using the money they collect. Buildings and infrastructure don’t translate into making a difference in their world.

Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, CA, found a creative approach to better align their priorities toward making a difference. Their Web site provides a description of their plan: “In developing our property we want to reflect the loving/giving nature of God. We want to build an outdoor amphitheatre rather than an auditorium so we can give more to the poor. We want to provide land to Children’s Hunger Fund to support and serve children in need locally and internationally. We want to create a park-like atmosphere for our community to enjoy.” There are other churches who adopt similar priorities for realignment all with very different strategies.

Serious leaders must face the fact that current crises in society go deeper than weak leadership. The church is the one of the last institutions to recognize what it means to have congregations full of knowledge workers. While the primary work of the church is still conducted on the weekend, knowledge-based organizations continue to morph into highly distributed anytime networks.

Throughout The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling More for Less (Hyperion, 2006) author Chris Anderson describes the profound economic shift because of the low cost of producing, distributing and searching for content. This goes right to the heart of our contemporary institutions. It calls into question the future role of large facilities, high technological overhead and an emphasis on an insulated professional corps for business, government and ministry.

In Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Penguin, 2008) author Clay Shirky describes a fundamental shift away from institutions for coordinating collective efforts to virtual infrastructure. It forces leaders to ask with a blank sheet of paper how will people get things done? Do we need formal organizations? If so, how will they be different in a digital world?

What if the function of connecting and coordinating shifts (not completely) from expensive buildings and organizations to free (or far less expensive) Web platforms? How does an existing organization leverage these new coordinating tools and repurpose their existing infrastructures?

During 2008, events demonstrate how easy it is for organizations, institutions and their leaders to delude themselves into wishful thinking. The only prescription for current leaders is to intentionally unlearn and emotionally detach from the current order of things.

We are at a point of asking fundamental questions about the assumptions we have carried for 500 years concerning society, commerce, the role of nations and the church. If we are to effectively address issues that confound our churches and leaders we will need to do so with a different level of consciousness than has guided us for the past several centuries.

Rex Miller, Southlake, TX, is a leadership consultant, futurist and author of The Millenium Matrix: Reclaiming the Past, Reframing the Future of the Church (Jossey-Bass, 2004). [rexmiller.net]