Surrender Church

To continue our discussion, here's another way that churches typically respond to change (from Leith Anderson)...

The Surrender Church is often more realistic and insightful than any of the above [i.e. Yesterday's Church or Try Harder Church]. It is a church that truly understands itself and its relationship to modern society; and on the basis of this understanding, it concludes that it cannot change, will not change, or is simply being swept away by change.

Ethnic churches lead the list of Surrender Churches. They originated to serve the needs of first generation immigrants who did not speak English, and many have been highly successful. The stress comes when a younger generation moves away from the language and heritage into English and mainstream American culture. If the ethnic church stays with its older people, it will die with them. If it changes to meet the needs of its young people, the old will be abandoned. Many choose to lose the young, continue to serve the old, and eventually close--having served one generation well and leaving the next generation to the care of others.

Changing neighborhoods also create Surrender Churches. White, middle-class communities give way to poorer minorities. Church members move to other neighborhoods or suburbs and drive back to a church that is isolated from its community. Current community members are unlikely to join a church that is not only a white and middle-class church, but is controlled by people who live fifteen miles away. Within a few years the church dies and the building passes to a new ministry that is tied to the immediate neighborhood

There are other alternatives, of course. Rather than passively surrendering, these churches may become divine agents of Jesus Christ through renewed mission. It is easy to criticize those who surrender but difficult to continue the battle.

A very different type of surrender is that which gives in to cultural changes while abandoning spiritual absolutes. This tragedy happened in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when many New England Congregational churches abandoned Trinitarian theology and become Unitarian. The waves of change swept them off their theological foundations and they forsook orthodox Christianity. The same thing is possible today when churches simply surrender to the prevailing changes and accept New Age beliefs, popular immorality, theological universalism, self-centered programs for success, or any other non-Christian pressure.

Change is not only an opportunity for the church, it is also a test for the church. Change forces continual evaluation of what is essential and what is not. Surrender may be appropriate and necessary when the changes are sociological nonessentials; surrender is inappropriate when Christian essentials are abandoned or altered.

I think he nails it in the last paragraph. Change forces us to determine the difference between essential practices and non-essential practices. In the area of non-essentials, we are free to change when needed. In the area of essentials, we are not free to change. The problem is that many in my fellowship were taught to believe there is no such thing as a nonessential practice. Every practice of the church is considered essential, regardless of how much of it was originally influenced tradition or culture.