Yesterday's Church?

Leith Anderson writes that among churches there are six different responses to change...the resistant church, yesterday's church, try-harder church, surrender church, entrepreneurial church, and renewal church. Here's what he had to say about yesterday's church (I thought this was interesting in light of the discussion about Scott Thumma's comments).

Yesterdays' Church keeps hoping that tomorrow will be 1954. It is not so much that they resist change as that they are nostalgic about yesterday.

This is the church that reminisces about a golden age and prays that it will return after the present parenthesis of change concludes. When the building is refurbished, it is in a style befitting the golden era. Music, liturgy, sermon topics, Bible version, literature, social activities, and management are as close to the old days as possible.

Yesterday's Church is the church that promotes denominationalism when it is perceived by many to be anachronistic. It is the Church of Christ that uses no musical instruments in an attempt to reconstruct the New Testament church in the twentieth century. It's the Roman Catholic churches that still use Latin and the Tridentine Mass. And it is the church that continues the practice of altar calls with an all-Christian audience simply because they were so evangelistically successful in the 1950s.

Yesterday's Church has both advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side is the fact that because it is slow to change, this church is unlikely to be caught up in a passing and destructive fad. The major disadvantage is the cognitive dissonance inflicted on people in the church. They are forced to live in a 1990s world all week [now 2000s] and return to a 1950s world on Sundays. The church does not interpret life or equip its people for spirituality amid the stresses and pressures of modern society. This scenario is different from the Old Amish who attempt to keep all of life in a different era; at least with the latter there is consistency and integrity. No so for the members of Yesterday's Church, which becomes an escape from everyday life rather than a resource for everyday living.

The reality is that next year will not be, can never be, 1954. There is no going back. Christianity cannot be constructed on fleeting nostalgia. Yesterday's Church will eventually die from the terminal disease of obsolescence.