Crossing the Bridge; A difficult shift for the church;

About four years ago, I went on a trip to Ireland for, what I called, “Church planter spring break.”  The RCA was gathering leaders to talk about our Euro partnership with church plants throughout Europe and it was an amazing trip, despite an interminable crammed bus ride to the Cliffs of Dover!

I took advantage of the trip to re-read one of my favorites: The Celtic Way of Evangelism by George Hunter III. This book points out that the Celtic church converted Ireland from paganism to Christianity in a remarkably short period. How? They didn’t build a fortress and wait for the pagans to ask for an application. They started with the community. They adapted worship and church life to the indigenous patterns they encountered. They worked with the beliefs and rhythms of the people they were trying to reach, rather than the other way around.

The Natural Drift: From Mission to Maintenance

Every church I’ve ever worked with has started as a mission. In the beginning, a group of people looked at their neighborhood, saw a need, and moved to meet it. They were agile, outward-faced, and deeply connected to their neighbors. That’s part of what makes church planting so exhilarating.

But over time, a subtle, but predictable shift occurs.

As a church matures, it begins to accumulate "loves." We fall in love with a specific liturgy, a specific pastor, a specific ministry, or a specific musical style. Slowly, the focus shifts. We stop asking, "How do we meet the needs of our community?" and start asking, "How do we keep what we’re doing going?"

We move from meeting the community’s needs to needing the community to meet ours. 

We need them to fill our pews, to fund our budget, and to keep our beloved traditions alive. And then we wonder why we aren't growing.

Even when churches recognize this shift, it’s nearly impossible to simply go back to when we first began.

"We Don't Know Them Anymore"

I recently met with a church that was deeply concerned about their lack of growth. They were an older church in a community that was growing like crazy. The schools were bursting at the seems with new families and new housing was developing every where. One leader looked at me with heartbreaking honesty and said, "The community has clearly changed, and we haven’t. I’m not even sure we know who’s here anymore.”

There’s an important distinction here to make; this isn’t about “relevancy” in the way we think about culture. It wasn’t that this church was out-of-date, or “no longer the cool place to be.”  This was about a different kind of relevancy. The kind of relevancy that makes the church essential to the well-being of the community because of the work for the church.

Instead of meeting the needs of the community, the higher value has become maintaining what we love.

The "Young People" Fallacy

I saw this play out vividly in a consultation with a traditional church. The leadership was passionate—adamant, even—about reaching young people. "We want the next generation!" they said over and over again.  We did a lot of listening groups in the church and we heard it in every group.  What an exciting mission to give yourselves to!

But it didn’t take long before nostalgia set in and the began talking about their beloved choir. Their strategic plan eventually surfaced: "We need to get young people to join our choir."

I had to ask the hard question: "Are the young people in your community asking for a choir?"

When they stopped, the tension was obvious: They weren't starting with the community’s hunger. They were starting with their own preference and trying to dress it up as a mission. And even if they could see it, that didn’t make it any easier to overcome.

Crossing the Bridge: From Maintenance to Mission

North America today is a mission field remarkably similar to the one the Celts faced: a culture of secular seekers who are uninterested in religious structures and institutions, but spiritually hungry for something vibrant and real.

To enter this new season, the church has the opportunity to make one of the most difficult shifts in its approach: moving From Maintaining What We Love to Meeting Community Needs.

This requires us to ask important Questions about everything:

• Our Buildings: Is this space a monument to our past, or is it a tool for the community’s present?

• Our Ministries: Are we doing this because it’s "on the calendar," or because it solves a problem for our neighbors?

• Our Leaders: Are we training them to manage a declining institution, or to be missionaries in a changing landscape?

When you adopt this mindset, you're strategically closing the gap between your church and the community. It means building real, effective bridges that link your ministry to your mission in ways you probably wouldn't dream up on your own.

A New Starting Point

The Celtic way wasn't about compromise; it was about context. They didn't change the Gospel, but they radically changed the delivery system by starting with the needs of the people around them, rather than the maintenance of what mattered to themselves.

They did this in lots of ways including:

Agricultural needs: The monks were often better farmers than the locals. They introduced new crop rotation techniques and iron tools. By helping the community increase their food yield, they met the most basic need: survival.

Healthcare needs Every monastery had a guest house. They provided free lodging and safety for travelers in a time when the roads were incredibly dangerous.

Social needs: Abbots and "Soul Friends" (Anmchara) often acted as neutral third parties to negotiate peace between warring tribes, fulfilling a desperate need for social stability.

Community needs: They taught the community how to manage water sources and sanitation, which directly reduced the spread of disease in crowded tribal settlements.

What would it look like for your church to begin making this shift? Here are some simple next steps:

·  Interview local leaders (like principals or business owners) to identify the single biggest practical challenge currently facing families in your immediate neighborhood.

·  Review your church calendar and pause any program that focuses on internal tradition rather than directly solving a specific problem for your neighbors.

·  Open an underutilized room in your building for a local community group to use for free, transforming a "monument" into a functional tool for the public.

There’s an invitation for the North American church to make a change.  It’s an invitation to look at our communities and to stop asking them to support our "maintenance" and start showing them that we are invested in their "mission." 

LINK: check out our Bridge Builder Worksheet as a free tool to help you cross the divide between your church and your community and if you’d like a partner to help you navigate the community, reach out at ScottPontier.org.