Waiting for Renewal

In a lecture for the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Andrew Root, professor of family and youth ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., said he agrees with other church leaders that the Christian church today is confronted by many challenges.

“It is clear that we are in a crisis, and many people really aren’t sure what to do. They don’t know how to act,” said Root, whose presentation Aug. 4 at Calvin University was titled “The 
Waiting Church: How to Face the
Crisis.”

The crisis today is that, increasingly, churches in many denominations are closing, due mainly to ongoing declines in the number of people attending – especially young people, who are turning away from organized religion, said Root, the author of several books on youth ministry and other topics.

In the face of these difficulties, Root added, church leaders tend to think the problem is that the church is no longer relevant to people. 

With this mindset, leaders have been trying to solve the crisis by employing church-growth programs, creating long-term evangelism strategies, and devoting a range of resources in attempts to make the church more meaningful.

But what if the crisis, Root asked, may not be the loss of relevance and resources, but in how we discern and follow the living God?

What if the crisis, he said, “is that God is God and that we are not”?

If this is the case, there’s a big problem, said Root. “If we are the focus, then God becomes a product.” 

As he spoke, Root likened this crisis to viewing the church as a type of business. In essence, it could be like a failing business trying to determine what is wrong and deciding that salvation will come only by boosting sales. 

Taking this approach, Root added, “the best you can offer is some sort of user guide” for determining how you can get God to save your ministry.

Root said: “There is this sense today that if you are going to survive, you have to be the star of your story.” So if we apply that to the church, then “the church has to be the star of its story.” Yet theologically that creates a big problem, he explained, because “the church can’t be the topic of its own story. In doing that, we step into a very ancient problem and move into idolatry.”

All of us have a story, yet it is important to realize that there is one overarching story – and that is God’s story, said Root.

Despite our best efforts, and regardless of all the energy we might pour into trying to bring people back into the sanctuary, we need to realize our limitations, said Root.

We must, he said, “learn to wait on the real story, which is to wait for God to enact the story of God’s love for the world. We must wait for God to make himself known.”

So how does this apply, Root asked, to an individual congregation that has tried to solve its issues by being busy, taking action, crafting vision statements, and building outreach programs?

“Maybe we need to take on another form of action – waiting on God to respond. The church starts by waiting,” he said. “If God is God, that changes everything. We can, as it says in Psalm 46, ‘be still and know that I am God.’”

Waiting can be hard. But we need not do it alone. We can learn to wait attentively and actively. In addition, said Root, “the best thing is that we can wait with someone. We can wait together in community for God to speak, for God to give us a vision.”

In fact, said Root, this is the very nature of a community: sharing and caring and being with one another, especially through hard times. Waiting can build lasting relationships.

Speaking specifically to pastors, Root said, it can be up to them, in a time of waiting, to learn the full-fledged story of the church community.

What shapes and makes a church what it is – its history and legacy – can be crucial and ought to be shared, he said. In fact, by learning the church’s story, we might discover ways in which God is working through it to help us, Root suggested.

“The job of the pastor,” he added, “can be to knit the stories together and help everyone realize that nothing can separate us from the love of God.”

And, together, as they wait on and receive revelations from God, members of a church community can learn to tell their story, said Root. In the process, they can see themselves as a unified part of a bigger purpose. 

By knowing our stories, said Root, “we can talk about our faith – which is always a plea for God to act in the midst of our sorrow.”

In learning to wait and to practice patience in community, said Root, a church community can grow in faith – and as it grows, it will be ready when God acts, when the Lord points the way forward.

But none of this is easy, particularly in our culture, which is full of frenetic, often misguided activity.

“Things are tough today for churches,” said Root. “But the church has lived through more difficult times, and Christ has gotten us through.”

Important to realize, he noted, is that in the end, “the church is simply the body of Jesus Christ, and while an individual church might not continue, God will continue.”

Wrapped up in this approach, he said, is both the story of God’s love and the story of a church’s response to that love. In waiting, we can find answers, said Root – “It’s possible that waiting may just be the thing that can renew and give us life.”