Pregnant Church?
There are lots of reports of the mainline church’s decline in recent decades. And there are actually new reports, about the decline of evangelical and conservative churches as well. But while the facts and figures may be grim, Presbyterian minister (PCUSA) and writer MaryAnn McKibben Dana believes that the news of our church’s demise is premature. While she acknowledges that things are no doubt turbulent, she reaches for another metaphor than illness or death to characterize her experience of the church. She suggests, in fact, that the church is pregnant – going through a difficult, even tumultuous transition, but with new life at the end. Check out her video here for a compelling, imaginative, and hopeful re-interpretation of our present circumstance, and then leave your views on MaryAnn’s suggestion and your own experience of congregational life.
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Two last postscripts:
1) Thanks to Mike Woods for passing this along to me.
2) For other videos in the “We Are Presbyterians” Project, click here.
So glad this video is still circulating! Blessings to you, David.
Thanks so much for making it, MaryAnn. I think it is such a fabulous and hopeful image and really invites folks to reframe their experience in an extraordinarily helpful way. Thanks, again.
This is so powerful!!!! I am sharing this! Thanks for your wisdom and insight.
If you change “Presbyterian” to “Episcopal” and one polity reference, this applies to the ECUSA equally – which I assume is David’s point in posting it. Thanks to you both!!
OR BAPTIST!!!
Mary Ann, what a good word for us!
I am a Baptist pastor but found this message of yours inspiring and encouraging.
How do you convince a church that they are pregnant or at least that God wants to bring new life when the majority of the congregation still is weeping over the loss of their children (how it use to be in the 50’s) and just can’t bring themselves to desire to go through a pregnancy at their age with their infirmities and financial instablity?
That’s a great question, John. And I think there’s actually room for some grief. Change is hard. Loss is hard. Death is hard. And a lot of people have experienced the passing of one way of doing and being church in just those ways. But others will sense the excitement of something new. And, who knows, perhaps if people grieving the loss of their sense of church have room to grieve openly and honestly, maybe that will make room for a new chapter and new life.
I hope you are right. But it has been my experience at least in the churches I have served that the very, very few (one or two) who do desire something new have waited so long for this new thing to happen that they simply move onto where something new is happening.
While the grieving folks left behind grieve all the harder when they discover why these folks left. Again they just cant grasp why anyone would want their little church ever to change.
Its like Rick Warren said in his book the Purpose Driven Church: if we had a child that hadn’t grown or matured since birth and now its 10 years old. As parents we would be running all over the country trying to find out what is wrong with our child. But in the church it just seems that we want to keep our church in a infant stage.
John, I’ve been slowly showing this video to various circles of leadership over the past few weeks as meeting devotions. We have been preparing for/experiencing our own sense of death/dying with changes in our ministry structure and the loss of staff. It has really helped to re-frame the conversation from one of despair to one of hope and excitement about the possibilities for us.
I don’t think you need to convince anyone that the church is pregnant but instead create the space to imagine something different than death, this is but one of many metaphors. One leader was a little uncomfortable with the video, but at the end of group reflection saw the value in thinking differently about our particular situation and context and had his own positive and life giving thoughts to add to the conversation.
And thanks David for sharing it – it has made huge impacts on helping us refocus on resurrection life and the exciting possibilities that God has in store for us.
Thanks for the video…
I am an Intentional Interim Pastor within the ELCA (Lutheran) denomination. I often am called upon to do Church Leadership Retreats, where congregations are seeking to consider new paradigms for ministry, identity, and service.
Your video talks about things that are quite real within the church in our North American Setting. Thank you.
From my perspective (here in the UK), I believe the biggest problem with today’s church is that far too many of the older generation want to keep the church to themselves, and are too mean to share it with anyone else.
As an example, our son (aged 17) is a very keen organist, who is hoping to secure a cathedral post after studying music performance at Uni. He is greatly encouraged by the organists in our local cathedral churches, and is allowed and encouraged to play in them; but he is not allowed to play in our own parish because he is ‘not old enough’, and ‘hasn’t had enough experience’.
Surely; isn’t the parish church precisely where we should be encouraging our young people to grow in faith, and to share their God given talents with others? Or am I missing something here?