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2009-03-03 issue:

Pastors Week explores 'new old church'

At AMBS, Diana Butler Bass shares the practices that lead to vital churches.

by Mary E. Klassen of AMBS

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Diana Butler Bass, Christian sociologist and researcher, helped more than 200 participants imagine a “new old church” during Pastors Week Jan. 26-29 at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) in Elkhart, Ind.


Diana Butler Bass, AMBS Pastors Week presenter, talks with Carole Ricketts, pastor of Michigan State University Mennonite Fellowship, East Lansing, Mich. Photo by Mary E. Klassen.

Bass, author of Christianity for the Rest of Us, spent three years doing in-depth research of 50 congregations in mainline denominations to learn how they found vitality and growth in spite of trends of decline. Her journey to this project began with the congregation where she worshiped several years ago, Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, Calif. Over five years, the congregation grew several times over and raised enough funds to renovate its old building to meet new state earthquake codes.

“We had saved Trinity, but at the same time God had saved us,” Bass said.

This experience led her to seek out other churches in mainline Protestant denominations who had similar stories of remarkable vitality. She and her team worked with the premise that churches that intentionally engage in Christian practices will find new vitality, and they measured this vitality with three characteristics: coherence, authenticity and transformation.

Bass explained that practices are the things the congregation does to meet human needs and serve God; they are different from programs. Practices may involve programs, but they have a greater sense of the three characteristics—coherence, authenticity and transformation. And, she said, “programs cost you money; practices are free.”

The researchers uncovered over two dozen common practices, with the three strongest being theological reflection, hospitality and embracing diversity. The others include testimony, healing, peacemaking, contemplation and forgiveness.

“Practices have to come from somewhere, usually the past,” Bass said. “What the past provides is the why. Without an answer to why, practices just become more work to do.”

The current generation is more interested in history than the generation that birthed it, she said.

“People are looking for ways to reconnect their lives with the wisdom of the past, and churches do this,” she said.

Rather than taking the denominational name out of a congregation’s name, which some churches want to do, Bass recommended using the denominational name as an invitation into a way of life that has a connection with the wisdom of the past.

Bass helped participants consider how her learnings might help Mennonite Church Canada and USA. She reported that people today are more passionately interested in social justice and peacemaking than the previous generation was.

“If you can introduce yourself as a living tradition with a set of practices that help young people shape a life of social justice,” she said, “they’ll be running all over you.”

The combination of practices, tradition and wisdom formed what researchers called an “architecture of vitality.” Illustrating this with three overlapping circles, Bass explained that vital congregations are places where God’s people gather to intentionally become a community of practice, memory and mission. This pattern represents one form for the “emerging, postmodern church, a form that seems to most naturally develop in mainline denominations.”

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