Andy Root and Ministry in a Secular Age part two

So where does this push to innovate come from that leads to these elements of this exhaustion and despondency? Next, I read/listened to “Church after Innovation”

Here Andy returns to “Faith Formation in a Secular Age” and his description of ‘faith’ becoming Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. He explores how this conception of faith can be seen in church and youth group programmes that have been developed by immanent framework with no sense of transcendent divine and have rendered religion as a tool for personal happiness and authentic selfhood rather than a transformative encounter with God.

In Church after Innovation Andy goes further to explore how survival of church has become central. And if I reflect on so many conversations and clergy trainings over the last few years as our numbers decline, that is do true. In response we are driven by the need for youthfulness and authenticity and the constant need to innovate, to reinvent ourselves to stay relevant. Ministry has too often been turned into performance metrics (growth, engagement, novelty), and innovation has replaced “mission”.

He then uses sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s work to explore the origins and consequences of the Neo-liberal and secular drive for innovation. He uses Rosa’s idea of social acceleration to explore how life feels increasingly fast and overloaded, and how this increasing speed leads to burnout, anxiety, and a lack of depth—affecting both individuals and congregational life. “Innovation has become a god-term in late capitalism. To innovate is not just to improve—it is to justify your existence.” All this is leading to burnout and spiritual emptiness in congregations

This really speaks to me. To be clear I am not one of those people who log for the good old days and want to keep things as they were. But I am not an innovator for the sake of innovation. I love our Anglican tradition. My time on the Tikanga Pakeha Liturgical Working Group, at the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation in Auckland in 2009, and my own work on the Anglican Liturgical Tradition for my masters deepened my appreciation for liturgy done well. We did try new things, sometimes for the sake of trying new things – I admit. But mostly I hope, to help people enter into the biblical story more deeply and to entre into our weekly liturgy more consciously. We can just do things because we have always done them that way. And that can lessen our liturgies capacity to speak to us and shape us as the missional people of God. But all that is different from the need to innovate, ditch our liturgy, use more choruses so that we can attract new people to our services. I gave up trying to attract new people long ago, so much of what Andy was saying spoke to me. It’s why I kept going.

So now I needed to offer my workshop, and I in preparation I read “When Church Stops Working: A Future for Your Congregation Beyond More Money, Programs, and Innovation” which he wrote with Blair D. Bertrand. This is more a “how-to book” but unlike any other. It was written for all those leaders who said, “this is all great stuff, but how do I bring others on board with it. I can’t point them to 6 books. So, this offers a summary of some of the main points and tells some stories about the way forward.

Blair and Andy say that we have fully adopted the immanent framework for ourselves and we have put the Church at the centre of it’s own story, confining God to the edges, co-opting God for our own purposes, and placing institutional survival at the top of our agenda. Which is pretty much what all the above is saying. And let’s face it, it takes courage to not place survival at the top when numbers are falling and you are not sure if you will have a job in a month or too. Many of us have been there.

The result is an adoption of the Ministry Industrial Complex with its reliance on business-like models, the drive for authenticity, innovation, relevance, and success in ministry being measured by numbers, efficiency, or growth. Or to put it another way, where ministry is doing it for someone else so that they might join church ensure our relevance and survival. Which takes us all the way back to his first book and his critique of relationships being instrumentalised – used as a means to an end)

Instead, they invite us place God at centre of church’s story and to let God be God. and central to this is Hartmut Rosa’s resonance. There are several different understandings of resonance offered in all these books which together build a layered understanding. But here resonance is described as a core quality of a person's relationship with the world. It is an experience of being "struck by" something, such as a piece of music or a beautiful sight. This experience is a "self-effective emotion" that "goes straight into you and through you," transforming you in the process. It's a "dialogue" between the self and the world, where both are changed. The opposite of resonance is alienation, which is a state of indifference or hostility where the world feels unresponsive or mute. And alienation is a commons experience for too many people today.

When God is placed in the centre of the story, they suggest Ministry shifts from the Industrial Complex to an Encounter with God. The offer a description of faith rooted in a Pauline theology of faith as divine encounter. They emphasize that faith is not about affiliation with a church but about encountering divine action in one's life. They reimagine ministry not as managing programs or creating relevance, but as bearing witness to the action of God in the world and helping people recognize and speak about God's presence in ordinary life—what Root calls “ministering through presence and attention.”

Instead of chasing relevance, Root suggests that churches should focus on creating spaces for deep spiritual resonance, where people can slow down and experience God's presence.

In When Church Stops Working Andy and Blair invite church leaders to resist the pressure to do more and instead rediscover God’s presence at the heart of the church. They note that many churches have lost the expectation that God is actually present and active, and they explores how God’s action is often subtle and surprising—not always measurable or marketable They propose that the church’s future lies not in better strategies but in a deeper spirituality rooted in the mystery of God’s work in the world.

In light of that they discuss how we often use Acts 2 as the starting point of the church, with the Spirit at work pushing those disciples out into mission. they then note that in Acts 1 Jesus instructs the disciples to wait and pray. They wonder if we too are called less to get out there with our innovation and programs to save the institution, and instead we too are called to wait and pray. In doing so we are invited to be, to embrace faithfulness over, effectiveness, presence over programming, and trust over technique. In waiting and praying we find our own place in God’s work in the world, what they term the church’s ‘watchword”. The offer stories of the importance of these, and how they are for a time and lead to the next purpose.

Finally they encourage congregations to accept the reality of decline or institutional death without fear. Tey remind us at that at the heart of our Christian faith is the story of death and resurrection. This is the pattern of the Christian life: dying to self (or structure) makes space for new life. Instead of fearing decline and death maybe we are to ask, “What is God doing in our dying?”, or, “What if God is most present in what feels like failure?”