The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Not Retired: Losing my “religion” to join God in the world

by Ken Howard

It’s been over two years since I left my last church to startup FaithX and, I swear, hardly a week goes by that some clergy colleague doesn’t ask me about how I’m enjoying retirement. The exchange usually goes something like this:

Colleague: So how are you enjoying retirement?

Ken: I’m not.

Colleague: Not enjoying retirement?

Ken: Not retired.

[at this point I explain how what I’m doing is a different different kind of ministry]

It’s not just the fact that people (often the same ones) keep getting wrong that irks me. What truly troubles me is the unexamined assumptions behind the sometimes spoken but usually unspoken exchange that follows:

Colleague: What? Wait! You left your congregation, right?

Ken: Yep.

Colleague: And you didn’t accept a call to a new congregation, right?

Ken: Yep.

Colleague: Then how can say you’re not retired?

[Read more…]

Do NOT Plant a Church, Unless…

By Ken Howard

 

This is gonna be a short one. And many of my fellow church-planting colleagues may not like it.

But if a young clergyperson with aspirations of becoming a church planter came to me today and asked my advice about how to go about it, this would be my advice:

DON’T

Why? Because the picture they have in their head about what a church looks like is some variation of the typical church model that Christian clergy and their congregants have been carrying around in our collective consciousness for more than hundreds, if not thousands of years.

It probably looks something like this…

A dedicated church building. On a dedicated church lot. With a dedicated clergyperson. And dedicated members.

Somebody recently asked me if we would still see churches like this in the future. My response was, “Only if it were stuffed and mounted and displayed in a museum of church archeology.”

Because this model of church is dead. Walking dead. But still dead. It is unsustainable. Because the way the trends are heading, there will simply not be sufficient numbers of Christians per worship center to keep it afloat, either financially or communally.

[Read more…]

Subscribe