IMAGINING A NEW CHURCH
What if We’re Asking the Wrong Questions?
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The decline of our church has left us feeling diminished, and has left our leaders feeling depressed and helpless. It has pushed them out of the ministry, and has discouraged others from ever thinking about becoming a church leader. It has created all kinds of fearful and reactive thinking and behavior. But we can’t be held hostage to failure, and resign from reality. Instead, we must look at a changing world with open eyes and an open spirit. We must confront our fears and anxieties and transform from within.
I decided to write this book because I believe there is a different way to approach this challenge. Instead of trying to fix the problem or wallowing in despair over what has been lost, we must focus on going deeper, and ask difficult and disruptive questions. We need to put everything on the table that has defined us as the church for the past decades and centuries. There are things we can learn about who we have been, and why we have behaved the way we have. We can learn from what we have said and what we have or haven’t done. We cannot separate ourselves from what is happening in our church. But it is not a hopeless situation. God hasn’t left the arena. Taking deliberate steps to be more in tune with what God is up to might just bring a powerful re-imagining for the church’s future.
Asking ‘what if’ is my way of beginning this process. I want to invite us into the hard questions. Only the hard questions will bring us to a place of deeper self-discovery, and an acknowledgment of what we can and can’t control. My whole life has been blessed by moments when I asked ‘what if’ instead of resigning myself and thinking ‘this is hopeless’. Those ‘what if’ moments often helped me see what I might have gotten wrong. Those moments helped me shift my behavior and change my response. Those moments led me to new action. It helped me change. This moment in time is pivotal for faith community leaders. It calls us to find a new way. We know that we can have impact and bring fresh meaning to communities. We have traditionally been meaning-makers in an uncertain world. But we need to look at how we got where we are and understand where we lost our way forward. We need to do this without envy and without fear. The world doesn’t need ministries that have thrown in the towel. Instead, the world needs faith communities to dive into this moment with open minds and hearts believing there is important work to still be done.
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About the Book
If our church isn’t a place of genuine inclusivity for the 21st century, are we a 21st century church? How do we define inclusive? If the world is changing, are we able to change with it? What if this new church looks different than we think it should?
Jeffrey Kjellberg’s IMAGINING A NEW CHURCH: What if We’re Asking the Wrong Questions? opens the door to a conversation about who we have been, who we are now, and who we can be in the future. In recent years, we have experienced a decline in both membership and engagement, and have struggled to sustain ourselves in a shifting and uncertain landscape. We have always relied on our history as a church to both energize our present and direct our path forward. But what if we don’t just have a storied past but a new and exciting future?
Rather than relying on failing strategies – strategies that have not turned our diminishing communities of faith around – what if we work towards a new practice? Through a series of self-examing questions, Kjellberg leads the reader through a process of deep reflection and creative inspiration. He asks us to examine our preset beliefs about who we are and what we believe, and explore a new way of being church.
This is not easy work and Kjellberg encourages us to express the full range of our doubts, fears and sorrows. But rather than mourning where we are now, what if the mystery of the future is what inspires our present? Can we find that new path forward without letting fear of loss block our way? Imagining A New Church challenges us to ask ourselves a new set of questions, freeing us from the need to recover to a place of imagining something new.
We want our church and our faith to be both relevant and responsive to a changing and needful world. Our confounding present is just one stop on our pilgrimage into a hopeful future. This process of doing and undoing, making and unmaking, is challenging. But in our love for our church, we can find the strength to forge a new way, a new path. The future can be one of hope and creation, rather than a time of sadness, darkness and loss. Jeffrey Kjellberg’s Imagining a New Church is a bright lantern on this journey.
About the Author
JEFFREY KJELLBERG is the owner/president of three national faith based consulting firms that work to develop financial resources, create effective missional strategies, and equip vibrant leaders. Jeff served as a pastor in the ELCA for 15 years prior to becoming a consultant/owner. He has an undergraduate degree from Concordia College, Moorhead, MN (1983) and a M/Div. from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN (1983). Through his consulting work, Jeff has traveled the country engaging with thousands of leaders and hundreds of ministry contexts, giving him a wealth of insight and perspective to the current realities facing faith based communities. He has dedicated his career to helping these faith communities fully live into their holy purpose.
Jeff lives in St. Paul, MN with his wife, Melanie. They have four children and one grandchild. Jeff’s passions are spending as much time with his family as possible, and traveling the world to experience the vast diversity of God’s creation and the complexities and beauty of the human condition.
www.jeffreykjellberg.com