Dear First Baptist, as you pray for our church, I would ask to seriously ponder this column in your various gatherings. I think the Spirit is leading us to some significant paradigm shifts including, but not limited to how we do worship, how we make decisions, what ministries will we engage, and which ones will we retire.

Blessings,

Roger

In 1962, Decca Records auditioned and promptly rejected a Liverpool act, saying, "The Beatles have no future in show business."

In that same year, an Arkansas retailer named Wal-Mart opened its first store, Pope John XXIII convened Vatican Two, the term "personal computer" made its debut, and science writer Thomas Kuhn introduced the term "paradigm shift."

Writing about fundamental changes in how science is understood, Kuhn unintentionally provided an insight for understanding the broader churn of modernity.

As everything from music to merchandising to religion to information underwent sea-changes that shook assumptions and transformed lives, the term "paradigm shift" became widely used to describe how lenses turn and suddenly the settled no longer seems settled.

Even when "paradigm shift" became an overused cliche, the shifts kept on coming. Cell phones are replacing land-lines in US homes, for example. Newspapers are fading, printed books are struggling, broadcast television lost its grip, e-commerce is challenging store-based retail, suburban home ownership no longer incarnates the "American Dream," and lifetime employment seems a relic of nostalgia fiction.

Time will tell what comes next. You can’t force a paradigm shift to happen. Neither can you put the genie back in the bottle. Paradigm shifts reflect deep-seated changes brought about by new technology, new political and cultural realities, and new movements of the human spirit. They aren’t just trends that will pass away.

Like all human endeavors, Christianity has been through multiple paradigm shifts, each one resisted fervently by the religious establishment, each one wrenching, each one laying ground for the next round of changes.

As in other enterprises, the future belongs to those who are willing to change. Some change-resisters in religion believe they are fighting for basic principles, indeed for the holiness of God, but time reveals their resistance as self-serving and disconnected from God’s fundamental nature.

Multichannel Church -- our view that congregations must look beyond Sunday morning worship as their reason for being -- responds to paradigm shifts, not just to whims of a fickle marketplace.

Shifts in worship, for example, are partly about timing, technology and setting, but they are deeper. People want their questions to be addressed, rather than coming to church to deal with the church’s questions. Yes, this is consumerism, but it’s also an assertiveness born of trust issues and a desire to connect with God, rather than belong to a church.

Shifts in polity are another example. For decades, the lay movement has been chipping away at clergy autonomy and authority. The results have been disastrous: nervous and play-it-safe clergy, assertive lay leaders who lack significant vision for their church beyond survival and comfort, severe difficulties dealing with change, slow responses to the marketplace, and non-stop conflict. This paradigm is losing credibility.

Denominations are in major processes of reinvention, partly as short-term response to funding crises, but also wrestling with issues of purpose and value added. As short-term fixes like mutual ministry (clergy and laity sharing leadership in cash-starved congregations) and clergy wellness initiatives come up empty, denominational leaders will look deeper at why denominations exist.

In the day-to-day where most of us live, this is a time of flux and new ideas, a time for experimentation, a time to question everything.

The healthiest congregations will be those that encourage newness and questioning. The most effective clergy will be those who dare to take charge, not to control the future, but to make sure the future isn’t stifled by the fearful. The most effective lay leaders will be those who stop trying to rein in clergy, but let the Gospel emerge in its full and disturbing power.

From Multi Channel Church - Morning Walk Media Inc.

By Tom Ehrich

Yes, Paradigms Do Shift -- Pay Attention to Them