Thirdly, I spent the weekend with my friend Andy McCullough, who leads a church in a large Middle Eastern city. Amidst all the exciting stories of church growth, baptisms and Muslims coming to faith through dreams, be brought a somber perspective as well: Where I come from, he said, we’ve gone through the whole cycle—winter (0-150), spring (150-300), summer (300-600), autumn (600-1400), winter (1400-2000), and we’re now (God willing) coming back into spring—whereas you guys are in autumn, and may need to start getting ready for winter. Are you ready for that? Or are you living as if an Indian summer will continue forever? [I should say that neither Andy nor I think that means we shouldn’t pray for summer, for revival, for breakthrough, for a speedy winter or whatever. Nor does it mean we should give up on seeking the common good, as if that was just a summertime hobby; may it never be! But if the Middle East is anything to go by, we might need to prepare for winter anyway.]
And fourthly, there is the question that one of the trainees on the Catalyst Leadership Training program put to me a few days ago: What does preparing for winter look like? Practically, if this is broadly right, what does it mean for us to be ready for winter? For all my interest in the insights of Manhattan apologists, Middle Eastern church planters, Orthodox philosophers and church historians, for most pastors it is the practical response that matters. What, in the real world, is the equivalent of turning on your heating, getting your hats and gloves down from the attic, and buying snow boots?
I’m thinking out loud here, so bear with me, but my response included the following.
Rethinking success. Measuring success by numerical growth is fine for summer, or even autumn—how good was the harvest this year?—but it might not be right for winter, where a huge amount of growing and working is done underground. (I can preach to more unbelievers in a week than a Moroccan missionary can in a lifetime, but that doesn’t mean that I’m a better evangelist; there are more Christians at HTB than in Turkey, but that doesn’t mean the missionaries there are more successful; etc.) Similarly, appraising how well you’re doing by how well you’re attracting young, energetic, dynamic people is dangerous, let alone by nebulous metrics like the “buzz,” “vibe,” “atmosphere” or whatever. This is something I’ve been thinking about a bit recently, so I’ll probably write more on it shortly.
Rethinking leadership. This is a point I’ve touched on before, via the comments of David Starling and Greg Beale, but it’s worth repeating: An awful lot of what is said and done about “leadership” in the contemporary church is at best theologically fluffy, and at worst indefensible. Starling makes the case that “leadership” isn’t even the best word for what pastors do, and reflects a secular business model more than a biblical one; Beale argues that eldership is integrally bound up with protecting the church during the end-time tribulation. If they’re right, and I think they are, then we may find that winter requires leaders for whom courage matters more than caution, theological clarity matters more than affability, and fight more than finesse. Shepherds, not game-show hosts. You get the idea.
Rethinking parenting. Most of us, nervous of the sectarianism of doily-wearing oddballs, have been part of a pendulum swing towards “active engagement” in culture, and away from “nervous retreat.” Many of us are probably so committed to that end of the spectrum that we would baulk at the idea of anything else. But I wonder if the pendulum needs to swing back somewhat, from a summertime to a more wintery setting. Many of the best parents I know have deliberately taught, and shown, their teenagers how to distance themselves from all sorts of cultural slurry that other (more naive?) parents have happily allowed their children to embrace. Like it or not, a lot of culturally engaged parents end up with hip children who don’t really care about the gospel, and a lot of more conservative types end up with kids characterised by resilience and fidelity. We don’t need to be weird, of course, but we do need to be faithful.
Rethinking liturgy. Summertime churches may be able to assume that their people know the gospel, because it’s all around them. But as the days get shorter, and the gap between Christianity and the culture widens, it becomes increasingly important to be explicit about it. I’ve been reading The Book of Common Prayer a bit recently, and it’s hard to get through more than a few pages without being reminded again and again of the gospel. How much of the Christian message could someone deduce from hearing what people in my church say or sing each week? (I know they hear the gospel regularly, of course, but saying/singing something has much more power to embed an idea than hearing it.) Again, I expect I’ll be writing a bit more about this in due course.
If all that sounds a bit heavy, even gloomy, then consider two more things. One: Of far more importance than any of these seasonal adjustments, obviously, are the things we do “in season and out of season”: pray, preach, break bread, sing, teach, serve the poor, baptize, love. Although the means of doing these things may change from season to season—sowing is easier in April than in December—the requirement to do them does not. So it’s not as if we’re supposed to run away into our holes in the ground and hide. And two: Winter is when Christmas happens. No matter what month it is, Aslan is on the move.
