Preparing the Church for the Coming Tsunami | Pastor Notes

In this edition of Pastor’s Notes, Mike Glenn explores the wave of cultural and generational change reshaping the church and what it means for pastors and ministry leaders. Rather than fearing what’s ahead, Mike encourages leaders to embrace new opportunities for ministry, equip people to use their gifts, and release ministry back into the hands of the congregation. The church may look different in the years ahead, but its mission remains the same.

• Transcript

  [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Mike Glenn. Welcome to our conversation today. You know, since I have stepped down from being the senior pastor at Brentwood Baptist Church, people have asked me, "What keeps you up at night? What, uh, what are you thinking about these days?" And honestly, what I'm thinking about is the tsunami of change that is gonna be hitting the church in the next three to five years, certainly within the next 10 years.

  That's one of the reasons that we started the Engage Church Network, was to help the church get ready for all of the changes that are gonna be happening. Now, you are already beginning to see some of these changes. What are those changes? One, the church is beginning to change in its age makeup. Um, a lot of the boomers now are retiring.

  Uh, the builders, the guys who came home after World War II, uh, they have passed off the scene. Now, the boomers are passing off the scene, retiring, selling the house, [00:01:00] downsizing, moving to be nearer the, the grandchildren or the beaches in Florida. Now, Gen X, Gen Alpha, and all the alphabet generations are coming into leadership.

  These are very, very different generations. They have a different way of seeing the world. They have a different way of engaging with the world. Uh, things like most of the leadership in churches now, this younger leadership, have never used a rotary phone Most don't know how to read a map. I, I mean a fold-up map.

  You know, the thing that kept falling out of your glove compartment of your car. Most of our, our, our friends have never had to look anything up in the dictionary, much less an encyclopedia. When I was growing up, if I told my mom I didn't know how to spell a word, she would tell me, "Go look it up." Well, that was my problem.

  If you didn't know how to spell it, then how could you go look it up? But you know, after a [00:02:00] while my spelling got to be pretty good. Now we Google it. We hit a few keys in our phone and all the information that is in the world is available to us right where we are. These people see the world very differently, therefore they see the church very differently.

  Things like giving. People will say, "Well, Gen X is not, uh, doesn't give." Oh, they do give. They give very generously in matter of fact, but they give very differently. When I was growing up, it was you gave to the church budget, you gave to the church mission fund. These were all big bucket items. Well, a lot of things have happened since b- between my generation and the generations that come after.

  One, we have lost all trust in leaders and institutions. People don't trust politicians, people don't trust, um, educators, people don't trust scientists, people don't trust pastors. [00:03:00] We have to see it. You have to show us. So telling me from the pulpit that if you give X amount of dollars it does these kind of things isn't good enough to motivate me to give.

  You have to show me. You have to show me, uh, the family in Pakistan that is being bought out of slavery and no longer has to make bricks. We have bought them out of slavery. Here's the family. Here's the last brick that this family made, and because you gave $1, $5, $10, this is what happened because of that money.

  If Gen X and the following generations cannot see the connection between what they give and a life being changed, they won't give it. If you ask them if they tithe, they will say, "Yes, we tithe." Here's the difference. 2% goes to a nonprofit, uh, 3% goes to a friend of theirs who's a missionary in Guatemala.

  Another 3% goes to the church. Yes, and [00:04:00] by the time you add it all up, they give their tithe plus some, but it's not going to the church. So if you are the pastor of a local congregation, one of your challenges is going to be how you fund the budget of the local church. The running joke that I have is Gen X will give you the shirt off their back for a well in Africa.

  They won't give you 15 cents for a bulb or a light in the sanctuary. That's the difference. You can't assume that they're going to continue to give in the same kind of patterns. You have to be able to show and prove the connection They won't take your word for it anymore. It used to be if somebody said something with some kind of status, a pastor, a, a senior statesman or something like that, then people would take their word.

  You're an expert. You, um, uh, have done the research. You have the degrees and that kind of [00:05:00] stuff, then I'll listen to what you have to say. Not anymore. How many doctor's offices have you been in ha- and you seen the sign on the wall that says, "My medical degree outranks what you learned on Google"? Or how many friends have you referred to as Dr.

  Google because they had some kind of symptom, and the first thing you do is you Google it? Of course, whatever you Google ends up in death, but that's what we do now. If we wanna know something, we Google it. We don't ask anybody else. We don't, uh, take anybody's word for it. It has to be validated by more than one stream.

  So if you're preaching on a particular text and you say, "Here's what our scholars have said," you can bet your congregation is out there checking what you said by what they're pulling up on AI on their phone. Things have changed a lot. It used to be if you [00:06:00] wanted to zone a particular piece of property, a church wanted to add a piece of property for parking, that the community would go, uh, along with it.

  It was pretty much a slam dunk. Now, not so much. Now the community will come up and say, "This will add to neighborhood traffic. Uh, this is gonna add a different expense because we'll have to put a red light or widen a road and the church doesn't pay any taxes." Or the, the community will come and say, "The church preaches hate."

  And there will be a particular social issue that this church has taken a stance against that offends certain people in their neighborhood, and they will come and block the church from being able to rezone this land. A lot of things we were as- that we had assumed in the past, we can no longer assume now.

  Now, this isn't good, it isn't bad. It is different. You're going to have to deal with your congregations much differently about money, [00:07:00] finance, time, all of those things, because they've all changed in the culture. I'm gonna tell you, what we have done for the last 50 years in local church life isn't going to work in the coming 50.

  COVID, well, COVID didn't break anything, but it showed us what was broken. One, we started, uh,

  COVID didn't break anything, but it showed us what was broken. And one of the things it did was it gave people permission to stay home on Sunday morning. So now 25% of our people, these aren't scientific numbers by the way, these are just my observations, but I'm not far from being scientifically accurate.

  One, 25% of the people who used to attend church don't go anymore. They found a different hobby on Sunday morning, Jesus didn't strike them dead, and they're gone. [00:08:00] Another 25% will come every time the doors open. They miss church so badly they will come for prayer meeting, business meeting. Any time you got something where you turn the lights on, they're gonna be there.

  The 50% in the middle, they've gone hybrid. That is, they will tell you that they're in church every Sunday. What it means is we go to church maybe once, maybe twice a month in person. The rest of the month we watch television online. The family gets up, the kids are out of sort, mom doesn't feel really well, dad had a hard week, and dad says, "Forget it, we're just gonna watch church on the couch."

  So everybody gets their chocolate milk and their coffee, they pile on the couch, and they watch church. Now here's the interesting thing. S- the Sunday morning service is viewed on YouTube, it's viewed on, uh, television, local church, [00:09:00] uh, services and that kind of thing. The small group, these people won't miss their small group.

  The one thing that they hated out of COVID is they couldn't get together with their friends. So we had things happen like small groups were meeting in front yards where people would sit in lawn chairs six feet apart just so they could see each other, just so they could find out how each other was doing.

  The small group is becoming more and more important. Uh, Jesus gave us the table for a reason. This is where life happens, it's around the kitchen table. And this is where Jesus did a lot of his teaching, this is where Jesus did a lot of his ministry, and it's where ministry will happen in the future. Uh, it w- don't be surprised if you're in your neighborhood and you're talking with friends, and you mention something about church, and they say, "No, we don't go to church."

  And you mention something about Jesus, something about the Bible, and they say, "You know, I've [00:10:00] always been curious to learn more." And you would say, "Well, I can do a small group. What time would work for you?" And don't be surprised when your neighbor says, "Well, you know, we're not doing anything Sunday morning."

  So you will have 20, 25 of your neighbors coming to your house on Sunday morning. The same 20, 25 neighbors that you could never get to go to church will come to your house. Guess what? That's church You'll be worshiping, you'll be teaching the Bible, you'll probably find some kind of community moment to connect.

  That's what a church does, and you will be the pastor, the leader of that church simply because you were the one person in your cul-de-sac who was a Christian. I have a friend who took a gap year after we graduated college. He got in his car and drove west. I talked to him one time, and he'd been hired to teach [00:11:00] Russian in a small town in Colorado.

  Well, he grew up in Alabama like I did. How in the world are you gonna teach Russian? He says, "It's easy. I figured it out." I said, "What did you figure out?" He said, "You have to stay one day ahead of the kids. That's all you have to do." So if you are a Christian, you're already one step ahead of your neighbors.

  Guess what? That makes you the leader. More and more of you as laypeople are going to be picking up these kind of ministries. We call it the Second Reformation. That is, the first Reformation gave the Bible back to the people. We could read the Word of God in our own language. And yes, there were people put to death during that time for translating the holy Word of God into the vulgar language of English.

  Now we're doing the same thing to the ministry. For a long time, pastors were told, "You go to school, we train you, we hire you, you [00:12:00] do the work of the ministry." As a result, people were recognized for coming to church. You were a good member if you attended. You were a great member if you attended and gave.

  The result, pastors were overworked, and members are bored out of their minds. What we're having to understand now, what we're having to rediscover as church leaders, is God brings people into a congregation for a purpose. You're saved on purpose for a purpose. Part of the salvation experience is discovering who you are in Christ and to what purpose you have been called to accomplish.

  That's when the life with Jesus gets really fun. Most of our folks never have that experience. And so as the pastor begins to understand, I can release this ministry to those people who have giftings and callings to it, then all kind of things change. One, worship changes. Do you [00:13:00] realize most of the people come on Sunday morning and they have no reason to be there?

  They haven't seen God do anything, aren't anticipating that God will do something. They come and sit on the back row like Russian Olympic judges with their arms folded. And I fully expect them to hold up cards, nine four, nine three, grading the worship service. That's why you end up with conversations like, "I didn't get anything out of the worship service today."

  See, they showed up expecting the worship team and the pastor to bring worship to them. Nobody can do that. You have to bring your own worship in. You have to come in celebrating, "This is what I saw God do Thursday," and then from that anticipate what God will do in the week that is to come. That's where worship gets fun.

  That's where it gets exciting. For most of us, it never gets there at all because the pastor's trying to do all the work of the church, visit all the hospitals, do all the funerals, do all the baptisms, do all the teaching, [00:14:00] do all the preaching, do all the administration. And more times than not, there's people sitting in the congregation who can do whatever the pastor's doing better than the pastor could do it themselves.

  When pastors begin to understand that I can release this ministry to my membership who will use their gifts to do it better than we ever thought it could be done. Now, for pastors, let me pull you aside here. You're thinking, "Man, if I give away all my ministry, then I've given away all my authority and all of my position.

  They won't need me anymore." Nah. Here's what happens. People get excited of what they're doing. They tell their friends about what's going on at their church. Your church ends up growing. People talk to your church and say, "Your church has so many ministries, so much going on. You pastor a great church." Just like any other thing in life, you can't [00:15:00] outgive God.

  Whatever you give comes back to you in more ways than you can count. You will end up leading an incredible church, which is what we want. Now- I don't want you to get discouraged, I really don't, because I'm telling you this is gonna be some of the most fun we have had. These are exciting days. Why? Because our culture is asking questions only Jesus can answer.

  Questions of identity, purpose, mission, hope, all of those things. They are Jesus questions. Do you understand that we're now in a culture that says parents cannot tell a child who they are? That this child is set free to figure out who they are, their own identity in the world. Can you imagine anything more hateful than a child growing up not, not knowing who they are?

  Uh, my [00:16:00] dad told me every day, "You're a Glenn, boy. You do things differently because you're a Glenn. Stand up straight, sit up straight, keep your promises." Da, uh, all of this. I thought we had castles in Scotland. I thought the, the, the name Glenn meant something. How disappointed I was to find out we were a bunch of Scot-Irish mutts that migrated through North Carolina, Tennessee, on down through Mississippi to the road, uh, you know, till we ran out of road in South Mississippi.

  That's my family. That's not the way my dad talked to me. You are a Glenn. You are somebody, and it's different when you have this name, when you have this identity. The incredible thing about the gospel is it begins by telling us who we are. You know, the world pulls a dirty trick on you, says you can be anything you want to be.

  No, you can't. You can be everything that Jesus created you to be, and the gospel begins with this [00:17:00] wonderful message: "This is who you are. This is who I created you to be. Now come work with me, come partner with me, and let's go find a little part of the world that I want to work with you," Jesus says, "in reclaiming, rebuilding, re- uh, bringing back in under the auth- or authority and the beauty of the Kingdom of God."

  Nothing is better in your life than knowing you're partnering with Christ in redeeming a little part of broken creation, which means one of the first things that a church has to do in understanding its community is fix something. Find a problem and fix it. It's called the Mother Teresa rule. That is, go somewhere where nobody wants to go, do something nobody wants to do, and the world won't say a thing They'll give you a platform from which your ministry can happen when you do that.

  Be known as the church that provides tutors to the local sc- uh, school. Uh, be [00:18:00] known as the church that feeds the hungry or builds houses for homeless people, uh, that works with high school graduates in putting their life plan together, their financial plan, their, their education plan, their business plan.

  Be the church that is known for doing something so that the community around you goes, "Hey, aren't you the church that?" And talks about your ministry. That then opens the conversation for you to tell them about why you're there, about your relationship with Jesus, about how Jesus loves you and how Jesus loves them, and that compels you then to do something about the hurt that you see around you.

  Then that drives you back to worship, that drives you back to discipleship, and that process starts over and over and over again. Now, yes, things are going to change, and it is a tsunami. I, I haven't even gotten into AI [00:19:00] and how that changes things, but it's going to be very different. It doesn't have to be bad.

  It's going to be different. But Jesus promised us that the gates of hell itself wouldn't prevail against His church. I am excited, and I'm really frustrated I'm 69 years old, because these next few years to see how the church is gonna respond and how Jesus leads His people to reengage with the broken culture, that's gonna be a lot of fun to see.

  Thanks for being part of this journey. I hope I've helped you a little bit. If you got more questions, let me know. We'd love to continue this conversation