Facing Up to Our Flaws to Secure Our Future
By Alan B. Ward |
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I watched a special about the Titanic on The History Channel recently. New evidence discovered by a team of explorers in 2005, has lead scientists and engineers to rethink what ultimately caused Titanic to sink. Conventional wisdom has always been that the ship sideswiped as iceberg and it ripped a hole in the side of the vessel. But the new findings suggest there may have also been damage to the double bottom underneath that was even more catastrophic. Could Titanic have had a structural flaw that made it vulnerable to sinking once its hull was breached?
To solve the mystery, the team decided to mount an expedition to examine Titanic’s “younger sister” ship Britannic. Britannic (launched two years after Titanic) never carried passengers across the Atlantic, but served as a hospital ship during World War I and ultimately sank in the Mediterranean Sea in 1916—making it much easier to access than Titanic. When the divers examined Britannic, they found that the structural flaws that were present on Titanic had been corrected on Britannic. White Star Line appears to have corrected the structural flaw in future ships, and also upgraded existing ships such as Titanic’s “older sister” Olympic.
 In the end the research concluded that Titanic was built with the best technology available at the time. They boasted that it was "unsinkable" and indeed they thought their claims were true. At the time, the engineers simply could not conceive of a breach large enough to sink the ship. In a previous post, The Unsinkable Church, I drew parallels between the tragedy of Titanic and the “tragic” state of affairs faced by many local churches. I argued both were preventable tragedies. We can agree or disagree that we should have done things differently in the past, but it’s hard to argue the state we find ourselves in. So the more important question is: Now that we find ourselves here, what are we going to do about it?
Just as Titanic was built based on state-of-the-art technology of the day, our churches were also “state-of-the art” institutions for the mid-20th century. Back then, no one could conceive of a better design for church, and at the time we really didn’t need one—i.e., we had a Church structure that matched the culture we were living in. But inevitably our culture evolves and the church must evolve as well. And that’s where the church has faltered… Unlike White Star Line, we weren’t willing to make the upgrades we needed to make to keep pace with a rapidly changing world. Leaders of local churches and denominations deemed proposed upgrades too expensive, too risky, too uncomfortable for the current membership, and ultimately chose not to “rock the boat”. After all, the old ship was doing fine; it was steaming full-speed ahead meeting the needs of the current passengers—safe, comfortable, and familiar. But we weren’t taking on many new passengers, and worse yet, lurking out there in the dark was the massive iceberg of postmodernity that caught us completely off-guard and ripped a gaping hole in the side of our thoroughly modern hull, exposing the rigidness and inflexibility of outdated church structures.
For a while, like the crew of the Titanic, we tried to downplay the seriousness of the problem, bailing water like crazy behind the scenes but putting a positive spin on things to the congregation … The band (or in our case, the organ music ?) played on in the sanctuary and we tried to convince everyone that: “There’s no need to worry. Things are going to be just fine.” But as we look around Christendom, clearly things are not fine. Membership of our mainline churches has declined significantly in recent years; youth and young adults in particular seem to have little interest in church as we currently do it; giving is frankly pathetic relative to people’s income. Soccer fields, Starbucks, and Walmart stores have bigger crowds on Sunday than our churches. People participate in church the same way they participate in country clubs; they view church as an optional activity that’s there for them to take part in if they so choose.
The old ship that functioned so well in 1960 was never intended to sail on the sea we find ourselves on in 2007. At the very least, the old ship needed upgrades along the way if it was to remain seaworthy, and on the whole, we’ve resisted making them. Sadly, our churches have fallen into disrepair and they now need to be pulled out of the water for a complete overhaul to make them seaworthy again. But that isn’t really an option. We have to keep sailing onward. There’s no other ship out there on the horizon to take on the “passengers” while the ship is repaired. What can we do?! …
Many local churches, such as the one my wife and I serve, are now trying to create new ships within our existing ships. [1] We’re seeking, in a matter of speaking, to create a church within a church, keeping the aspects of the old ship that work well and changing those that don’t—much the way Britannnic was upgraded to be more secure than Titanic once structural flaws became apparent. We’re racing against time to create these new ships before our old ships completely sink. We fear that it is not a matter of if but when, and we want to prepare for that reality. We recognize that, like the Captain of Titanic, some will choose to go down with their old ship, and we try and respect and dignify their wishes. But we pray the majority will choose to migrate to the new ship and sail forward with us to wherever it is God would take our congregations. We don’t know what the future holds for our churches, but we trust God’s Spirit to be the wind that guides us forward. We believe God is greater than any ship we create and will ultimately safeguard his Church for generations to come.
[1] People from a variety of different churches and denominations are also meeting together to have dialogue and try and come up with a more seaworthy ship while still faithfully participating in their own individual churches—e.g., the Emerging church movement.
Alan Ward lives in Baltimore, MD and blogs at Can These Bones Live Again? |
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