Grow out of your neighborhood soil
Fourth in a series: Five disruptive church trends in 2025
April 24, 2025
By Rev. Rick King
Carey Nieuwhof is the Canadian pastor and trend-spotter I read who annually publishes a list of “disruptive church trends” that he believes will affect churches of all types, even though he writes with a primarily evangelical audience in mind. I’m interested in how we can view this year’s five disruptive trends through the lens of our merger process. Each week, we’ll look at a different trend and see how it applies to us as we try to plant a new church out of a merger of two existing churches facing challenges. Source of the content is Nieuwhof’s blog, but the take on it is my own.
It’s just after Easter and Earth Day, and also Pope Francis’ death, and I can’t let a moment go by without inviting you to attend our joint Earth Sunday service this coming Sunday at New Life at 10 a.m. Original poetry, a joint choir anthem, a message on healing our relationship with the earth and each other—and special Earth Day activities after church, along with tasty food and drink. See you there?
Now, Disruptive Church Trend #4: Carey Nieuwhof notes that historically, whenever a new model for being church arises, others rush to copy the formula, hoping to attract large numbers of new people and revitalize the church. It’s like there’s a checklist of boxes you have to check if your church is to be successful.
A production model of church, when what we need more of is a gardening model. Get to know your soil, nurture it, and bloom where you’re planted.
The problem is that what’s new gradually becomes less original the more churches that copy it. Back in the 1990s, being an Open and Affirming church in the UCC was novel, and was one of the features the denomination was touting in growing UCC congregations.
Extravagant, radical hospitality is still important, but with more and more churches now becoming LGBTQIA+ affirming, it’s not unique anymore. Becoming more local, getting to know your church’s neighbors and neighborhood intimately, and looking for opportunities to join forces with neighbors in community ministry is far more important than any cookie-cutter approach to being the church.
As we think about the kind of NEW church God will bring out of this merger between our two churches, we need to discern the difference between learning from others and imitating others. Imitating some other church’s formula for success is NOT innovating; it’s imitating. But there are things we can learn from other churches and do well in the new church that comes out of this merger: how to invite people to church, welcome them when they show up, keep in touch and let them know how to get involved, prepare them when they feel ready to make a deeper commitment to the community, etc.
Above all, it’s everybody’s job to get to know our neighborhood, even—and especially—if you’ve been in the neighborhood for a long time. Because there’s turnover happening in this neighborhood and the one around New Life: the people we need most to connect with are not necessarily the ones who were there ten or even five years ago, to say nothing of 25 or 30 years ago.
We are to take root and grow in the soil of our local context, not that of some other church. And that means getting curious, starting conversations with neighbors, and learning about our “local soil.”
What are YOU curious about in our two churches’ surrounding areas?