Decline & Renewal, 16: Stan Granberg Guest Column

Editor’s note: Here’s another in our series of guest columns on church decline. Coming articles will focus on renewal.

Our eleventh guest column (on this issue) is from Stan Granberg, the founder and director of Kairos Church Planting Ministries. Stan grew up in the Pacific Northwest. After years as a church-planter in Kenya and as a teacher in the southern US, he returned to the Northwest to find a changing landscape among Churches of Christ. In the article below, Stan describes the impact this has made on his work for the Kingdom.

The View from Stan Granberg

I grew up in the Seattle/Tacoma area. During the 1970s and 1980s our fellowship of Churches of Christ had a dynamic feel to it. Our camps were full. Youth events were frequent and dynamic. The Great Northwest Evangelism Workshop was drawing 2,000 or so participants. We had no megachurches but the incoming people outnumbered the outgoing and our church life seemed good. 

When I returned to Portland, Oregon to teach at Cascade College in 1996 after ten years of church planting in Meru, Kenya and three years teaching at Lubbock Christian University I quickly sensed both the flow and mood in our churches had changed. Churches were generally a bit smaller numerically and less dynamic. But it was my students at Cascade who gave me the real insight. Student after student came into my office from Churches of Christ in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and California with the same struggle, “I can’t find spiritual life in my home church.”

That’s quite a statement. It needs a bit of interpreting. They were saying that their parents’ and grandparents’ churches did not provide them the spiritual vitality, context, or direction that fed their spiritual life. So most of them left. They went into community churches and a growing number of new, emerging churches. They didn’t leave because of a cappella worship (though they seldom will be part of a non-instrumental church anymore), or “soft” biblical teaching, or a looser moral value system. They left for churches that offered them dynamic spiritual connection into the 21st century. They left for churches that spoke their language, addressed their questions, and connected with their social world. These churches know how to address change and the life challenges change brings with it.

I could give you the numbers for Churches of Christ. My students gathered the data on over one hundred churches that all told the same story: gentle, consistent decline. But this story of decline is much more of an emotional story. Eventually we are faced with the decision of what pearl or treasure will we pursue so deeply that we will “sell all we have to gain it.” Will that treasure be the future of the coming kingdom of God that is so compelling we will pull up our tent stakes to go to where God is leading us or will it be the past that we will guard and maintain at the cost of life itself?

I made my decision in December 2004 when I resigned from the Bible faculty of Cascade College to start Kairos Church Planting. I believe when we release and resource new churches, our established churches will receive the blessing of renewal.

                
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Bio:
Stan Granberg is a graduate of Harding University (BA), Harding Graduate School of Religion (MTh), Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission (ThM) the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (PhD). Stan married Gena (Catterton), who shares his passion for lost people through their Kairos partnership. Their four children (Erik and Lisa Granberg, Danny and Katie Reese, Joshua Granberg and Jared and Laura King) are all pursuing ministry in various forms, stateside or in cross-cultural missions. In addition to his work with Kairos, Stan is on the faculty of the Harding University Graduate School of Religion where he teaches church planting, domestic evangelism and missions courses. He has also served on the faculties of Lubbock Christian University and Cascade College and taught adjunct for Pepperdine University.