Jason Locke's Blog

If you’re familiar with any of  the blog posts  from my sabbatical partly spent in the UK, then this book by Mike Moynagh explains a big piece of my research. During our 10 days based in Oxford, I got to visit with the author over cool drinks on a warm, summer afternoon. That two-hour chat was one of the highlights of my sabbatical. Mike is incredibly pragmatic, knowledgeable and humble. We had a wide-ranging conversation about how most efforts to "diagnose" the church's problems are quite misguided. What often results amounts to little more than prescribing surface changes: sprucing up the building, livening up the worship service, preaching more emphatically or with better theology, or simply doing the liturgy well. These changes, Mike suggests, never really address what lies at the heart of church decline in Western societies today. To be clear, Mike Moynagh loves the traditional church. He personally prefers the Anglican liturgy above more "contemporary" ...

On October 8, 2023, we held our last worship service in our home of 59 years. We're moving on to a temporary location while we wait for God to reveal where our more permanent home will be. It's been a journey for which there is no solid road map, but we feel blessed by what's happening. We formed a giant circle for the final song at our longtime, northeast Fresno home. In late January, our elders announced a shock decision. We would be selling our church building and moving on. Among the elders, it was an uncontentious and unambiguous decision. They 100% believed it was in the church's best interest to put our property on the market and find a new home. Many congregations have hard choices to make about aging properties that are oversized for today's churches. Selling seemed the most desirable option to our board in our circumstances. I wrote about that decision back in January. You can read about it here . I had an inside seat to their decision-making process. As a...

Most North American churches are in crisis mode. Decline. Division. Lack of direction. Even closure. These are the realities you likely know all too well. It’s old news. In response to these negative trends, I typically hear one of two lines of thought. The first just involves doing what churches already do, only better. Welcome people more warmly. Lead better worship. Be more transparent. Preach more effectively. Make your facilities more inviting. Serve nicer coffee. Have snazzier kids’ classes. Use social media more successfully. The list goes on and on. Standing-room only crowd for our workshop at the 2023 Harbor Lectures This set of strategies stems from the reality that most church leaders have a church-shaped mission. In other words, they know how to do one thing: Sunday morning worship. And since that is what churches do, that must be the tool to turn things around. The mission must fit church as they know it. The second line of thought is less optimistic. It embraces dec...

To read my latest article on the Mosaic ministry site at Abilene Christian University, please click below: https://www.mosaicsite.org/main/2023/4/11/i-survived-the-church-renewal-movements-re-missioning-is-what-we-need-now

To read my latest article on the Mosaic site, please click the link below: https://www.mosaicsite.org/main/2023/2/7/the-church-of-scotland-is-changing-fast-can-the-churches-of-christ-follow-suit  

On Sunday, January 22, 2023, the College Church of Christ elders hosted a meeting for church members. During this meeting, they announced their unanimous decision to sell the church’s existing property and relocate to a more appropriately sized property elsewhere in the Fresno/Clovis area. Each elder and minister shared their own words of affirmation about this decision. This move is not taken lightly and no doubt evokes sadness in many folks. Still, the church leaders believe this is a crucial, positive step. Despite the many memories that fill this campus, the church's current needs are no longer a match for this property. Selling and relocating will help the College Church more fully live into its mission and vision for the future. A brief bit of context may be helpful. In early December, the elders asked church members for ideas about what to do with the building and property. It was acknowledged that the College Church sits on an expansive 9-acre property with nearly 45,000 ...

Here are five books I read & appreciated in 2022. Not ranked in any particular order: Book #5, Church for Every Context by Michael Moynagh If you’re familiar with any of my recent blog posts about my sabbatical partly spent in the UK, then this book by Mike Moynagh explains a big piece of my research before our trip. I also got to visit with the author this summer in Oxford. Mike is incredibly pragmatic, knowledgeable and humble. This is one of the best books on “doing church” I’ve ever read. Actually, I can’t think of a better one. I honestly don’t understand why this book isn’t being universally used in seminaries to train pastors and church leaders. It’s that good. Why so overlooked? Well, it’s got the weight of a doorstop. And it doesn’t seem as widely available in the US as it is in the UK. So perhaps those are obstacles. But why is this book so important, in my opinion? First, it’s written through the lens of mission. Mike grew up in East Africa, the son of missionaries. Like...

On my sabbatical this summer, I rediscovered several important priorities about how to "do church" in the 21st century. Instead of endless controversies about what should or shouldn't happen in a worship service, the church needs to rediscover a sense of mission outside the bounds of traditional worship gatherings. Simply put, the church must become a people once again shaped by the mission of God. In writing this, I am not at all down on the traditional worship gathering. Regular assemblies are an enormous blessing to many existing Christians, myself included. We need to continue to slowly walk these gatherings toward being healthy and edifying for those who depend on them. As we continue to do this, however, it's time to STOP putting the wrong expectations on these worship gatherings, be they comfortingly traditional or radically contemporary. We should NOT expect worship to carry the load for evangelism, education, revival, fellowship, and every other necessary asp...

The Sunday morning church service comes once a week. That hour occupies such a small sliver of a person's waking hours in a week (about 1%). Yet churches pour a huge amount of time and resources into thinking about, planning for and executing the weekly gathering. And no matter what they do or how well they do it, the vast majority of people will never show up or even consider showing up. This is true for nearly every church I know. The Sunday morning worship gathering is what churches in North America know how to do. Those with bigger staffs, newer buildings and more money are obviously able to do it at different level from most churches. Regardless of size, however, churches tend to measure their success based on that one hour. It's the primary focus. It's the main entrance into the church family. It's how churches teach, train, disciple, encourage, communicate, and evangelize. And yet, year by year, despite such massive investment, the number of people who show up fo...

Photo taken August 14, 2022. Credit: Tsenia Ellis. It's with great sadness that we announce the death of our beloved friend and brother, Arthur Wint. He passed into the loving arms of Jesus at about 5:00 am this morning. He was at home in his favorite recliner. His Alexa device was reading Bible verses out loud. We give our love and sympathy to Carlotta and to all their kids and grandkids. About 8 years ago, Arthur started having mysterious and concerning symptoms. After many doctors visits which included a few dead ends and wrong turns, they finally diagnosed him with ALS or Lou Gerhig's disease. He was told he would likely have only one year to live. While ALS quickly diminished his motor skills, it did not diminish his spirit or his voice. His medical team continually marveled at Arthur. The fact that his voice remained strong up until the final weeks remained a mystery to the therapists and doctors who treated him. We give thanks to God that he not only kept Arthur alive bu...

In an earlier article, I wrote about a key discovery from my recent sabbatical. It's that we need to start leaning into DISCIPLESHIP FIRST methods of reaching out rather than solely relying on WORSHIP FIRST approaches. A worship-first approach works fine in a world where people are looking to belong to a church, but this method becomes increasingly futile in a society where most could care less about attending a formal worship service. You can read my article about this here . But just what does it look like? Why is this important? I was a college student at a state university in the 1980s. I was one of the key leaders in our campus ministry there, and we had tremendous success in growing the campus ministry and affecting change. Then I worked as a campus minister at a different state university in the 2000s, hoping to see the same kinds of positive results. In the decade or more in between, however, a monumental change was occurring that would deeply affect ministry in the US. Thi...

On my sabbatical, I've made multiple (re)discoveries about how we might think differently about doing church work today. Here is number two! It's that we need to think of strategies that put discipleship first, not worship first. The pieces were already in place for me to understand this one. What was lacking, however, was the imagination to see what it actually looks like in practice. Sometimes you just can't think yourself into a better way of acting ... you have to lead with your feet! That's what this discovery will allow us to do, or so I think. Everything I've ever known about how to do church involves a WORSHIP FIRST strategy. This means that the goal of interacting with non-Christians or unchurched people has been to get them to visit and then regularly attend a church's worship service. As a missionary in Europe, I was always trying to gradually move people closer and closer to the ultimate goal of getting them to join our church worship gatherings. Eve...

As I begin this post, I'm in Ravenna, Italy. If you don't like history, you might want to skip the first three paragraphs. I was unaware of Ravenna's significance until recent years. Perhaps I was taught this crucial piece of history long ago and didn't absorb it. More likely, though, is the idea that this town is forgotten by many who teach Western or religious history. Ravenna was the western seat of the Roman (or Byzantine empire by then) for a few centuries. After the sacking of Rome, Ravenna became the ideal spot for the empire's western capital because its marshy, seaside location made it easy to defend. The city was easily accessible from the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). Great buildings, palaces, and cathedrals were built in Ravenna in the 4th-8th centuries. It was the last Roman or Byzantine foothold in an Italy dominated by Lombards, Goths, Vandals and so forth. Much of ancient Ravenna was destroyed over time. Allied bombing in...