Jason Locke's Blog

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

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...

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...

Here's a parable. Let's say that you love swimming. You love swimming so much in fact that you are part of a swim club. You believe that swimming is the healthiest thing a person could do, and you feel stronger and more vibrant when you are actively swimming. Every week, you meet with your swim club to do laps together and then go out for drinks. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of your week, and you see this as incredibly important. You and I are good friends, in this parable at least. And as an advocate for swimming as the key to a healthy life, you keep inviting me to the swim club. You use various enticements to get me to go. You even introduce me to another swim club member in the hopes it will push me over the edge. Do you know where this parable is going? Read on for the conclusion. (from www.goodlife.org.au/squads) Clear of Covid, I have resumed my planned sabbatical schedule. It was hard to let go of the planned visits in Hamburg and Frankfurt, but the wise pat...

Last Friday, we left for my first ministry sabbatical. The trip to Germany was mostly uneventful. Completely full flights. A strange delay of 2.5 hours at DFW. But no real problems. We had an eventful Sunday, which I describe below. On Monday morning, though, I woke up with congestion, headache and sore throat. Since I had a couple meetings planned that day, I believed it wise to take a Covid test to rule it out. The result was positive. Shocker! No idea if I picked it up before leaving Fresno or somewhere on the flight over. This has led to the very sad cancellation of a number of activities and appointments I had this week. We're extending our stay in Frankfurt to try to get well quickly. Back to our arrival in Frankfurt... We got checked in to our simple hotel in the heart of Frankfurt and then had one goal for that day: Stay awake until evening. The worst way to overcome jetlag is to succumb to the afternoon-nap temptation on day one. Mission accomplished. I was in Frankfurt on...

This was my latest post for Charis . It's an online resource produced by the Siburt Institute for Church Ministry at Abilene Christian University. http://char.is/blog/2016/09/29/five-keys-to-reviving-a-dying-church/ Click, read & share. Thanks!

Liberec, Czech Republic. Not a highlighted spot on most people's maps. Certainly not a well-known place. But I lived in the Czech Republic for the better part of a decade, and I know its regions and cities. This article tells the tale of one church I encountered that displays all the characteristics of a seemingly vibrant church in an unexpected place. Communism decimated Czech churches. It's hard to destroy 1100 years of Christianity, and Communism wasn't the only philosophy to mount an assault on belief in the modern age. But Communism managed to finish off an entire generation of believers. When I moved to Prague, conservative Protestant or "evangelical" churches could claim maybe 50,000 people out of a population of 10 million. And many of those churches were demoralized after discovering that the fall of Communism didn't bring the masses flocking back through their doors. Czech  churches  certainly needed renewal, but I didn't see much sign of it....

This week, I read & shared a piece by Steve McSwain from the Huffington Post religion blog. McSwain seems to be a good guy, and he is a respected church leader. His article,   " Why Nobody Wants to Go to Church Anymore "  is a well-reasoned response to a previous blog post by Ed Stetzer on the Christianity Today blog. Stetzer is another widely read Christian leader. In his article,   " The State of the Church in America: Hint: It's Not Dying ," Stetzer argues that "The church in America is in transition," and that we shouldn’t really think of it as declining or dying. What is Stetzer saying? He wants to reassure us that the American church is just getting rid of "cultural" and "congregational" Christians – i.e., those who aren't serious about their faith. According to Stetzer, this will leave the church with a group of people who can seriously engage society as "a mobilized mission force in the midst of this missio...

Cork, Ireland was far more interesting than I’d imagined. I only had two real expectations when we visited Ireland in 1997. First, I expected to see beautiful, green pastures with medieval ruins and countless sheep scattered across rolling hills and coastal cliffs. Second, I hoped to feel and taste the atmosphere in village pubs brought to life with bands and bards singing ancient tunes amidst a non-stop flow of Irish stout served up in pints. Our week in Ireland certainly provided all that and more. What I didn’t expect, however, was to have a meaningful church experience during our journey. Just like in Prince Edward Island , Churches of Christ of the American Restoration Movement have no real presence in the Republic of Ireland. Well, I mean that we have no presence outside the capital city of Dublin. And even that is an infinitesimally small work in the midst of a large city. So basically, we didn’t plan to cross paths with any CofC friends. On our only weekend on the ...

Prince Edward Island was the last place I expected to have a moving church experience. Rewind to 2007. With our elementary-age boys in tow, we made the 1200-mile drive from Morgantown, West Virginia to Canada, to Cavendish on the north shore of Prince Edward Island. We loaded up the Olds Silhouette (the Cadillac of minivans) and went northeast toward the Atlantic Provinces for a little summer getaway. I can’t quite recall why we picked PEI. It had nothing to do with Anne of Green Gables—books that neither Julie, our boys nor I had ever read. We have no family up that way and no childhood memories of a trip we were trying to relive. It just seemed like a fun vacation spot. It wasn’t the boring slog of a drive that you might expect. On the journey north, we stopped in Boston for the obligatory tour of Paul Revere’s house and the Old North Church—along with a nonstop stream of Dunkin Donuts. The fireworks extravaganza for the Fourth topped it all off on the banks of the Charles Rive...