Future Focused Church
Future Focused Church, Kate Powell, Jake Mulder & Raymond Chang, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2025, 317pp, £19.99,
None of us knows the future of our church, our denomination or The Church. This book isn’t going to change that. But the strapline points to how it can be helpful to us in that its focused on ‘leading through change, engaging the next generation and building a more diverse tomorrow’. Those are three key elements that we are trying to achieve today in order to be at all relevant to tomorrow, or perhaps even today.
Primarily this book is about leading through change. Based on North American research, the context is somewhat similar to us but still some years behind. We have seen far faster national Christian decline and while migration is currently helping, overall we are making less of an impact in society compared to previous generations. We, and almost everyone else. Continuing to do the same is very likely to repeat the cycle of decline, consequently it is imperative for us in church leadership to read the signs of the times and discern where God is leading, that we might follow and help others. We are in a distinctly different and rapidly changing context. The generations before us had huge issues to face but in a society where the Christian faith had a good level of respect and the Christian story was fairly well known. Life is very different today and will continue to change.
Most Sundays we pray the Lord’s Prayer. The authors here remind us that this is a ‘future focused prayer’ (p28). In praying this we are looking to the future and seeking God’s Kingdom and action to be clear to us as we follow. After the ascension the disciples were immediately reminded of a future event – that Jesus will return. Consequently ‘being future focused is not optional or just a good suggestion for some churches but rather an affirmation of what is central to allchurches to be healthy, vibrant and vital’ (p29).
The book offers a very straightforward map of the way forward. We want to move from Here (what our current context looks like) to There (where God is leading us). The crucial steps in between are recognising Who (our people, gifs and community) and How (what our next step and further steps will be to enable us to get to There).
There is a huge amount more in what I think is a helpful, clear and realistic text. If you are looking to the future, which I hope you perpetually are, then this book and others like it are food and inspiration for the ongoing journey. Its split into four sections (Who/Here/There/How) with the various chapters having reflective questions to further help us understand and work through the content.
If you want to start (or hopefully continue) to think through how we develop our churches and escape from what can feel like inevitable decline, this text is a really good companion and guide.
Rev’d Dr Stephen Skuce
Growing Churches Officer
The Methodist Church in Ireland