Gardens in the Desert

Gardens in the Desert: How the adaptive Church can lead a whole new life, Michael Adam Beck & Kenneth H Carter Jr. (2024, Abingdon Press

 ‘Disciples are not made sitting in caves staring at shadows.’ (p92)

This statement struck me as core for why a conversation on an adaptive church is necessary in this current age. We have long journeyed with the conversations included in this book around fresh expressions and the inherited church in which we serve and worship, however the thoughts presented by Beck & Carter are a helpful reminder and perhaps a prompt to move us on.

Sharing their experiences within the United Methodist Church in America, of which there is some resonance with the Methodist Church in Ireland, the authors begin to challenge how we, as Church, ought to be responding to the landscape we currently find ourselves in. Using Jeremiah 29, and many other helpful illustrations, they encourage the readers to be honest about the challenges of today, but also hopeful that the ability to adapt is within us if we are willing to face loss and change and believe in resurrection.

There are challenging questions to face across these pages about whether the church has spent too long looking inward and has lost sight of its Christ given commission to ‘go’ and make disciples. It invites us to think, have we got lost looking at the shadows of the days long gone, feeling safe in the cave of comfort and routine, or are we prepared to think and move, to prune and let go, because we believe that ‘nothing is sacred but the mission.’ (p134).

What was helpful about the perspective presented in this book, was that it doesn’t disregard or devalue the inherited church, rather encourages it to adapt and grow and graft on the new. It states clearly that ‘simply planting new faith communities will not stop the church’s decline’ (p41) but that investing in existing congregations is also necessary for sustainability. The writers point to helpful models of listening, learning and loving, so that a church and its leaders can truly discover the people and place in which it is planted. They emphasise the importance of team, of blending the rules to create space to move, and challenge how we might extend authority to unleash leadership within our faith communities.

This book contains some thought-provoking reflections on clergy and a current model of ministry that is leading to the quick burnout of many. It expresses a different model that in this new missional frontier, clergy will have to ‘disrupt the toxic cycle, create missional mess, establish new grazing patterns and redirect the rivers.’(p100)

For leaders, this book creates space for thought and reflection on current practices whilst inviting a look into something more. What is presented seems relatively possible in our present scenario, if only we might have a renewed courage to try. For congregations, this book presents some tough questions to reflect on as you examine practice and be honest about reality. However, it also summons cause to hope as it invites you to imagine and to move into what God may yet have in store for you.

Rev Cheryl Patterson
The Methodist Church in Ireland