by Jordon Cooper, Teaching Pastor, Lakeview Church

I am a teaching pastor at one of the larger churches in Canada.  We average around 1000 people a weekend.  For the last 10 years, Lakeview has been attached to the Willow Creek style of ministry.  With some improvements brought in from Saddleback and Ginghamsburg we risked everything on being a seeker church.  We are a hypermodern church that has embraced everything that modernity has given us.

I am a teaching pastor who is not modern.  I hate the term postmodern but I guess it fits.  My fascination with Willow Creek revolves more around the chance to take in a Cubs game once in a while than it does with Bill Hybels.  I am not knocking everything that they do either but that isn’t me.  Lakeview Church isn’t me either and yet I stay.  A lot of people ask me why.  Here is my answer.

For a lot of people I have sold out and moved to the suburbs.  I have chosen, they might argue, to ignore the call of real ministry for the safety of the establishment, modern or hypermodern.  They accuse me of riding momentum, a lot of resources, and someone else’s ideas to easy success.  To them I send them a “martyr cookie” and remind them that all is not cheery in the land of color coordinated pastel sweaters.

There is a reason that so many people have rejected modernity.  A lot of churches are not healthy.  They may be growing at a rapid rate but there is something wrong with them.  We ran a $65,000.00 deficit on a small budget last year at Lakeview.  Our people are not growing.  I see a lot of social/small groups that covenant on gossip and coffee with a token look at Scripture.  Worship is a blend of seeker songs and new music that no one sings to.  Lakeview is one of the churches that is trying to change and make a turn back to what a healthy church needs to be.  It isn’t easy.  We have sold them cheap grace and now have jacked up the price.  The transformation to hypermodernism was easy compared to what we are attempting here – from Willow Creek to postmodernism.

I stay to continue the dialogue with my church.  People need to hear a contrary voice.  At last year’s Leadership Summit at Willow Creek a bunch of people got all pumped up over Bill Hybels justifying why Willow Creek doesn’t share their money.  We were going to stop all giving to other ministries and only keep it to ourselves.  Someone needed to challenge that thinking.  Maybe I was wrong but that wasn’t the point.  Someone needs to offer critical thinking into the church.  While giving out SoulTsunami accomplishes something, so does speaking out and saying, “we need to look at this.”  More change has been brought about at Lakeview by asking someone to explain this to me in light of cultural trends than anything else.  I was reading about the brain drain at Microsoft of their entrepreneurial spirit.  The columnist was asking if there is enough talent left to make great products anymore.  I am not saying that I am anything special but if all of us bail out, who is left to challenge the decisions being made?  Contrary voices and change always go hand in hand.  Too many of our voices have moved away, largely because of the modern church’s penchant for not listening.  That is a shame and it makes the job of those of us left behind harder to do.

I stay because I believe that someone needs to figure this thing out.  We throw around the quote that one third of all churches in America and Canada will close over the next decade.  For some that is a vindication of their ministry.  For me it grieves my soul.  I love the church with all of its blemishes.  I am not a big fan of institutionalized Christianity but for the people that will lose something that they gave their life to, I feel for them.  I also know the potential of the church.  I think that Chuck Colson is right when he says that the church is the only institution that is big or powerful enough to make a difference in today’s society.  We need to get the church healthy enough to make that difference.  I want to be a part of the solution for the modern church, not a part of the problem.  I am no one special but I am willing to lay something on the line for the church to help continue the dialogue.  I want to see churches making a difference, not closing.  That goes for premodern to postmodern.  We are all in this together.

The last reason to change is that a lot of churches like Lakeview have already made a major change from the 1950’s style of worship to a Willow Creek/Saddleback style.  The boomers remember what they went through.  They may not like what we are doing but they respect us for trying.  There are churches out there that will never change.  They are mired in their own past success and idealized memories.  There is also the occasional church that has changed and the call to change again may not fall on happy ears but ones that are still receptive.  It is those people that I challenge, learn from and stay for.  Personally I think that you will see a lot of modern and hypermodern churches transform to postmodernism.  It won’t be pretty and there will be a cost but they will make it.  I have heard of how Spurgeon’s church went from 6000 people in his prime to 60 today.  The cost of not changing is higher.

Will I stay at Lakeview forever?  I don’t know that, only God knows.  I may be called to fight the battles somewhere else soon or I may be slugging this one out for a while.  Wherever I am, I will help build a healthy church, postmodern or not.  The fact is that not all of us are church planters, some of us are called to re-engineer the past, and we accept that challenge.