Nancy Beach - Next Sunday: An Honest Dialogue about the Future of the Church

Debriefs are some of our favorite family memories. Hanging out in our kitchen, half of us sitting, half standing near the island, sipping Diet Coke while we devour a box of cookieswe love unpacking anything we just experienced together. It could be after Samanthas basketball game when we urged her to quit passing so much and just shoot the ball! Or laughing about Johannas special soccer move she pulled out in almost all of her games. Our debriefs included evaluating every theater production the girls were a part ofour collection of programs and playbills is huge. Major moments were reviewed with tremendous detail, especially if something bombed, a line was forgotten, or a scene truly moved us.

All of our debriefs were highly specific, reviewing bad referee calls, missed lighting cues, and the awkward onstage kisses of teenage actors. We are a family who loves to talk, interrupting one another frequently, all in the name of judging... sorry, evaluating!

This debriefing energy was not confined to sports and theaterit also included church. Nancys role as a pastor to artists created a bit of a curse. Our family struggles to fully experience anything without immediately reflecting on questions like, How did that go? Was it clear, compelling, moving, or a waste of time? What would we do differently if we had a do-over? Do we think the message or artistic moment had its desired impact? And although the dad in this scene is a left-brained business guy, he weighed in with strong opinions not only on sports but also on theater and church. All four of us were all in when it came to debriefs.

In recent years our conversations expanded to include Samanthas husband, Will. As someone who grew up mostly outside the church, he brings an entirely different perspective. The five of us engage in animated dialogue about the current and future state of the local church. We care deeply about churches thriving, both because of how most of our lives have been shaped and guided by various communities of faith and because we believe in the church as a force for restoration. We long for churches to flourish.

This book largely reflects those family conversations. We suspect that we are not alone and that many other familiesfrom grandparents down to teenagersshare their assumptions, disappointments, suspicions, memories, apathy, and, yes, their hopes for the future of the church.

In fall 2019 Nancy was invited to speak to an annual gathering of Christian publishing executives in Boston. The assigned topic was dauntingforecasting the future of the church. The stakes for the future of the church could not be higher. In the Great Opportunity report, which was commissioned by Pinetops Foundation, we learned that half the people who grew up in church have already left. Churches, for the most part, are up against a culture increasingly filled with Nonespeople with no religious affiliation. Nancys thinking on the churchs future was sparked by a message she heard from Pastor Ben Carcharias at a leadership conference. Building on those thoughts led to the seven distinctives described in this book. Together we asked, What will be most important for local churches going forward if they hope to thrive and not merely survive? Others will no doubt point out distinctives that are not on the list (prayer!), and we offer our perspective as humble learners who care deeply about the church and, like so many others, are just trying to figure it out. We do not come at these questions with an audacious sense of confidence or think we possess the answers or the magic ticket for churches to reach their full potential for the next generation.

This book includes two distinct voiceswith a section from both of us on all seven subjects. Nancy brings her baby boomer perspective and experience on a team that built one of the most influential churches in the past forty years. Samantha is a millennial child of the megachurch and VeggieTales. She knows every word of the DC Talk Jesus Freak album and never missed an edition of Brio magazine. Her work as an artistboth in and outside the churchinforms her perspective. And she has now gravitated toward a different kind of faith community from the one that first formed her.

Our church stories are also shaped by our identities as straight, White American women (who share 50 percent of our DNA!). While our gender brings certain expectations and limitations inside religious circles, we have the privilege of feeling comfortable in most pews. Our conversation focuses on our experiences in predominantly White churches in the United States and the patterns, challenges, and opportunities that lie before these congregations. Readers must not stop here. We believe tomorrows church must center the stories of those who have struggled to feel welcome at our tables.

We write to open up the conversation, to share our journeys of discovery and our reflections on what is and what could be. Entire books have been written on each of these distinctives; we offer only a reflection on topics that surely warrant deeper study. We are not historians or academics but storytellers. Yet we believe there are some collective truths revealed in the particularities of what we and those we love have experienced.

This book is for every person who wants to believe that church still matters, even though so many of us have been disappointed, even wounded, along the way. Maybe, like us, some of your highest highs and lowest lows in life are connected to your church experience. As we wrote, we pictured our readers joining us around our kitchen, all of us still holding out hope that the churchall churchescan do better and choosing to be a constructive part of the solution rather than cave to cynical criticism. We believe in the unique potential of the local church to liberate and transform hearts, and repair and restore communities. So pull up a chair, grab a drink and a snack (if you were really in our kitchen, itd be something full of sugar), and lets dig into the dialogue. And in the spirit of a true and fully engaged debrief, feel free to add your own comments in the margin!