I recently received an advance copy of Gordon MacDonald’s new book, Who Stole My Church? What to Do When the Church You Love Tries to Enter the 21st Century, from Thomas Nelson publishers. I was happy to receive a book from my friend, Gordon MacDonald, but this title surprised me a bit. It certainly seemed a departure from his previous books, such as, A Resilient Life and Ordering Your Private World, which were more about the individual’s inner life. This new title was clearly not about the inner life. In this new book MacDonald has attempted to tackle one of the most divisive topics in the 21st Century church, the topic of change.
His title not only surprised, but it worried me. I always love MacDonald’s books, but I was afraid that I wouldn’t like this one. As a church planter I have encountered the angry church goer who thinks the church belongs to them and resists any change to its tradition or culture. As I looked at the book’s cover I hesitated to open it.
I had recently acted as MacDonald’s chauffeur, driving him from the airport to a speaking engagement and back to his hotel. On the one hand, I observed him to be an early adopter and very innovative in his thinking. He seemed more adept with his Palm PDA than any twenty something. He made good use of his laptop while projecting powerpoint images on a screen to illustrate his talking points. Yet, after a rousing time of contemporary worship lead by a young, blue-jean wearing, guitar playing, worship leader, MacDonald began his talk by asking everyone to sing an old hymn with him. He explained that he really had difficulty worshiping to the new songs. He wanted to sing something to which he and those fellow, “gray-haired” members of the audience might relate.
His hymn singing preference didn’t worry me, I’ll soon be 50 years old and I still love the occasional old hymn too. Certainly, MacDonald at age 66 deserved to sing the songs that touched his heart. But now as I held his latest book in my hand, I wondered if his taste in music had colored his view of change in the church.
I shouldn’t have worried. Gordon MacDonald’s new book was a joy to read. It is not a reactionary response to change. It is a very relational and mediating view of how an individual church congregation might face and respond to the changes in today’s culture. The book is a real page turner too. MacDonald wrote this book as a kind of “dramatic form of semi-fiction.” In it he tells the story of how he leads a fictional church in a New England town to respond to the cultural changes around them. I found myself relating to the conversations and struggles of this fictional church. MacDonald may be writing fiction, but it is certainly based on real life experience.
MacDonald’s character in the book (he plays himself) decides to bring together a group of disgruntled church leaders to discuss the changes the church is facing. He calls it a “Discovery Group.” In their weekly meetings they discuss nearly every cultural shift of this generation. They discuss the change of their church name. They struggle together with the elimination of their church choir and the ensuing “worship wars” that go with having a contemporary band leading on Sundays.
But their journey is more than having to lift their eyes from hymn books to projected words on screens. Gordon’s character leads them to confront their own view of the church and more importantly, to whom the church belongs.
The book begins with one of the members of MacDonald’s Discovery Group named Yvonne saying with great sadness, “All I know is that someone stole my church and I’d like to get it back.”
The book is about the journey that led this same woman and many of the members of the group to change their view. Along the way they discovered that the church never belonged to them anyway. It had always belonged to Jesus.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves the church. Those who feel called to help transition an existing church to reach this generation will find much to encourage them. While MacDonald has not attempted to write a “how-to transition a church” book, he does offer a kind of paradigm for working with a church that has already begun the journey.
For those that are familiar with the coach approach to leadership, they will find many valuable “powerful questions” that may be used in leading people towards change. MacDonald’s character often uses questions and active listening to pull resistant people forward. Although not everyone in MacDonald’s fictional church is able to make the change, everyone is listened to and heard.
MacDonald admits that not everyone is shaped for leading a church through this kind of change. In one of his final chapters, he says:
Our experience leads me to say that if you want to be part of a church that is radically different from anything you’ve ever known, then plant one… But if you are willing to be patient in one of those old churches (like ours) that is pretty high up the S-curve, then put your head down and go to work. Be patient, be prayerful, seek allies, build alliances with other generations. You’ll probably have to convince a lot of people, and they’ll come dragging their feet like the members of our Discovery Group. But as time passes, somehow the Spirit of God will grab hearts, and you just may see a miracle– a hundred-year-old church that acts with the spirit of an enthusiastic teenager. That’s what happened to us.
I shouldn’t have worried about Gordon MacDonald’s latest book. He gets it right. The church is not ours. It belongs to Christ.