Adam Mclane from adamclane.com has an interesting post that I have pondered and re-pondered. His “Anxiety in Youth Ministry” is well founded in my heart, as I too have been anxious for a couple of years as to … what will happen to church as we know it … or have known it. Adam quotes Campolo …
“Church, as we know it today, will collapse with the economy. And we will shake ourselves off and ask, ‘what do we do now?”
I know many will read this and just let it settle on deaf ears as some fatalistic statement from a kook. But, is it really? If I were an employed minister on a church staff at this point in history … I would be anxious too. Oh, I am anxious enough with the economy and owning my own business. Truth be told, when I first began to feel anxious about the future of the church as a whole … I felt that I needed to do something about not depending on the “organizational” church for my income. Another story, and I digress.
Adam makes this observation next in his post.
A year later we have to step back and acknowledge that in many ways Tony was right.
* A down economy has forced tens of thousands of churches to re-evaluate how they spend money. Not a bad thing, but has caused stress at all levels of church staffing.
* A shifting culture, and the owning of the reality that traditional youth ministry programs are fading in their effectiveness… more stress for youth workers.
* Time to think, causes that stress to bubble to the surface.
* The length of time things have been stressful (for some, 2-3 years now) causes this stress to manifest itself.
Adam calls it … tribal anxiety. And the big question is … what do we do with it? The link to his article.
