Unstuck church
It's systematic, but it feels personal
The phone rings again - or it pings with another social media message.
Another friend is reaching out - clergy or lay, working for the mainline church or a member of a congregation.
They’ve just been fired, or they work with someone who should be fired - but won’t be.
They’re running the church all by themselves because no one else shows up.
They have no idea what they’re doing but they’re afraid of being found out, and losing their job.
They’re asked to do things (fire others, close churches) that they don’t want to do, but they can’t say no.
They know the budget can’t last another year, but everyone keeps going ahead like everything is ok.
It’s a mess. They’re stressed, they’re frustrated, they’re mad. Most of them, somewhere in the conversation say this:
‘I’m never going back to that church/denomination/diocese again.’
These calls are becoming more and more frequent. Maybe it’s because of what I do, or my experience in the church. But it’s becoming alarming.
People aren’t calling about what we think of as classic misbehavior - no one is stealing money or having inappropriate relationships (at least, they’re not telling me about it if they are!).
The alarming things are much more mundane:
Power dynamics
Entrenchment
People in jobs they’re not qualified for (but won’t leave)
Politics (all sides - people who embrace certain politics, people who won’t embrace politics, etc).
Conflict
I was worried that if I published this, people would see themselves in my story and feel exposed.
But I guarantee that these area) composites and
b) a drop in the bucket of the things I’ve heard lately.
I tell them all I really can’t help them beyond being a listening supporter. I have no ecclesiastical standing or authority to be involved in their situation.
But I can tell them this:
They are not alone (by a long shot)
This is what institutional collapse looks like
And it’s hard to see the big picture when you’re putting out fires every day.
It’s hard to see the system shifting when it all feels so personal.
My ministry has always been about helping people re-imagine church.
This is why so many people are calling me when things feel intolerable in their ministry. They definitely want to imagine better ways of serving God and their neighbor!
What I see is that before we get to the point of building something new, we need to see how it’s not a choice anymore.
The church of the mid-20th century is not working now that we are well into the 21st.
And the fires we’re putting out - that feel like unique, isolated situations - are signs of the futility of doing the same thing again and again, and hoping for different results.
This is how I decided that I can be helpful to those who have reached out to me - about issues in their church or denomination, or for re-imagination guidance.
I’m starting a series of workshops - the first one is August 12 - about the fundamentals of Free Range Priest ministry.
The first one is taking a good look at how systematic, institutional changes have brought us to the place where change is no longer an option.
The other three are:
Sustainable Part-Time Ministry - August 26
How to Be a Free Range Priest - September 9
Holy Tech: Building the (Ancient) Future of Church - September 23
But it all starts with seeing the places we are stuck - and how we use those pain parts to start building something new.
So I invite you to join me:
Unstuck church: How Systematic Change Is Pushing Us into the Future
August 12, 2025 5:-7:30pm Eastern (online; yes there will be a recording)
Why join us: Discover how the decline of 20th century institutions is our invitation to re-imagine ministry.
Big Promise:
You’ll leave with a clear understanding of the systematic changes that are causing institutional collapse and how to move from trying to stop this (you can't!), to using its pain points for transforming our vision of ministry.
Who it's for:
Clergy, lay leaders, and denominational staff who feel disillusioned, overburdened, or uncertain about the future of church—but still deeply called to ministry.
When you're done you will be able to:
Recognize the signs of institutional stagnation and decline as systematic issues—not problems we can solve.
Accept the death of outdated institutional systems and see this as an opportunity for ministry transformation.
Grow in courage and vision for the future of church.
Learn to discern what to bring with us and what to let go of (baby/bathwater).
We'll cover:
Why and how the institutional church system is 'stuck'.
What we would need if we were starting church from scratch today.
Why this all feels so scary.
Where the spiritual hunger is, and how we feed it.
Unstuck Church
$39 - paid Free Range Priest subscribers get 10% off.
This is part of a workshop series - register for 3 and get one free!
** It will ask for your name and email when you register. This is for my personal registration database. Your data will not be shared.
It may feel like you’re too stressed, too busy, too caught up in what your ministry looks like now to think about the big picture.
But I’m convinced that the walls we keep banging our heads against are exactly the places that God is calling us to turn around and find new paths for sharing Good News.
At the risk of over posting, something brief. In the last 42 years of ordained ministry, I have gotten caught a few times in the church bureaucratic machinery, and in different church bodies. I should add I am a non-stipendiary priest, always serving alongside a "day job" of university teaching. None of the incidents involved any infraction on my part that deserved punishment. For the most part it was either breakdown of diocesan process or being on the wrong side of a personality in power. Nevertheless, when months go by with no action, when the rules are being used for other purposes, it has been painful for me to fit this with the Gospel, with the work of Jesus of Nazareth. But the church institutional structure's no different than the university or government or corporations--full of humans who sometimes behave badly or ineptly.
That some of this machinery becomes an end in itself, thinks it knows better than people and parish priests, is blindly clinging to process in the face of change--here's where we have real dilemmas, as you suggest.
At the bottom, Christ remains, and Christ's body.
Spot on essay. A colleague friend who works in demographics says that mainline churches are facing massive losses in membership due to the old age of our members. And, as they die off, the churches lose their most generous donors. There’s no time like the present to explore change in our models of church.