What Is God Up To In My Church?

By Hannah Stevens

How do you feel about the world and the Church today? What is the future of the Church? As Christians, theologians, and ministry leaders, we wrestle with these questions late into the night. We want to be faithful stewards of this era in the Church’s history. We want to anticipate the current and future needs of our congregations. We want to be relevant in a world that has lost hope in institutions and is longing for peace.  

Many of us feel the weight of this calling, and as is typical of our self-reliant nature, we push onward. If we just try hard enough, surely we’ll find the right way forward. Of course, if we begin with us, we likely will miss the plot. We can’t forget the starting point must always be, “What is God up to in and through the Church?” 

More specifically, we must ask “What is God up to in my church?” In the frenetic pace of our world, it is difficult to slow ourselves down and sit with this question. But how can we expect to lead congregations without it? And what will happen if we are attentive to it?

Through our work with Churches in Mission, we have had the opportunity to bear witness to several churches attempting to do just this. 

Meet the Reformed Church of Highland Park in New Jersey. This church operates three nonprofits that directly support and care for their neighbors through job services, employment placement, affordable housing, ESL classes, legal services, and food access. 

What was their strategic plan to get there? Prayer. 

Everything they do traces back to their worship life and their commitment to taking the prayers of their people seriously. They don’t ask what everyone else needs to do. Every week, they slow down to ask, “What is God putting on our hearts? What does God want to do through us today?”

Then there is Mercy Road Church in Redford, Michigan, which is doubling down on a similar commitment. They are a congregation of fewer than a hundred people with a high rate of active participation from congregants. They have lamented how their size prevents them from having a youth group, or at least a youth group the way a larger church would. Through coaching with Churches in Mission, they started to reframe their lament into questions: “What are the things Mercy Road can do that a big church can’t? Or, what might God be calling us to do?” 

Something clicked for the team as they began to articulate what it’s like to be part of their congregation, how they feel seen, connected, and valued. As they wondered what it would look like to extend this culture of welcome to the youth in their congregation, they realized they can lean into their strengths by investing on a personal level in every child and teenager at their church. They have also brought this value into the way they worship together by inviting youth in the congregation to lead from the front, to participate in reading Scripture, and to lead the congregation in prayer. Their future will be shaped by how God is moving through them, young and old together, paying attention to where God will lead next.

Over the past five years, the Churches in Mission process has journeyed with congregational teams who are paying attention to their congregation, and neighborhood, and asking how God is moving among both. As we look ahead to the next season of this initiative, we invite you to ask the same question: “What is God able to do through my church?” To learn more and get involved, join our email list on our website: westernsem/lifelong-formation/m.edu