Why the Church Needs A Better Story Even More Than It Needs a Social Media Strategy

The church in its current form is dying. There, I said it. No sense trying to deny it. Attendance at churches of almost every denomination in the United States is in rapid decline. Nearly a quarter of the adult population of the U.S. do not affiliate with any religious tradition. And that number is quickly rising, as 40% of kids leave behind the religious tradition of their families when they head off to college or career.     

But I don’t need to review the data for you. Anyone invested, for one reason or another, in the continued life of the church feels it in their bones. We see the empty pews. We sense people making the mental stretches necessary to convince themselves that what’s going on on Sunday morning is still connected in some real way to the rest of their lives. We feel ourselves stretching, too.  

Don’t get your hopes up. I’m not here to tell you the next new strategy to bring your church back to from the dead. Lord knows we have enough of those. I’m a church guy, so in the last decade or so that I’ve spent on the staff of churches from various mainline denominations, I’ve witnessed every strategy in the book to try to turn this ship around. About the turn of the century, it seems, we all simultaneously realized that the cool vibes of late 90s worship bands and denim clad preachers with soul patches wasn’t going to be enough. We turned instead to “data-driven strategic planning,” “organic leadership structures,” and “pub church.” The last church I served, a mid-sized suburban Lutheran congregation peopled mostly with empty-nesters, had become jaded even by these cutting-edge new church growth tactics and hung its hopes instead on a good old fashioned phone tree aimed at rekindling relationships with anyone who had left the parish for one reason or another over the last twenty years. It might have worked too, but we forgot to account for the fact that in 2019 nobody answers their phone anymore.

I’m not being cynical. Really, I’m not. Even if the campaign promises have mostly turned up empty, I have benefited personally from the church growth zeitgeist. I’m all but guaranteed church employment by my demographic information alone. I’m a millennial (just by the skin of my teeth) with three kids. That’s like the holy grail for church growth strategists. I wouldn’t be surprised if some particularly tech savvy pastors get push notifications from the local bistro every time someone orders both the avocado toast and Cheerios. And if I come with the promise of bagging a few more unicorns like myself—jackpot!  

But I do wonder if we haven’t been coming at this problem the wrong way. Remember the Sirens from Greek mythology? They lured unsuspecting sailors into the rocky coasts of their island by the captivating beauty of their song. Few heard the Sirens’ call and lived to tell about it. But at least two heroes did find a way past the peril. Odysseus, wanting desperately to hear the enchanting melody, ordered his crew to fill their ears with beeswax. It worked. The wax drowned out the stimuli so that Odysseus’ crew could focus on the task of keeping their captain tied to the mast of the ship, his own ears unprotected. But in the Argonautica, Orpheus took at different tack: When Jason’s ship passed the Sirens’ island, Orpheus took out his lyre and began to play a ballad. Of course Orpheus’ bar tune was no match for the harmonic majesty of the Sirens, but he did have one thing going for him: he told a better story. Jason and his crew were too enthralled to pay the Sirens any mind.   

The church is essentially just a community of people who have been entrusted with the story of God’s interaction with the world. And it’s a damn good story, too—about creativity and tragedy, friendship and betrayal, love and loss, politics, conspiracy, assassination, and redemption. What if, instead of trying to drown out the competition with comfier chairs, cooler leadership structures, fancier social media strategies, and better coffee or beer, we just got really good at telling our story? What if instead of throwing down thousands of dollars on strategic planners or social media workshops, churches hired theologians to help them think through the complexities of retelling the story of God and the world in the 21st century? (Okay, full disclosure time: I’m a church guy with control of a church budget, trying to make it as a popular theologian. But c’mon, you already knew that, you’ve looked at our about page. Haven’t you!?) What if we had honest conversations about the way our story challenges our current political structures? Or how the story itself is challenged by modern science, pluralism, and the pervasiveness of religiously sanctioned injustice?

Look, I’m not suggesting better theology would solve all the church’s problems. Or even that a well-crafted social media strategy wouldn’t. I’m in no position to make that kind of prediction. I’m just saying, not many people pass the Sirens’ island and live to sail another day. So if this is our last night, wouldn’t you like to hear a good story? And who knows? Maybe it will capture our attention just enough to do the trick.

-Joseph Smith