10 unexpected church trends to surface by 2020

A Church leader once said he didn’t have a vision beyond the next 12 months.

His point was that everything changes rapidly, and no one knows the future. So why plan beyond what you do not know for certain?

In looking far into the future, he believed leaders wasted too much time on fruitless thinking in which attainable goals are never achieved.

He had a point.

Much time, brain energy, printed paper and blogosphere megabytes have been wasted on fruitless plans for an uncertain future. Despite the downsides of wasted time and premature predictions, I believe the best leaders risk being wrong for the sake of a better understanding of where we might end up; that’s part of what makes a leader.

Leaders move followers toward something – goals off in the distance and in the future. Allow me to risk being doubly wrong – sharing with you not only 10 church trends for the next 10 years, but ones that may be unexpected to some. I believe these trends are critical for leaders to know as they lead their churches to advance God’s kingdom in the coming decade.

The identified trends are:

  1. The heterogeneous church explodes
  2. Church attendance continues to decline
  3. The conservative drift draws more
  4. Deep teaching gets more popular
  5. Boomer ministries boom
  6. Ministries to families grow
  7. Staff positions evolve
  8. The importance of the church building is renewed
  9. Charismatic leadership becomes less prevalent
  10. Growth in video-venues slows down

Continue reading 10 unexpected church trends to surface by 2020

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