The Once and Future Church: Reinventing the Congregation for a New Mission Frontier (Once and Future Church Series)

by Loren B. Mead

The dependency system fostered by the Church of Christendom remains a barrier to building a church for the future. The hierarchical arrangement that grew in the institution through its life was a response to the worldview of its leaders. It was reinforced by the leaders' interpretations of history, and it facilitated responding to the missionary frontier at the edge of the Empire. These reinforcing systems contain unhealthy structures. In an earlier generation we described this as a classically Parent-Child institutional arrangement, locking the child into permanent dependence. In today's language of Twelve Step Programs we describe this as a co-dependent system. Whatever the language or image, we are pointing to the fact that the church has a culture that encourages some to take responsibility for the lives and behavior of others, with loss of authority and independence to those others. Systems that continue as Parent-Child or co-dependent systems will block the development of the kind of individual responsibility and authority that only can shape a church responsive to the new mission frontier.