The Complexity of Simplicity
The trend toward simpler living is taxing the church.
Bob and Linda Jones and their three kids once lived in an upscale neighborhood with two cars, large-screen tv, health club membership, two mortgages, and lots of credit card debt. They felt empty, stressed out. Then they read Your Money or Your Life. They paid off their credit cards and traded in both cars for one with a lower car payment. Bob cut his work hours, and Linda quit working outside the home. She is now home-schooling their children.
It’s the simplicity trend. It’s huge. It may well affect how you approach ministry.
Downshifting for control
The Joneses are part of a growing group of middle-class Americans voluntarily choosing a simpler life. Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute, predicts that by the year 2000, about 15 percent of baby boomers will embrace this lifestyle. He anticipates “a revolution of anti-materialism”; simplicity will be incorporated into all elements of society.
Both boomers and busters seem to be riding this trend, but for different reasons. Gary Preston, pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Boulder, Colorado, finds that in his church “baby boomers are really wrestling with those issues,” and the busters have already answered them.
Celente thinks boomers are making a voluntary choice toward a simpler lifestyle while busters are being forced into it. “They don’t have the career opportunities the boomers had,” he says. “Theirs is an ‘involuntary voluntary’ simplicity.”
The result is “downshifting,” a strategy of setting career limits to gain more control over family, money, time, and clutter. According to a survey conducted by Robert Half International, Inc., working parents are willing to cut their pay and hours by as much as 21 percent to spend more time with their families; 76 percent would also forfeit career advancement for more family or personal time.
The simplicity trend has almost become its own religion.
Family choir
Many searching for the simpler life are turning to the church for peace and community. Joe Boyd, associate pastor of Canyon Ridge Christian Church in Las Vegas, Nevada, says people seem to be “more relationally conscious; they want community.” Some people are growing averse to programs; they want to control their time, to be able to spend it with their families. Some just want to “hang out.”
As a result, The Church by the Side of the Road in Seattle, Washington, pastored by Dennis Sawyer, has begun to reorganize. The church has opened the choir to all ages so mothers, fathers, and children can spend time together at choir practice. The church has also ungraded its Sunday school to allow for families to be together (though the church still offers age-graded classes).
The hunger for simplicity challenges the church in the areas of money and volunteerism. Some churches are forced to adopt bare-bones budgets as families take lower incomes. Sawyer is finding few people who want to spend the time to head up anything. He has also found that “people are willing to give [financially] to be released from the responsibility.”
Nancy Graves, list coordinator for home study groups at Calvary Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, has discovered members are opting to attend only one service a week. “The days of expecting families to attend three services are over,” agrees Sawyer.
Simple religion
For churches, one key to riding this trend is allowing for options, which paradoxically, means more complexity for the church. Many churches are adding services on Saturday nights and making use of home study groups.
Sawyer’s church has someone to answer phones from early in the morning until 10 p.m. six nights a week. It also has home study groups occurring simultaneously with Sunday evening services. Calvary Baptist in Houston initiated “rest nights”: one night a month the church cancels its Sunday evening or midweek service to encourage family time.
Above all, these churches agree with this simple rule: People are more important than programs. That’s the new simplicity.
-Ginger E. McFarland Editorial coordinator, Leadership
1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
