Taking on Water & Building Lifeboats

I’ve been wrestling lately with what it means to be a United Methodist pastor in the twenty-first century. If you look around our connection, the reality is hard to ignore: many of our churches are dying. Some are slowly fading, others are maintaining the status quo—which is really just a polite way of naming a kind of death. And yet, in the face of this reality, our institutional machinery often hums along because that is what we demand lest we stir panic from institutional disruption. We hold meetings, pass resolutions, and roll out new programs that feel eerily like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic while the ship sinks beneath us.

That image may sound harsh, but please know that I don’t intend it as scorn. It’s lament. It’s grief. And beneath it is a longing: surely God has something more for us than managing decline. Surely the Spirit is not finished with the church.

The Illusion of Safety at the Center

One of the classic studies in innovation was Everett Rogers’ research, and he included a case study from the 1940s on hybrid corn adoption in Iowa. The findings of this study were fascinating: the larger farms were the ones that first experimented with hybrid seed, while smaller farms held back.

Why? Larger farms had the margin to take risks, the cushion to absorb potential losses. Smaller farms, pressed to survive season by season, couldn’t afford to gamble.

That story resonates with the church. Larger congregations, often flush with staff and budgets, are assumed to be the “labs” for innovation and hosts for conferences that can be more like a sugar high than a transformative leadership experience. The rest of us are told to watch, learn, and mimic. Innovation, in this way of thinking, is a luxury good—something reserved for those who already have “enough.”

But here’s the paradox: while the center of any institution is busy preserving itself, innovation almost always comes from the margins. That’s true in business, in social movements, and certainly in the story of God’s people. Prophets rarely showed up in the temple boardroom. Jesus did not emerge from the Sanhedrin. The Spirit blows in surprising places, often among those who have little left to lose.

Rearranging the Deck Chairs

The temptation of the institutional center is to preserve what it knows and what it has. And so, we tweak structures, launch new campaigns, and adjust language—but all in service of keeping the existing ship afloat. Trust me, I have been chief among those in this camp.  It’s how we are steeped. These efforts can feel important, even heroic, but they rarely touch the deeper issue: we are clinging to a form of church that may no longer serve the mission of Jesus in our world.

Rearranging deck chairs may keep us busy, but it won’t keep us afloat. The real question is not how to polish the brass but how to build lifeboats.

Lifeboats of Innovation

What do I mean by lifeboats? They are small, nimble, relational, Spirit-driven communities of faith that carry the mission of Jesus forward even as larger structures struggle. They are not bound by institutional survival but freed to imagine what faithfulness looks like in real neighborhoods, among real people, with real needs.  These lifeboats cannot be developed by and tethered to the institution; otherwise, they will never be able to float on their own because they will be held back or dragged under when the big ship begins sinking.

Lifeboats might look like:

• A handful of people gathering in a coffee shop to read Scripture, pray, and share life.

• A congregation partnering with a local school, not to boost Sunday attendance but to meet tangible needs.

• Youth gathering around Alpha or another forum where questions can be asked without judgment.

• Families serving alongside their neighbors in projects that make visible the love of Christ.

And more importantly, they reproduce! This is something that the institutional church that I have learned in is not super excited about actually doing.  This past year at our area denominational gathering, several wonderful areas of emphasis were shared on the screen with hundreds of church leaders and representatives.  As they were shared, one at a time, people cheered and clapped-particularly for the ones that were social justice or mental health related (which are important, hence them being a priority).  However, when it came to the area of focus on professions of faith (a disciple’s role to invite others to accept Jesus’ call to follow him), the room filled with hundreds of people…fell silent. I am not sure who noticed it, but a couple of people did.

As an institution, we can leverage our collective voice on those exciting issues with little personal investment, but it takes faithful, devoted followers of Jesus to make very personal investments to lead someone into a true Christian life (and if we are honest, all of the other priorities need very personal investments as well).  Without making new disciples, we have no shot at healing our world of ills, injustices, and wrongs, because our "cause" dies with us (until God raises up a new people).

We need lifeboats that are the fruit of deep personal investment in helping people know and follow Jesus—then repeat with a new person.  These lifeboats don’t always make headlines. They may never appear in denominational reports. But they carry the seed of something regenerative, something that looks like the kingdom of God breaking in.

From Industrial to Regenerative

For too long, we have borrowed the industrial model of church: build bigger barns, produce more output, measure success by size and scale. That model worked for a while, just as industrial agriculture once promised endless yield. But the soil is depleted. The fruit is thin. Maintenance has become our highest goal.

What if, instead, we took our cues from regenerative farmers? Their focus is not on squeezing out maximum yield for one season, but on renewing the soil so that life flourishes for generations. They plant diverse crops, they rotate herds, and they trust the slow processes of nature to restore balance.

In the same way, the future of the church is not about sustaining an old industrial model. It is about regeneration—renewing discipleship, deepening community, trusting the Spirit to create life in unexpected places.

Hope on the Margins

Here’s the good news: God has always done new things from the margins. When Israel was in exile, prophets reminded them of God’s promise to do a new thing. When the disciples were huddled in fear, the risen Jesus breathed peace and sent them out. When the early church was scattered by persecution, the gospel spread like wildfire across the Roman world.

Innovation is not a luxury. It is the Spirit’s gift to those who are desperate enough to listen. It does not require large budgets or big buildings. It requires courage, humility, and a willingness to risk for the sake of the kingdom.

A Provocative Hope

So yes, the ship is sinking. But maybe that’s not the end of the story. Maybe God is teaching us how to build lifeboats. Maybe the decline of one form of church is making space for a resurrection we can scarcely imagine.

Our task, then, is not to polish what is fading but to nurture what is emerging. To listen on the margins. To notice where the Spirit is stirring. To be brave enough to climb into the lifeboats, even when the Titanic feels safer for now.

The future of the church will not be found in maintaining what we have always known. It will be found in small acts of courage, humble communities of faith, and regenerative practices of discipleship. And that is good news—because resurrection has always come from a tomb, never from a throne room.

Let's start building lifeboats.