The church’s challenges are global: four lessons I learned in New Zealand

Secularizing societies. Weakening churches. Ideological divisions. Harried pastors. Comparing the Christian situation in the US and New Zealand.

Waving New Zealand and American flags of the political map of the world.
Waving New Zealand and American flags of the political map of the world.

Waving New Zealand and American flags of the political map of the world.

Secularizing societies. Weakening churches. Ideological divisions. Harried pastors. Faithful efforts amid hard challenges.

It is amazing to travel 8000 miles and discover that the challenges facing Christianity in one place are pretty similar to the challenges back home. That is pretty much what I found during two weeks of lectures and sermons across New Zealand.


Here are four overlapping challenges in New Zealand and the US, based on my very preliminary observations:

1) Our countries are becoming more secular.

Steadily shrinking percentages of the people in both New Zealand and the US claim Christian commitment. The religious ‘nones’ are rising in numbers. Cultural voices feel free to poke fun at Christianity and Christian vestiges in the public square. Nothing that the churches seem to try makes much of a difference in any of the above.

Christian voices in the public square appear overall to be stronger here than in New Zealand. I met several fine thinkers and activists who are attempting to revive a thoughtful Christian public voice in New Zealand. They have the potential to change the landscape. But the general sense is that public discourse hums along in the land of the Kiwis without a significant Christian presence. Earlier denominational efforts to fund public-issues research or public-affairs officers seem largely to have been abandoned. The situation is not as far gone here, yet, but trend lines are similar. Of course, the Kiwis benefit from having fewer unconstructive Christian voices speaking in the name of Christ.

2) Our churches are suffering from thinning understandings of the meaning of commitment.

 When I first became a “born-again” Christian in the 1970s, the expectation and practice was that we would be in church three times a week – Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night — along with the weekly tithe of 10% of income to the church. But both in New Zealand and here, high commitment these days looks more like one to two visits a month, and giving is more irregular among many.

I would really like to know two things: whether this thinning of the understanding of Christian commitment is happening in other countries as well, and whether the same thing is occurring in other voluntary organizations.

3) Our denominations and congregations are affected by politicized ideological and moral divisions.

Left/right polarization on today’s sex-related social issues looks pretty similar in New Zealand churches to what it looks like here. I walked into Christian churches having the same difficult discussions on LGBT issues as we are having right here – often in the same terms, and reading the same books. Some of these differences are contributing both to internal conflicts and difficulty in mustering a public voice.

I should hasten to add that politics in New Zealand overall falls far to our left. New Zealand is much more like a European liberal social democracy. It is much more “green,” much more peacemaking-oriented, than our society. This extends to most Christians as well. I was also deeply impressed by New Zealand’s efforts to build a genuinely bicultural society in relation to its indigenous Maori population — and, now, a genuinely multicultural society related to other immigrants.  

4) Our pastors struggle to meet the challenges of the era.

I met some very fine pastors in New Zealand. The country has a strong tradition of theological education at bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels. An educated clergy appears to be broadly appreciated, at least in the churches I visited.


But pastors there and here face an uphill battle. They do everything they can and still numbers decline. They start contemporary services for younger folks while retaining traditional services for the Boomer set – in a sense working twice as hard for half the result they used to see. They try to shepherd flocks that are hard to get a grasp on because it’s a different congregation every week. They have to navigate theological, ethical, and political landmines, any of which can blow up already vulnerable congregations.

There is much to admire in these shepherds, and in so many of their congregations. Their faithfulness in pursuing their work with integrity is admirable. But there is also much to puzzle over, as across the miles, Christianity in New Zealand, the US, and elsewhere struggles with such profound challenges.

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