“We Tried That, Didn’t Work”

What a Fool Believes - Part 7

“We tried that, and it didn’t work.” As I travel around making Fresh Expressions mischief across the U.S., I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of this statement. If you’ve ever attempted something creative or outside the box in church life, chances are you’ve heard it too.

To be fully transparent, I have a blind spot here. My wife and I have been cultivating Fresh Expressions for 17 years. We’ve led three congregations that were on the verge of closure through revitalization processes, and we’re currently planting a new blended ecology church. We know this works. We’ve seen God show up again and again.

Still, I want to take a step back and explore why some feel these experiments are no longer worth the effort. And more importantly how we might move the needle toward passional innovation in an environment shaped by that kind of skepticism.

A Double-Minded Church

In the last article, I explored the social construction of reality, and how people inhabiting different plausibility structures experience two polarized versions of reality, a kind of… “War of the Worlds.”

Similar dualism exists within the church.

To oversimplify: there’s the inherited church mindset, an institutional iteration formed in the managerial era. This refers to the period in the 20th century when large corporations, rose to prominence through centralized, hierarchical structures built around efficiency, control, and professional management. Protestant denominations in the U.S. adopted this organizational model, thriving for a season as the values of bureaucratic rationality, professionalization, and institutional authority aligned with cultural expectations.

This mental model became the dominant ecclesial framework, shaping everything from clergy roles to metrics of success. Churches became structured like corporations, with pastors functioning as middle managers and laity as passive consumers. But the cultural conditions that once supported this model have shifted. We now live in a network society (Castells, 2009), defined by decentralization, fluidity, and relational connectivity.

Then there’s a fresh mindset, what some call the “missional” or “emerging” church. While it may seem novel, I’ve gone to great lengths to show that Fresh Expressions are not new. They are an ancient stream of Christianity, one that predates Christendom. They emerge from the same vine as Antioch springing from Jerusalem, Celtic Christianity alongside Rome, Catholic orders, the Beguines, the Reformers, early Methodists renewing Anglicanism, Base Ecclesial Communities in Latin America, and the list goes on (see An Ecumenical Field Guide to Fresh Expressions).

Ardelt and Sharma (2021) note that unwise organizations are marked by rigid rules, hierarchical control, and an overemphasis on predictability, efficiency, and measurable outcomes. These systems chase certainty and causality, relying on superficial collaboration and reward mechanisms to drive performance. But when real change is needed, these structures falter. They lack flexibility, moral grounding, and compassionate culture. They suppress creativity, resist uncertainty, and ignore the relational and ethical dimensions that make work meaningful, ultimately failing to cultivate the wisdom necessary for long-term resilience and human flourishing.

James describes our dualistic condition as “double-minded,” which, he warns, leads to instability in every way (James 1:8).

In Rooted in the Wild, I argue the original structure of the church wasn’t a binary, it was a blended ecology: Temple and Table. Jerusalem and Antioch. Stationary and sent. Field preaching and organized societies.

But the hierarchical structures of the managerial age have so thoroughly defined what “church” means that anything outside that mold, like Fresh Expressions, feels weird, extra, or even threatening.

The Shadowlike Phantasmata

To understand why movements like Fresh Expressions can feel so foreign, we need to consider the process of socialization. Socialization is an internal learning process through which individuals are initiated into the meanings, practices, and expectations of a culture or organization. As sociologist Peter Berger explains, the individual doesn’t just learn the objective meanings, they come to identify with them. The meanings become personal. We embody them. We express them (The Sacred Canopy, 16).

When it comes to denominational life, we’ve been deeply socialized into a particular organizational framework: its structures, assumptions, values, language, and, yes… its metrics.

One of the greatest challenges with our current metric system is that it has normalized only one legitimate expression of church: the inherited, attractional, Sunday-centered model. New forms of church, for new people, in new places, and new ways, are not just swimming upstream… they’re resisting something embedded far deeper than most of us realize.

Berger is worth quoting at length here:

“The individual may dream up any number of, say, institutional arrangements that might well be more interesting, perhaps even more functional, than the institutions actually recognized in his culture. As long as these sociological dreams, so to speak, are confined to the individual’s own consciousness and are not recognized by others as at least empirical possibilities, they will exist only as shadowlike phantasmata” (The Sacred Canopy, 13).

For many deeply ingrained in the institutional church, Fresh Expressions remains exactly that… a shadowlike phantasmata. A dream. A curiosity. Something “not sustainable” in any recognizable organizational sense.

The Wrong Motivation

So when someone says, “We tried that, and it didn’t work,” what they often mean is: it didn’t result in butts and bucks. We didn’t see increased attendance, higher tithes, or more people becoming members. Why? Because we’ve been socialized to believe these are the true indicators of success.

But this critique fails to account for the profound social transformations we’re living through: the decline of membership culture, the rise of religious disaffiliation, and a growing spiritual hunger that no longer fits inside conventional containers.

Fresh Expressions were never designed to produce those traditional outputs. Our current indicator systems simply don’t know how to measure the kind of vitality that emerges through this ancient-yet-new way of being church. Fresh Expressions exist to reach people who will likely never engage the church as it’s currently structured.

In truth, it didn’t “work” because we were measuring the wrong things and often starting with the wrong motivation.

That’s why, in every training we offer, we spend significant time grounding the motivation in the compassion of Jesus.

Our “why” is simple: There are millions of people—each of sacred worth—who may never experience the beauty of Christian community unless we go to them. Unless we see them. Love them. Join them. And form church with them.

Socialization, but Different

This is why I’ve been so passionate about metrics reform for over a decade.

Let me get autobiographical for a moment.

For me, Fresh Expressions have never felt strange or “extra.” After being dragged to St. Marks UMC in Ocala, Florida, by my grandparents as a child, I caught a glimpse of the gift of communal life. But not long after, I took a detour that led me far from the church.

I grew up on the streets. Dropped out in the ninth grade. While other youth went to summer church camp, I was riding the Grey Goose to juvenile detention and eventually to institutions for youthful offenders.

I don’t come from a legacy family in my Annual Conference. I have no connection to generational nepotism. When fellow clergy talk about “building their résumé” through church appointments or climbing the denominational ladder, it feels foreign to me.

Ministry was never a career path. It has always been a sacred vocation, one that began with my formation in the spiritual orphanage that was my local church.

My particular calling is not to serve as an institutional chaplain, minding the company store. My socialization process was different, but not unique. There are many like me. And we love our ecclesial mothers no less. For me, the UMC is the only spiritual home I’ve ever known.

Out of Control

At 19, Jesus intervened in my life, disrupting the criminal enterprise I was running and turning my world right-side-up. I went back to St. Marks and stood up one Sunday to share my testimony. Many in that congregation had been praying for me since I was a little boy.

Soon after, I became the youth pastor.

The church had no youth or children, so I returned to the streets, to the trap houses where I once sold dope, and started recruiting. We bused in kids from the nearby projects. And something beautiful happened: a movement of young people began following Jesus.

But that movement sparked anxiety among some in the inherited church, and especially the senior pastor. These kids were unchurched. They cussed. Some had criminal records. Many were in interracial relationships (which was controversial for this all-white congregation). Some were queer. They filled the church with noise and laughter, slinging open doors and playing in the hallways.

Eventually, we were relegated to a small outbuilding tucked behind the main property. Leadership labeled the whole thing “out of control.”

I was young and reactive. I didn’t handle it well. And the movement collapsed under the weight of institutional resistance.

But that moment taught me something profound about my denomination: its deep attachment to control. And by control, I don’t mean Spirit-led, I mean predictability, manageability, domestication. No risk.

The Wrong Yardstick

After a four-year relapse that took me deeper into darkness than ever before, I returned to the church as an assistant pastor, this time a little more humble. We launched Christ-Powered Recovery (CPR), converting parts of our church into permanent spaces for the recovery community. We welcomed people navigating poverty, addiction, and injustice. We didn’t have language for it at the time, but looking back, it was a fresh expression of church.

Jill and I went on to serve other churches in our district for 13 years. But in the middle of the pandemic, we were sent back to St. Marks, this time as the appointed clergy. God just wouldn’t let us walk away from this little congregation.

By current denominational metrics, there’s nothing particularly “vital” about our church. Sunday numbers are modest. Most of our people don’t attend the inherited church. Many may never become “members.” They give what they can, often a dollar or two. And that’s a huge discipleship step. But it doesn’t fund the machine.

So we’ve had to get entrepreneurial. Open Arms Village, a holistic sober-living program, now operates within our facility. As its own 501(c)(3), it can access grants and conduct fundraising, and in turn, it helps financially sustain the ministry of St. Marks. We turned the parsonage into a step-up house, converted the pastor’s office into a counseling center, and host dozens of community groups renting space each week. Through this diversity of income streams, we’ve become financially sustainable, and we even pay 100% of our apportionments (the institutional dues that support the broader church).

Our church has no paid staff. Jill and I are appointed quarter-time. The church is completely run by volunteers. Teams of laity preach, shepherd, distribute food, host community dinners, and start fresh expressions.

By old indicator paradigms, we are not “vital.” But we also know we are being measured with the wrong yardstick.

Making Our Own Yardsticks

But by other measures, we are thriving.

We have dozens of people meeting in these faith communities who have no history of church or have experienced traumatic encounters with Christians.

Jill and I both work multiple jobs outside the church, denominational, educational, and entrepreneurial, so the congregation doesn’t have to carry our salary. Like Paul the tentmaker. Like Wesley the author and resource-creator. We can help fund the ministry rather than expect the ministry to fund us.

That gives me a kind of freedom many pastors don’t have. I can speak truth in our current sociopolitical moment. I can personally support ministries that seek to be the healing hands of Jesus amid the rising tide of Trumpism and Christian Nationalism.

Let’s be honest: some congregations have long served as bastions of racism, heterosexism, patriarchy, and American exceptionalism. When ministers move from “preaching to meddling,” some congregants vote with their feet, and their checkbooks, crippling justice-oriented work.

I’ve watched people I love, people I baptized, visited in hospitals and rehabs… walk out of worship mid-sermon because I was “getting political.” All I did was call us to be people of compassion, justice, and inclusion, whose primary allegiance is to King Jesus.

I don’t want them to leave. It hurts. But I won’t chase them.

My job is not to appease the 99 folks playing church musical chairs. My calling is to follow the Good Shepherd in search of the lost one (Luke 15).

The kind of church where metrics crush the Spirit and silence the prophets? That doesn’t work for me. So, we make our own yardsticks, yardsticks that measure what contextual vitality actually looks like for us.

In the current sociopolitical environment, we’ve come to realize that for us, being vital isn’t about being big. It’s about being faithful, even if that means being small.

I realize none of this earns me a big fan club among my more institutionally minded colleagues.

Throughout history, those who have tried to “reform from within” have often been exiled by the very ecclesial bodies they sought to renew. And if, one day, my own efforts lead to expulsion from the denomination I love, I’ll accept that.

Even so, I was baptized a Methodist. And I’ll be buried one. Whatever shape that may require.

And if you feel these same inner stirrings, if something in you longs for a church that is more courageous, more compassionate, more free, know this… you are not alone.

Wise Expressions?

So… does it work?

Let’s run Fresh Expressions through the Three-Dimensional Wisdom lens we’ve explored throughout this series:

1. Cognitive – Do we understand what’s really happening in church decline, cultural shifts, and plausibility structures? Are we willing to adapt to the realities of a post-Christendom world?

2. Reflective – Have we examined our assumptions, interrogated our motivations, and questioned the inherited measurements which shape our definitions of success?

3. Compassionate – Are we moved by the suffering of others enough to leave the 99, enter unfamiliar spaces, and love people in their everyday spaces and rhythms of life?

Fresh Expressions is a wise way of being church because it embodies all three dimensions.

It aligns with the deep logic of love at the heart of the gospel and responds with discernment to the demands of our cultural moment. It doesn’t cling to inherited forms out of nostalgia. Instead, it adopts a flexible, listening posture… embodying Christ’s presence in real-life, real-time spaces where people actually live, work, and gather. It gifts the denominations we love with new yardsticks, measures that reflect what faithfulness and vitality truly look like in this century.

Organizational wisdom, as Ardelt and Sharma (2021) describe it, involves ethical grounding, openness to uncertainty, collaborative creativity, and a commitment to the greater good. Fresh Expressions nurture these capacities by decentralizing control, empowering lay ministers, embracing experimentation, and cultivating communities of belonging outside traditional frames.

In this way, Fresh Expressions becomes a living parable—an expression of the church’s ability to adapt without losing its soul. It honors tradition while remaining open to transformation. It trades managerial rigidity for spiritual responsiveness. It loves people enough to go where they are and build community with them.

It detoxes the church from our addiction to control and invites us into the vulnerable, liberating posture of being led by the Spirit.

That’s wisdom.

That’s Fresh Expressions.

And yes… it works.

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Moving the Needle: How We Begin

If you’re feeling stuck or discouraged by institutional resistance, here are some practical ways to start moving the needle:

• Reframe Metrics: Start tracking signs of spiritual vitality that reflect your context: conversations, meals shared, justice pursued, prayers prayed, stories transformed… not just attendance and income.

• Start Small, Start Local, Start Ugly: Begin with a micro-gathering. Find a third place, a café, dog park, local dive, and listen to what God might already be doing there. It doesn’t have to be pretty, just begin and see what unfolds.

• Build a Team: Don’t go it alone. Find two or three others with a heart for the margins and start discerning together. If the inherited group is opposed, go “outside the camp,” like Jesus did (Hebrews 13:13).

• Tell Stories: Share what’s happening. Celebrate small wins. Stories change minds faster than spreadsheets. Help the inherited group feel connected to the experiment, celebrate the ways their prayers, presence, gifts, service, and withness are enabling what’s happening.

• Stay Grounded in Compassion: Let love, not fear or decline, be your motivator. Remember: we’re not trying to save the institution… we’re joining what the Spirit is doing in the world.

Fresh Expressions is not a silver bullet. But it is a wise way forward, a Spirit-breathed, Jesus-shaped path that honors the past, minds the present, and points toward the future.

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Let’s continue the conversation. Share your reflections below or in the Congregational Wisdom Circle Facebook group. What metrics are you using in your church? What do you wish we were measuring instead?

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The Science of Wisdom

In this episode, Michael and Jessica sit down with Dr. Monika Ardelt, a leading wisdom scholar, for a deep dive into the science of wisdom—and why it matters now more than ever. We explore the 3D Wisdom Scale, wisdom and aging, bad theology, organizational health, and how churches can actually cultivate wisdom in a rapidly changing world. If you care about the future of the church, leadership, or just becoming a wiser human, you do not want to miss this one.

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A Fresh Expressions Classic, Reborn for a New Moment
Rooted in the Wild: Revitalizing the Church in the Blended Ecology is the updated edition of the book that helped launch a movement. With fresh insights and expanded tools, this guide to re-missioning the church is once again available… just in time to help your church grow deeper roots and wilder branches!

Available for preorder from Abingdon Press.