10 in 10

 Globalization is at the heart of many of these 2010 church trends.  When we look at the changes that are coming to the church, most of them revolve around the idea that people in general are moving away from local, centralized services and towards distributed networks.  Globalization affects our communication and the production of goods, and it will be affecting the church as well.

These 2010 church trends are changing the way that churches operate. This will be a year when people start to slow down in their desire for service projects and that type of community volunteering.  There has been an increasing involvement in reaching out to the people around us through community service, but we are reaching a turning point where people are losing interest.  This year we are going to start seeing churches trending away from this type of interaction.

Another sign of the declining loyalty to a single local church will be the increasing prevalence of crowdsourcing spirituality in the church.  If you are unfamiliar with crowdsourcing, it is the process of putting a problem before many sources (a crowd) to find a good solution.

 2010 will see more ministries fall by the wayside for lack of volunteers.  Of course, there are always a set of programs in churches that only hang on because a few people want to keep running them, but this will be the year where we see more of these start failing.

 Churches need leaders.  I think that anyone in church leadership will agree with that (if only to justify their own position), but the challenge has been to get leaders involved on the right level.  As churches are moving to more, smaller groups, many struggle with what leadership will look like.

 2008 and 2009 were years when the poor economy was a top issue. 2010 will be the year when people really see the light at the end of the tunnel and economic rebound starts to affect the church.

There are two main reasons why this year will bring economic rebound; fatigue and recovery.  People are ready and willing to get back to their "old lives" when things were good, and we are likely to start seeing that happen, or at least people acting like it is happening.

 2010 will see churches internalizing pluralism.  What I mean is that, more than ever, people will be attending churches that they disagree with doctrinally.  I have already discussed the changing role of membership in the church and I think that this intra-church pluralism correlates to that movement.  While pluralism has negative connotations, I believe this movement can be value neutral for the church.

2010 will be a swing year when the church starts to really understand the difference between belonging and membership.  The seeds are already planted for new growth in belonging focused ministry in the local church; small group ministry, for instance, is becoming a more important element of churches at all sizes.

Ask any old fashioned science fiction writer and they will tell you that 2010 is the future.  This was supposed to be the time of flying cars and moon colonies.  Of course, not everything the sci-fi guys predicted came true but this is still a time where people are growing less tolerant of old tech.

If your church still doesn't have a website, this is probably a good time to get one.  Actually, 1998 was a good time to get one, but you've already missed that bus.  More and more people are going to expect better technology at their churches.  

 2010 will be the year when community goes mainstream.  Now, you may be thinking that already happened with sites like Facebook and LinkedIn but it didn't.  What we have seen the last couple years is social networking taking the place of community.  This year more and more people are going to be saying that they don't want updates from Facebook "friends," they want face time with real friends.

With the new year upon us, this is a good time to look at where the momentum is in churches across the country.  This series shows my guesses for the top ten 2010 church trends.

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