Towards Sustainable Church Renewal: Fostering a Local Culture of Reflexivity within Churches in the Netherlands

    Activity: Talk or presentation typesOral presentationAcademic

    Description

    In this contribution we study ten churches in the Netherlands that are engaged in a process of transformative congregational change. All these churches have com-mitted themselves to a two-year change-trajectory instigated by the church renewal initiative Church2030. Within this two-year period, they are encouraged to communally reflect upon their own local church practices and come up with several exercises that will inspire congregational renewal in their own local context. In this paper we discuss the ten documents of these churches that contain their strategy for change. These documents also contain transcripts of the coaching sessions that we have had with the representative leadership teams of these churches. In these sessions the bottom-up character of bringing about change, and the need to involve young members of the congregation (20–30-year-old) are discussed. In all, these churches are asked to build a local culture of reflexivity in which they constantly review and renew their own church practices to make them fit for experiences of salvation and warrant sustainable church renewal.
    Period17 Sept 2023
    Event titleEcclesiology and Ethnography Conference Durham 2023
    Event typeConference
    LocationDurham, United KingdomShow on map