Talk about (church) life and death
RIVERSIDE, CALIF. — People live and die.
So do congregations.
Heritage21 works to normalize conversations about church life cycles.
“We want to encourage and also challenge at the same time,” said Doug Peters, a longtime preacher who serves as the national ministry’s executive director. “It’s a balancing act because if you look at certain numbers, it can really sound bleak. But there are opportunities for renewal.
“We need a holy imagination, a creative imagination, to see what might be … to help stoke faith in people’s lives,” he added. “If we’re going to make a difference in the future, we must get creative.”
Jonathan Williams, left, pulpit minister for the North Oaks Church of Christ in Santa Clarita, Calif., visits with Doug Peters, executive director of Heritage21. The two talked at a seminar on “The Challenge of the Empty Church” in Mission Viejo, Calif. Williams is a Heritage21 ambassador.
The Church of Christ Foundation — a California nonprofit — supports various ministries and provides scholarships for students to pursue Christian education. The foundation joined with Heritage21 to co-sponsor two recent seminars on “The Challenge of the Empty Church.”
Two Southern California congregations — the Mission Viejo Church of Christ and the Magnolia Center Church of Christ in Riverside — hosted the back-to-back regional events.
Jesse Trice, a foundation board member, emphasized to attendees that “churches reach their life cycle … and go into their dead cycle.”
He paused for just a second.
“Don’t look at me like you don’t know what I mean,” said Trice, who has served as an elder of a Spanish-speaking Church of Christ in Whittier, a community in Los Angeles County.
“There’s no church in Sardis,” he added, referring to a congregation mentioned in the Book of Revelation. “The church at Laodicea doesn’t exist anymore. Every church has a life cycle.”
“There’s no church in Sardis. The church at Laodicea doesn’t exist anymore. Every church has a life cycle.”
A renewal ministry
Heritage21 began with a group of five Christians asking, “What does God want us to do? And what can we do to contribute to the future of Churches of Christ?” said Stan Granberg, author of the 2022 book “Empty Church: Why People Don’t Come and What To Do About It.”
The renewal ministry cites three major goals:
• “Assist and advise congregations struggling with survival to make sound, healthy decisions about their future.”
• “Assist them as needed in protecting their faithfully accumulated resources.”
• “Provide financial support to and encourage a new generation of U.S. churches and other kingdom expanding efforts.”
Granberg, a former missionary to Kenya, founded the U.S.-based Kairos Church Planting in 2005. Kairos’ executive director, Bruce Bates, is a Heritage21 partner and flew to California from Rhode Island for the seminars.
Besides Granberg, the initial group included:
• Scott Lambert, a longtime California minister and Pepperdine University chaplain who worked with Kairos before moving to Texas, where he led the Let’s Start Talking ministry before starting a faith-based nonprofit called The Conversation Group);
• Mike O’Neal, an attorney, accountant and president emeritus of Oklahoma Christian University;
• Blair Bryan, a fourth-generation Church of Christ member from North Carolina with a long tenure in commercial real estate;
• And W. Mark Wallis, a Colorado Christian with a background in real estate investment.
The founders intentionally chose the name Heritage21 out of love for the heritage of Churches of Christ — “the values that we have,” said O’Neal, who also serves as The Christian Chronicle’s board chairman — and a desire to see the fellowship thrive in the 21st century.
Blair Bryan, chairman of Heritage21, leads a prayer at a seminar on “The Challenge of the Empty Church” hosted by the Magnolia Center Church of Christ.
All the original group except Wallis still serve on Heritage21’s board, chaired by Bryan, a member of the Providence Road Church of Christ in Charlotte.
A handful of additional trustees have joined, including Robin Maynard, an attorney active for decades at the Woodbury Church of Christ in Minnesota before taking a new job last year as chief legal and compliance officer at her alma mater, Harding University in Searcy, Ark.
A misconception exists that churches go to Heritage21 to receive hospice care, Maynard said.
“It is more accurate,” O’Neal said, “to say that Heritage21 comes alongside churches to help them assess the reality of their situation and seek to be good stewards with the people and resources God has entrusted to them at this stage of congregational life.”
It’s true that Heritage21 has worked with congregations in Arizona, Arkansas, California, North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas to sell old buildings and reallocate funds to new church plants and other fellowship ministries.
But such examples don’t reflect the ministry’s full scope, Maynard noted, pointing to “so much good work done on equipping churches in terms of revival and renewal.”
As Maynard sees it, the empty church seminars plant seeds and inspire leaders to ask important questions, such as, “Are we the best stewards of all the resources in the Kingdom? How can we most effectively reach and disciple believers?”
Attendees listen to speaker Stan Granberg during a seminar on “The Challenge of the Empty Church” hosted by the Mission Viejo Church of Christ.
‘This is a service’
Since starting in 2016, Heritage21 has engaged with 124 churches and helped reinvest $4 million in church assets into kingdom work, leaders said.
Also in the Golden State, Heritage21 is a key partner in Common Call San Diego — a multimillion-dollar collaboration to revive Christ’s body in that Southern California city.
Heritage21 provides its services for free, even if some church leaders find that difficult to believe.
Attendees walk to their cars after the seminar hosted by the Magnolia Center Church of Christ in Riverside, Calif.
The ministry has helped dozens of churches secure their corporate legal status to protect members from personal liability and protect assets from misuse or takeover by people who do not share their Restoration theology.
“I did some bylaws and articles of incorporation for a tiny church in Nebraska, and I think they’re still surprised they didn’t have to pay anything,” Maynard said. Leaders think “there’s got to be a catch. But no, there’s no catch. This is a ministry. This is a service. This is what we want to do to help in the kingdom.”
Heritage21 founding board member Scott Lambert speaks at a seminar on “The Challenge of the Empty Church” hosted by the Magnolia Center Church of Christ in Riverside, Calif.
Minister Lonnie Fritz and his wife, Cindy, work with the Central Church of Christ, a 60-member congregation in the San Jacinto Valley city of Hemet.
The couple left the Riverside seminar feeling upbeat.
“I’m hoping that we can contact Heritage21,” Lonnie Fritz said, “and maybe partner with them and kind of repurpose and renew.”
BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. He traveled to Southern California to report this story. Reach him at [email protected].
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