Looking Back To Move Forward

Farris Blount, III

Assistant Professor of Practical Theology
Director of the Doctor of Ministry (DMin) Degree Program
Director of the Black/Africana Church Studies (BACS) Program

Many Black churches today face a difficult reality. Attendance, engagement, and participation are declining. Churchgoers are gravitating toward more established or well-resourced congregations with extensive programming, significant staff support, and robust children’s and youth ministries.

But most Black churches are small, reflecting the current church attendance trends in America. A typical congregation might have between 50 and 75 people. The senior pastor may be the only staff member – and may hold another job because the church cannot support a full-time pastor.

If those trends continue, many Black churches will struggle to survive. So, what does it mean to sustain a call to ministry in that environment?

I believe the answer begins with recognizing the deep and rich legacy from which we come in the Black Church tradition.

History tells us that faith has never been just a head exercise in the Black Church. It is lived out – from enslaved Africans trying to make sense of God amid their condition to newly freed African Americans forming independent Black churches and denominations.

The Black Church has always wrestled with its purpose and mission in a world that has often denied the humanity of Black people. Yet churches also became places where Black people could affirm their worth, find their voices, and care for one another.

That history shapes the mantra that guides my research: We must look back to move forward. The ways we sing, worship, pray, and preach may change. But they are rooted in a tradition that has sustained, guided, and undergirded Black people for centuries.

Looking back can help us address the questions confronting the Black Church today: What does it mean to be Black in a world where anti-Blackness persists? What does it mean to be a people of faith amid rapid technological change and artificial intelligence? How should we use digital technologies in preaching, worship, and pastoral care when these very technologies contain biases? How do we become more welcoming and inclusive of people who may not fit into our understandings of class, gender, and sexuality?

More fundamentally: What does it mean to be the Black Church today?

I don’t believe programming, buildings, and budgets are the answer to that question. For many Black congregations, a model built around those things is unsustainable.

Instead, my research asks: How do we rethink Black ecclesiological traditions for the 21st century? How do we help newer, younger generations of Black Christians rethink their participation and engagement? I want to move away from a performance-based or consumer-based model toward an understanding of church as lived practice.

In many ways, understanding the church as lived practice isn’t new. It is what Black people have always done. We came together to be the church.

My doctoral research focused on Black millennials, a group to which I belong. Our willingness to engage, join, and support churches will have a significant impact on the future of Black congregational life. But I don’t think the answer is simply persuading younger people to maintain the institutions previous generations have built. Instead, we can learn how those institutions came into being in the first place and re-envision those lessons for our current reality.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black Christians created churches and religious institutions during the difficult years following slavery and Reconstruction. Churches became places of education, political organization, and mutual aid. People pooled resources to provide food, support families, and pay for burials. They built what their communities needed with what they had.

We live in a very different moment, but we can recapture that creative ethos. Instead of asking how we preserve the institutions we inherited, we can ask: What does our community need now? And how do we build a church to meet those needs without falling into a consumption model?

When pastors look around and see churches with bigger buildings, larger staffs, and extensive programming, it’s easy to operate from a deficit model: We don’t have enough people. We don’t have enough money. We can’t offer what that bigger church offers.

When I mentor pastors, I try to turn that around: Let’s not focus on what you don’t have. Let’s focus on what you do have. I believe God has given every congregation something.

A church of 50 people might be extraordinarily hospitable. People walk through the doors and know they’ll be loved, cared for, supported, and prayed for. That congregation can build on that gift.

Another small church might become a hub for addressing food insecurity. Another may have a remarkable number of teachers and retired educators who can build a strong Christian education ministry.

The question becomes: What has God given us? How do we center that gift in the life of our congregation and do it well? And how might we then use that gift in partnership with other churches to build the beloved community right here and now?

That changes the measure of successful ministry. A pastor no longer has to look at a larger church and ask, “Why can’t we do what they’re doing?” Instead, the pastor and congregation can discern together what God has called them to do. That can be freeing, especially for pastors who are exhausted by the pressure to constantly do more – to attract more people, create more programs, raise more money. Instead, you can do the things God has called you to do and expect God to meet you in the process. You can help the congregation understand what it means to be the Church rather than to just attend Church, and in doing that, move from a focus on self-fulfillment to serving our neighbors.

I also remind pastors that ministry was never meant to be solitary. At my ordination service, the preacher, the Rev. Dr. Christy Woodbury-Moore, gave me advice I have never forgotten: Find your people.

Pastoring can feel profoundly isolating. Sitting in the senior pastor’s chair, you may believe no one understands what you’re carrying. But ministry is communal. When Jesus prepares to send His disciples out in the Gospel of Matthew, He sends them together. He does not send them alone.

The history of the Black Church reinforces that lesson. Ministry has never depended on one person carrying everything. Black churches survived because people pooled their gifts, resources, labor, and faith.

Sustaining a call to ministry does not mean having unlimited resources, building the biggest church, or shouldering every burden alone. It means knowing what God has given you, recognizing the gifts already present in your community, and finding people who can share the work.

Black churches and our histories are not perfect. There are challenges our institutions must address. For instance, we must be more inclusive of people who look and love differently.  But looking back at our histories also means remembering that the challenges facing the church today are not the first difficult circumstances Black Christians have encountered. Previous generations built churches amid slavery, segregation, poverty, and exclusion. They responded with creativity, faith, and communal care. We do not need to reproduce the churches they built. But we can draw on the imagination that enabled them to build. That’s why we must look back to move forward.