The Body that Leads Together Posted on
Is this the end of church as we know it? From the Reformation to the first congregations, Michele (Schrock) ’81 Hershberger and Jessica (Schrock) ’02 Schrock-Ringenberg of Hesston College’s Center for Anabaptist Leadership and Learning (CALL) talk through what a resilient church might look like in an age of polarization and pandemic.
It gives us permission to be helpless, and it’s in that state of helplessness that beautiful new things emerge.
-Michele Hershberger
What do we mean when we talk about the “resilient church”?
Jessica Schrock-Ringenberg (JSR): This is one of my favorite topics. As a pastor, I remember having this incredible sense of hope and excitement about what was happening on an individual and collective level, seeing people in our congregation just blossom. But hovering over the top of all of that was this sense that the structure of what we called “the church” the building and the programs and t