by Thom S. Rainer
“I should have seen that coming.”
Those words are painful when a church leader looks back on a missed opportunity or a preventable crisis. The signs were present. Other matters simply seemed more urgent.
As I look toward the next five years, I see five developments that could catch many American churches unprepared. These are possibilities worth watching and preparing for prayerfully.
1. Spiritually receptive people may find our churches difficult to understand.
We may encounter more people who are interested in Jesus but have little understanding of Christianity. They don’t know the Bible stories. They don’t understand our terminology. They have no idea what church membership means.
Pew Research Center reported in 2025 that 35% of American adults have changed their religious identity since childhood. We cannot assume someone’s background from where they live or who their parents were.
Churches need to examine their preaching, guest ministries, and groups through the eyes of someone with no church experience. We can explain clearly while teaching deeply.
“We kept preparing for people who already understood church.”
2. Our staffing expectations may become financially unrealistic.
More churches may discover they can sustain a ministry but cannot sustain their traditional staffing structure.
I expect greater use of co-vocational pastors, shared staff, outside administrative services, and ministers developed within the congregation. These arrangements can provide meaningful opportunities for healthy ministry.
But expectations must change with them. A church cannot compensate a pastor for part-time work while expecting unlimited availability.
The time to develop lay leaders is now. Waiting until the pastor resigns could leave a congregation searching for someone willing to accept a job that has become impossible.
“We thought we had a pastor-search problem. We had an unsustainable ministry model.”
3. Stable giving may conceal a fragile financial future.
A church can meet its budget every month and still face significant financial vulnerability.
How much giving comes from a handful of households? What happens when several of those families relocate, experience serious illness, or die? Are younger members learning biblical stewardship?
The issue deserves attention even when attendance is increasing. New attendees do not immediately replace the financial support of longtime, generous members.
Church leaders should understand giving patterns while protecting individual confidentiality. They should also teach generosity consistently. A stewardship crisis becomes much harder to address after the money disappears.
“We counted the dollars, but we never examined who was sustaining the budget.”
4. Buildings may become opportunities we waited too long to consider.
Some congregations will have facilities they can no longer maintain. Others will have growing ministries and nowhere affordable to meet.
There is tremendous potential for partnerships, shared facilities, mergers, and property transfers. But these conversations require humility and time.
Too many churches may postpone them until the reserves are depleted and major repairs are unavoidable. By then, their options will be limited.
A congregation can extend its ministry for another generation through a thoughtful property decision. Leaders should begin asking how their buildings can serve the gospel in the years ahead.
“We protected ownership so long that we lost the opportunity to extend the ministry.”
5. AI may increase the importance of personal pastoral ministry.
Barna reported in June 2026 that only 13% of surveyed pastors said they did not use AI at all. Half used it for brainstorming or generating ideas. Adoption is already well underway.
The surprise may be what happens afterward.
As content becomes easier to produce, people will still need someone who knows their name, spends time in their community, and helps them grow as disciples.
Church leaders must decide how to use the time technology saves. That time could become a significant investment in people. It could also disappear into producing more material nobody requested.
“We became more efficient, but our people still didn’t feel known.”
These five possibilities deserve our attention now. We can make our churches easier for guests to understand, develop more lay leaders, teach biblical generosity, consider new uses for our buildings, and use technology to create more time for people. Each step can strengthen a church today while preparing it for the years ahead. My prayer is that five years from now, more church leaders will be able to say, “We saw an opportunity, and we responded faithfully.”