You can set out to do traditional worship or contemporary worship or jazz worship or Taizé worship or gospel worship. In the end, the style you choose doesn’t matter as much as understanding what resources you have to draw upon. Shakespeare said it succinctly: “To thine own self be true.” That’s one of the secrets of healthy traditional churches today.

Here’s an underreported factoid: Throwing out tradition and trying to “go contemporary” has failed in as many or more established churches as it has succeeded.

That’s right, contemporary worship hasn’t saved every church that has given it a spin.

These silent failures, I believe, come from pastors leaving their core congregations behind in the change and from congregations attempting to be something they do not have the resources to become.

As a 50-year-old man, I could try to wear a pair of the oh-so-hip skinny jeans, but I’d look stupid doing it. I simply don’t have the physical resources to pull it off. That has been the fate of many a church that has tried to put on the garb of praise bands and screens without realizing they don’t have a critical mass of people who can play the instruments and sing the songs.

Sometimes these churches were failing at traditional worship because they didn’t have the resources to do that well either. Trading one weakness for another doesn’t solve anything.

The old model of Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches assumed a particular style of church could be executed in nearly any setting, whether rural or urban, wealthy or poor. In this cookie-cutter world, if Trinity Baptist Church of Central City didn’t have the strongest choir to pull off a Christmas cantata, everyone understood that, credited them some handicap points and commended them for the noble effort.

Those days are gone—not only for churches but for all institutions in American life. Television and the Internet have leveled the field of expectations in American culture — not to the lowest common denominator but to the highest.

If by “traditional” we mean the franchise model of church, then traditional won’t cut it any longer. My own former denomination, the Southern Baptist Church, had a classic franchise model for years, with churches supplied by a central provider for curriculum, music and even furniture and architectural services. There are several styles of Southern Baptist starter church buildings I can identify even driving 60 miles an hour down the highway.

Along with television and the Internet, Baby Boomers are partly to blame for the demise of cookie-cutter churches, according to church researcher George Barna in his book “Revolution.” Baby Boomers’ desire to have only the best in everything has shifted culture, just as the Japan earthquake in 2011 shifted the spin of the earth’s axis.

The result, Barna said, is more “niche” churches.

“Whether you consider the changes in broadcasting, clothing, music, investing or automobiles, producers of such consumables realize Americans want control over their lives. The result has been the ‘niching’ of America —creating highly refined categories that serve smaller numbers of people but can command greater loyalty.”

He applies this trend to churches: “The church landscape now offers these boutique churches alongside the something-for-everybody megachurches. In the religious marketplace, the churches that have suffered most are those who stuck with the one-size-fits-all approach, typically proving that one-size-fits-nobody.”

Congregations today need to innovate but they can only innovate within the range of their available resources.

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