Community Update: Cultural Evolution - Growing into What’s Next

CSL Kelowna
4 days ago
3 min read

There’s something beautiful happening at the Centre for Spiritual Living Kelowna—and many of you are already feeling it.

For generations, spiritual communities, including ours, were shaped around one central leader. The minister carried the vision, the care, the authority, and often the emotional and spiritual weight of the whole community. That model served an important purpose for its time.

But the world has changed.

Across countless congregations, one pattern appeared again and again: sincere, devoted communities longing to grow—yet constrained by an inherited structure that places nearly all authority, identity, care, and meaning upon a single leader. This is the minister-centric paradigm, and it has shaped Western congregational life for centuries.

That model was once necessary. In an earlier era, centralized leadership offered coherence, stability, and continuity. But the cultural, psychological, and spiritual conditions that once sustained it no longer exist. Today’s world is marked by distributed knowledge, relational networks, trauma-awareness, self-directed spiritual seeking, and a hunger for authenticity, shared leadership, and real transformation. The complexity of modern life simply cannot be carried by one person on behalf of the many.

Rev Corinne and I attended a lecture at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church given by Rev. Dr. William Harrison, president of Lutheran Theological Seminary with a PHD in Systemic Theology. He promoted his book, Leadership in a Shrinking Church: Finding New Vision in Unlikely Places.

In it he cited how the world has changed in a relative relatively short time:

A 60-70% decline in attendance in churches AND even service clubs and civic organizations throughout North America.
How the nature of belonging has had a huge cultural shift – in Families, churches, even bowling leagues,
And how working harder or doing it better won’t make people want to belong.

We’ve also experienced significant change in the 18 months I’ve been here -some of it by design, others by the organic emergence of divine intention. Rev. Harrison’s suggestions as how to navigate these changes and make a positive difference, parallel in many ways with what’s already happening here at CSLK. Our purpose is to be a centre for Spiritual Living – a safe place to find deeper purpose through practice and connection.

What has not changed—and will never change—is our foundation in Science of Mind. We remain grounded in the timeless teachings of Ernest Holmes: the Creative Process, Spiritual Mind Treatment, personal responsibility, and the inherent wholeness and worth of every person. These principles are the bedrock of who we are. They are our spiritual DNA.

What is evolving is how we live these teachings together in community.

Today, people long for more than inspiration alone. We long for authentic belonging, shared leadership, emotional and spiritual maturity, and communities that don’t just inspire and uplift us—but actually transform us. That longing is already alive here at CSLK. It’s woven directly into our Evolutionary Purpose:

“Transforming lives and inspiring people to make a positive difference in the world by cultivating the values of extraordinary respect, compassion, safety, and accountability.”

As we each take part in cultivating our values of extraordinary respect, compassion, safety and accountability, there’s a shift in frequency. There’s a vibe. What’s emerging now is a natural next expression of that purpose.

We are growing into a community where leadership is shared, responsibility is collective, authority is functional rather than positional, and our purpose—not any one personality—becomes the center of gravity.

This evolution is not about fixing something broken.

It’s about allowing something healthy to mature.

As this cultural evolution unfolds, our Beloved Community is becoming: