Posted on 11/22/2015 4:17:13 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The conversation surprised me.
I was recently meeting with about a dozen members of a church that was on the precipice of closing. During their perceived "good old days," the average worship attendance was in the 40s and 50s. Now the church attendance was in the teens. The church was on metaphorical life support.
I shared with them some items of urgency that might give them some glimmer of hope. So I was surprised when one of the members asked me a question that seemed to come from nowhere: "Will we have to sing from screens instead of hymnals?" she asked with a tinge of anger.
never responded directly to the question. It was too late. The few members were of one mind about an issue so peripheral I had never anticipated it. I left saddened.
The church had chosen to die.
The Need and the Passion
It is my life and ministry passion to help churches, particularly struggling churches, to revitalize. One of the greatest needs of churches today is to choose to live and to thrive.
Unfortunately, many congregations are choosing to die. For certain, they are not calling a business meeting and making a motion to die. Their choices are more subtle and, often, more incremental. But the end result is the same.
Churches are choosing to die.
Five Deadly Choices
So what are churches doing specifically that leads to their demise? Here are five of the more common choices.
1. They refuse to face reality.
I was in a dying church recently. The congregational average attendance was 425 seven years ago. Today it is 185. I could find no one in the church who thought the trends were bad. They were in a state of delusion and denial.
2. They are more concerned about greater comfort than the Great Commission.
Church membership has become self-serving. The church is more like a country club than the body of Christ. People are "paying dues" to get what they want in the church. It's all about their preferences and desires.
3. They are unwilling to accept responsibility.
It's the fault of culture. All the new churches in town are to blame. If someone wants to come to our church, they know where we are. People just don't want to come to church anymore. Excuses and more excuses. I have never been in a community that is nearly fully churched. There are many people to reach. Excuses preclude obedience.
4. They are too busy fighting and criticizing.
If we could take the energy of church critics and antagonists into reaching people with the gospel, our churches would become evangelistic forces. Unfortunately in many churches, members expend most of their energies criticizing leadership and others, and fighting over trivial issues.
5. They are confusing non-negotiables with negotiables.
Almost ten years ago, a couple of men who live near me asked to visit with me in my home. They wanted me to consider visiting their church. One of the men told me their church was one of the few in the area defending the faith. I asked him what he meant by that. He explained that the faith was one particular Bible translation and traditional hymns. I wasn't sure what happened to the bodily resurrection and substitutionary atonement. The church died within seven years.
Choosing to Live Rather Than Die
Most churches have choices to live or die. We use the word "revitalize" because it means to live again. I hope you will join me in this passion to see unhealthy churches become healthy, to see churches choose to live.
As one way of being a part of this movement of revitalization, I have teamed up with Revitalized Churches in Florida to offer the best resources we can to help in this cause. They are once again offering the resource that has helped hundreds of churches move toward revitalization.
Those churches have chosen to live.
Bookmark
The answer, which, of course, was never given, was 'just because you built it doesn't mean you get to worship God in your own way'.
Attendance in the teens?
They can’t make their utility payments on that, let alone other expenses.
Then there are the dying denominations that don’t really mind. For instance, there are a number of Episcopal churches with large endowments and bequests that can serve a small congregation indefinitely even if no one donates. Same goes for the Christian Scientists (if you consider them a Christian denomination), where they can sell off extremely valuable properties to take care of greatly reduced numbers in style for a long time (while scaling down expenses like the Christian Science Monitor and the Reading Rooms).
I was in a church that did all 5. We invited a guy from the Conference (it was a UM church) to look at us and give us some ideas. He present these same 5 problems and one of the “influential members” (see #2—paying “dues” to demand influence from the pastor and from lay leadership) stood up and said that he wasn’t going to listen to this anymore and he actually looked at two more “influential members” and pointed at the door with his thumb and they got up and left.
I finally left two years ago because of the state of the UMC, because I recognize that manipulative “big givers” exist in just about any church. I blame the lack of strong theology for the decline of churches. In the case of the UMC, you could overcome all 5 of these problems and the fact that they are wishy-washy on just about everything from gay pastors to abortion to biblical inerrancy to islam.
Well, maybe wishy-washy is a bad term. The average congregant is one side of those issues and the ordained leadership tends to be on the other. That’s the problem! Jesus came to divide. There are sheep and there are goats. Your church can’t survive if it just tells goats that they are sheep and that Jesus is a good buddy who would NEVER tell you that you are doing wrong.
The Episcopal Church has been dying for years. Here and there are viable congregations that stay alive due to liturgy, endowments and big city “social Justice” initiatives. But lacking theology us hardly good for the long run.
#4 is hard. Non-negotiables have to be argued to remain such, but complaining about pastors not being leaders or not doing something exactly right, just wears him down instead of encouraging him to help in the fight, even if not specifically lead. Don’t blunt the spear!
IF you do not want to see a mosque on every street corner
blaring the Muslim call to worship over a loudspeaker
several times a day; you will haul your butt up, get dressed
and drive over to a Christian church in your town, put your
share in the offering plate, participate, sing, enjoy the
music, the Scripture & do what you can to support the
Christian churches. Otherwise, don’t complain when the imam
sends recruiters to YOUR home. - We attend a church in town;
but took a day off today. Sometimes you just have to stop
& take inventory; but next week, God willing, we go back!
Sounds like he’s hung up on thinking old hymns and church as it was then is “choosing to die”. In this twits mind repetitive chant hymns on screens is what we all need.
The truth is that crap drives as many people away as it attracts.
I wonder what our Roman Catholic friends think of this article. They must think Protestants are an odd bunch at times.
The “advice” offered by Mr. Rainer sounds like something from a board meeting of a struggling corporation.
I know our Protestant brethren tend to shy away from John chapter 6, nevertheless it is a powerful passage that I believe speaks to the church revitalization movement (among other things of course).
After our Lord teaches about eating His flesh and drinking His blood (John 6:53ff), the Bible says in verse 66 “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” (ESV).
Imagine that. Jesus preached and they crowds left Him by the droves. Doesn’t sound like a growing, thriving, revitalized church to me.
What our churches need is not more gimmicks and slick song services. Our churches need men of God who preach the Word and tell it like it is. Men of God who preach Christ in all His glory. Men of God who are lions in the pulpit, rightly dividing the Word of Truth. Men of God who believe with all their hearts this word from our Savior: “And he said, ‘For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.’” (John 6:65 NRSV).
I think a big problem facing many churches is that they have lost the “centrality” in the lives of their congregations.
Accessory to an older church was a meeting hall-dining room, a kitchen, a lounge-restroom for women and girls, small classrooms for Sunday school instruction, and importantly, things to do the rest of the week at the church.
Whenever crops would come in and be cheap, the kitchen might be used for cooking and canning, to provide food for families having a hard time financially. Otherwise groups of ladies would visit shut-ins, the elderly and incapacitated to keep sociability in their lives.
Baptisms, weddings, funerals, all would be guaranteed good attendance out of friendship and respect. This mattered.
Throughout all of it, the clergyman was kept busy.
I for one understand that things can get weird any time you are dealing with human beings, no matter what your denomination.
Numbers are not the measure of a church. Not in God’s eyes. Faithfulness is. That doesn’t mean faithfulness to a hymn book, but it also doesn’t mean you need to sing “Jesus Is My Boyfriend” and serve coffee instead of communion.
Growth can be a cancer. In many mainline churches, they preferred cancer to health, and that is now killing them.
The Gospel requires repentance. You cannot be saved FROM your sins if you don’t acknowledge you HAVE sinned. Few things in modern society are as “hateful” as discussing sin - but you cannot preach repentance without it. If someone believes they are healthy, they won’t call on The Great Physician.
Yes it has to be his way. I was in a church where they had a succession of worship ministers who said the worship service had to be their way and if you were not on board you were selfish for wanting to have the service your way. You had to be open to their changes or else you were the troublemaker. Membership kept going down. The church was in a mixed demographic area and when they adopted a goal of having 33% white/33% black/33% Hispanic We decided to leave and help them achieve their mix goal.
So many of the worship ministers focus on their singing and the ones on the stage that they ignore whether the congregation is singing. If they want more volume they just crank up the microphones. If you look around, most of the members are just moving their lips. Not sure that is what God desires.
We live in a country with 41% of the kids born out of wedlock but never a sermon on fornication. Always grace and forgiveness. But hey, that is a way the consultants say to grow your church. Not sure this is what God desires either.
A tiny paid of church could. There are several tiny ones near me that make it with an attendance of twenty and occasionally renting the place for a wedding.
I am RC and trust me, there are clergy members who WANT the church of JP II to die.
Why do churches die?
These lousy article is filled with ambiguities and vagueness. Churches should not worry so much about membership like this article does. They should simply stick biblical truths like the following.
Number one: belief in heaven and hell. Number two: extramarital sex is sinful, including homosexuality. Three: As the Bible says, the man is head of the household, as well as individual churches. Doing otherwise would lead to constant squabbling and numerous divorces. Four: Spare the rod, spoil the child. Five: Go forth and multiply. Increasing the population of believers is the best way to expand the church! Six: Live your life by the ten commandments.
Simple.
6. They ignore the plain words and teachings of Jesus and invent new lessons to “fit with the times”
It is interesting you include really nothing on Jesus nor his lessons in your rant...
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