I was their church consultant in 2003. The church’s peak attendance was 750 in 1975. By the time I got there the attendance had fallen to an average of 83. The large sanctuary seemed to swallow the relatively small crowd on Sunday morning.
The reality was that most of the members did not want me there. They were not about to pay a consultant to tell them what was wrong with their church. Only when a benevolent member offered to foot my entire bill did the congregation grudgingly agree to retain me.
I worked with the church for three weeks. The problems were obvious; the solutions were difficult.
On my last day, the benefactor walked me to my rental car. “What do you think, Thom?” he asked. He could see the uncertainty in my expression, so he clarified. “How long can our church survive?” I paused for a moment, and then offered the bad news. “I believe the church will close its doors in five years.”
I was wrong. The church closed just a few weeks ago. Like many dying churches, it held on to life tenaciously. This church lasted ten years after my terminal diagnosis.
My friend from the church called to tell me the news. I took no pleasure in discovering that not only was my diagnosis correct, I had mostly gotten right all the signs of the impending death of the church. Together my friend and I reviewed the past ten years. I think we were able to piece together a fairly accurate autopsy. Here are eleven things I learned.
- The church refused to look like the community. The community began a transition toward a lower socioeconomic class thirty years ago, but the church members had no desire to reach the new residents. The congregation thus became an island of middle-class members in a sea of lower-class residents.
- The church had no community-focused ministries. This part of the autopsy may seem to be stating the obvious, but I wanted to be certain. My friend affirmed my suspicions. There was no attempt to reach the community.
- Members became more focused on memorials. Do not hear my statement as a criticism of memorials. Indeed, I recently funded a memorial in memory of my late grandson. The memorials at the church were chairs, tables, rooms, and other places where a neat plaque could be placed. The point is that the memorials became an obsession at the church. More and more emphasis was placed on the past.
- The percentage of the budget for members’ needs kept increasing. At the church’s death, the percentage was over 98 percent.
- There were no evangelistic emphases. When a church loses its passion to reach the lost, the congregation begins to die.
- The members had more and more arguments about what they wanted. As the church continued to decline toward death, the inward focus of the members turned caustic. Arguments were more frequent; business meetings became more acrimonious.
- With few exceptions, pastoral tenure grew shorter and shorter. The church had seven pastors in its final ten years. The last three pastors were bi-vocational. All of the seven pastors left discouraged.
- The church rarely prayed together. In its last eight years, the only time of corporate prayer was a three-minute period in the Sunday worship service. Prayers were always limited to members, their friends and families, and their physical needs.
- The church had no clarity as to why it existed. There was no vision, no mission, and no purpose.
- The members idolized another era. All of the active members were over the age of 67 the last six years of the church. And they all remembered fondly, to the point of idolatry, was the era of the 1970s. They saw their future to be returning to the past.
- The facilities continued to deteriorate. It wasn’t really a financial issue. Instead, the members failed to see the continuous deterioration of the church building. Simple stated, they no longer had “outsider eyes.”
Though this story is bleak and discouraging, we must learn from such examples. As many as 100,000 churches in America could be dying. Their time is short, perhaps less than ten years.
What do you think of the autopsy on this church? What can we do to reverse these trends?
Posted on April 24, 2013
With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America.
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473 Comments
A few things that struck me as I read the article in the comments. A) It’s not always about the people in the pews. In my experience I have often seen churches with more boldness and zeal in the pews than in the pulpit. Mainline Christianity needs to start forming pastors again who have a passion to spread the gospel and care for souls. We don’t need more ordianed activists, organizers and event directors. We need PASTORS!! B) It’s not always about desegregation or diversity. Sometimes I feel we have created an idol out of diversity. On internship a parishioner came back from a synod event and said “Vicar I was told I had to invite a black person to church, I don’t know any,” I replied, “Marilyn, start with the unchurched white family across the street.” Thanks for the great read.
While the autopsy results are true one important aspect that is overlooked is the fact that Pastors are not doing their tasks very well in offering courageous leadership. Shepherds must lead!
Being a Priest in a parish for 3.5 this whole article needs to be read in most of the Parishes where I live. Here, the “glory years” are relived so often. But even they are a fallacy because when you check the vestry books, the attendance was not very good even 50 years ago. The parish I had just left has a wonderful vision ” to make sure ‘my church’ is still here when I die so that I will be buried out of ‘my church'” For the past 25 years,this Parish can not keep priests longer than 3 years! Most have left before “things” start to happen. Some have left utterly destroyed by bullies, people who have lost the mission of the Gospel. It’s sad. One priest said 25 years ago that the area is in Palliative Care. WE NEED to WAKE UP!! And stop being like the people of Jeremiah’s time!
Churches like these which have not died yet are the place that many young pastors begin in the ministry, many of whom either become discouraged or leave the ministry.
These churches are the way they are for theological reasons. They either were never taught or resisted learning what the Bible has to say about being and doing church. Someone or something other than Jesus was the head of such churches. The inner life of these churches did not reflect the NT teaching about how people are to relate to each other and behave in God’s church. The relationships between pastor and church leaders was not shaped by the call for pastors to equip and laity to be equipped for ministry. The individual wholeness of church members makes it hard for a pastor to find healthy leaders. Sometimes the individual wholeness of the pastor makes a sick church even sicker. Lastly, these church bodies like healthy skin by having healthy ministries for an unhealthy world because of neglecting the biblical call of outreach and ministry to others. Such churches are poor because they are theologically underfunded. The solution is preaching, teaching and discipling churches in biblical ecclesiology (doctrine of the church). Clergy who lack sound ecclesiology must be taught and discipled in it also.
Speaking of the subject of the inward focused Church who doesn’t evangelize: The longer I’ve been in ministry the more I believe that we the “corporate” Church can only do so much when it comes to evangelization. I really believe that it is to be mostly the individual members of the church who are to do the evangelizing. The church members are the ones in the market place rubbing shoulders with many different kinds of people. That is their MISSION FIELD! But because individuals no longer reach out with the Gospel to those around them, the corporate Church is having to take up the slack. So you see many a church compromise their services, making them “seeker friendly” to get the unsaved in their churches. You see them lean towards entertainment to entice them into their doors, and the message is watered down so they will not leave. All this compromise to get more into their church. Then the whole purpose of the Church shifts from being a place for the saints, to a place for the unbeliever! If each individual did their part in representing Christ in their own sphere of influence, then we’d see more people get saved and COME INTO OUR CHURCHES!
Where was the godly influence? It sounds like the many pastors let the congregation pull rank. A bad form of Church government perhaps.Sounds like the majority got their fleshly way and the pastor was powerless. A sure formula for disaster.
let me get this straight you were informed of this dying church, by the time you got there the first thing that should have been settled was how you would be paid?……would you have given them that consultation if you knew you were’nt going to be paid? should’nt the fact that the church was dying pricked your heart to help rather than to settle the payment issue first? and when since have we gone downhill that a church now has to pay to get consultation on its deteriorating situation nowhere in biblical scripture an apostle or prophet had to be paid to give a consultation on a specific situation… in revelation chapter 2-4 Christ gave free consultation to the various churces, in 1 corithians 7 Paul by the holy spirit gave free consultation to specific situation…if i may be bold to say this, brother you added to the death of that church, obviously they could not swing your fee, until a brother decided to foot on top of all that the church was going through they had to deal with this issue…further more where was the pastor at the time of your visit? where was his suggestion? had he also lost his vision? was there no knowledge on his lips as a messenger of God to correct the church? and like a shepherd lead them back to the true counsels of God?
Danavan,
I do not really want to respond to your diatribe against Dr. Rainer but I would find it even more distasteful if he had to defend himself. That said, I would respond with three points and a question: 1) Most people in America get paid for providing their expertise. 2) If a church is unwilling to spend the relatively small investment to pay an expert, they are unlikely to be willing to change. 3) The fact that they had agreed to hire a consultant but had not been able to come to an agreement about how to pay for the service likely gives you some insight into the nature of their business meetings. My question is this: Do you go to work and expect to not get paid? I have a newsflash for you, to earn the degree Ph. D. is a massive sacrifice of time, energy, and money. In a secular field the consulting fees would be astronomical by comparison to what a church consultant makes. Yes, there were no consultants in the New Testaments but neither were their air conditioners, microphones, toilets, or hymnals (not to mention Bibles that include both Testaments in book rather than scroll format), which one of these new developments are you dissatisfied with that you would like to jettison along with consultants? Final thought has to do with your comments about preaching. Many a preacher has faithfully opened God’s Word to the congregation for many years only to have it fall on deaf ears.
In spite of our disagreement on this issue, I do share your passion for Christ’s Church and belief in the power of Spirit empowered preaching.
DK
P.S. Not that it matters, but I am on an unpaid consulting team that is currently creating a program to help churches get healthy–our main fear (this really borders on expectation) is that the churches who need the assistance most will not be willing to ask for it.
Thanks for the though provoking story!! It seems to be a sign of the times…..to see churches in decline. The older members don’t care for change in the church. They don’t like to see how the young people dress, the music that is different-brought into the church, noisy kids, etc. etc. We must as a family of believers go to our church for the right reasons: as Christ said in the Bible- forsake not the gathering together. We must be accepting of others, willing to accept some change, be friendly and understanding. We need to see our community as our mission field – ripe for the harvest and invite those who are unfamiliar to us, into our midst. We need to welcome anyone who has a desire and thirst for the Word. We need to reflect Christ!! We need to be willing to minister, not just be ministered to!!