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
I am not a religious person and of course, don’t attend church. Yet, there is a message in this story for anyone, not just church-goers: cooperate and grow together or bicker and fall apart.
I’m aware of a church that is attended by a close acquaintance that is exhibiting the symptoms described by the author. It is elders in the church who stubbornly cling to the past and create the acrimony that will eventually cause the church to fail. Like the church described by the author, this one has been through several pastors, all of whom were attempting to keep the church relevant in the community. These pastors were resisted every step of the way by elders who thought that they were still attending the church that existed 40-50 years ago. The current pastor is having a bit more success in this regard, but is still being resisted by elders who can’t accept that not everyone sees church life through the faded lenses of the past.
A philosopher whose name escapes me once opined that there is nothing constant as change. All organizations, spiritual or secular, should take heed. If you want to perpetuate yourselves make sure there’s enough room for new people to get involved.
Thanks, Thom. This is painfully right on. In Chicago, God has given us opportunity to restart 8 different churches in the last 13 years. These historic churches carried many of the eleven signs you list. But before they died we had the privilege of merging our stories with theirs, breathing new life and vision into a places of historic mission. We believe this is a key part of church planting strategy for this generation in the North America and Western Europe. We did a little video about our restart story: http://www.newlifecities.org/restart/
Thank you. I will be sharing this post with my mission planning team.
How about this? Hospice pastors, for the churches that are going into their declining years, and would like to die gracefully. Then sell off the properties in order to fund evangelism and church planting.
Teach the old folks in a declining church like the one above that everything – even their beloved church – dies and they must leave and move on so that something good can come of it.
Jesus taught who would produce much fruit, ones with a good and noble heart. Contrasting this he pointed out those who received the word with gladness but fell away do to the cares of this world, also those who fall away do to trials. People can still attend church, but their hearts can be far from the Lord. Thankfully we do have a savor who I believe continues to search for lost sheep. Christians who have fallen away. Jesus also said unless one takes up their cross they are unfit to be called His disciple. This indicates a choice, Jesus does not force us to take up our cross thus having our heart condition renewed.
The culture has changed. There are too many worldly interests to take up the busy lives. There is hope in reaching out to the community with welcome arms and spreading the Word.
This is a great diagnosis. And the obvious answer for how not to die is to do the opposite of items 1-11. Still, there are lots of blogs floating about the death of the church; I would love to read some posts about churches that have been resurrected, and the characteristics thereof.
ive read my own church’s ills into the article………it’s sad….true…and it hurts….we’re covering all 11
I’ve read my own church’s ills into your article….it fits…and hurts……
I once served as the bi-vocational minister in a small congregation which has since closed. They were faithful people who gave heartily to support their church and their denomination’s programs. They had an adequate facility which was well-maintained and also room for expansion. They were eager to share in community mission and programs. But, a few years before I came there, when the number of children in the church had reached a very low level, they had given up offering any Sunday School program for them. Soon, the few families with children were going elsewhere. The community began to grow, some young couples in which one partner had grown up in that church started returning to the community and a few even joined. But when their kids got to the age to participate in classes they reluctantly moved their memberships elsewhere. The classes were no longer their and neither were the people young enough to lead them. That one past decision, more than any other factor, eventually killed that church.