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
Great article Thom! Ten years ago the Lord led my wife and I to plant a church in a rural South Dakota community. At the same time our church was growing and experiencing God’s blessing, we began to notice that so many other congregations in our region were not. In short, my eyes were opened to the dismal state of the church in so many rural communities. In 2009 God gave me a clear and strong vision to use technology to reach out into other rural communities that were in need of a healthy, vibrant, growing church that was driven to share the gospel and reach out into the community to make real and lasting impact. Since then, we have grown to 3 multi-site campuses and we are preparing to launch our 4th this year! I’m not sharing this for the sake of bragging (God gets ALL the glory for what He is doing in our story!) But I would like to share our vision with anyone who recognizes that they are sitting in a dying church and would love to be a part of something fresh. Feel free to check out http://www.therescuechurch.com and click on the banner that says VISION to watch a brief video about how you can be a part of bringing a healthy church to your community. Once a church is characterized by the symptoms described in this blog post, it is almost impossible for it to recover (short of God intervening with strong leadership). I say rather than wasting years of your life “organizing deck chairs on the Titanic”, get out while you can and invest your time, talent, and treasure in a church that has a fresh and compelling vision from God, that is outward focused, that is serving its community, that is reaching the next generation, and that speaks more about its future than the glory days of the past!
Unfortunately, I truly feel that our Church will follow this path when our Pastor retires. He is a fabulous Pastor, a man after God’s own heart, and though he is in his early 70’s (and has Pastored our Church since he was in his 20’s), his messages are still fresh and very relevant. In a very small town (1600 people), our Church attendance is over 600 on Sunday morning! It would be much larger, but it’s a revolving door. I’ve been there 15 years. We moved 25 miles JUST to go to this Church, even though it meant my husband had to drive an hour to work. About a month ago I looked around and realized that I didn’t recognize about a third of the people there. The problem is our Church board. If you are in any ministry in the Church, you WILL have a run in with them eventually. Our Pastor would prefer to put responsible people in positions, then let them MINISTER (with light supervision). On the other hand, our board likes to make every ministry as hard as possible…to the point of people quitting and/or leaving the Church! Our daily operations are run by the board, but big decisions, or those that cannot be agreed upon, come before the Church members for a vote. That is supposed to be the final decision. However, over the past 15 years, the board has become the “good old boys club”. You cannot run for a board position without the current board’s approval, and they have worked out a system where they just get reelected. They are constantly overstepping the boundaries of their positions, and going totally against issues that were decided by congregation vote. Some things seem small: a room was supposed to be shared as a “once in a while” bridal room, and a staging area for vbs decorations was carpeted with the palest green carpet, and fancy white upholstered furniture was put in there, along with an elaborate sink, makeup benches, etc. TOTALLY against the congregation vote, but they justified it by saying it was done with donated materials. The bottom line was: a board member’s daughter was getting married, and wanted it fancy. They also defied the vote, and didn’t allow it to be shared space. The bigger things are BIG: $200K over budget on the new Church office, all because the board member’s wives were given free reign with decorating, buying extremely expensive and impractical things (like a $10K conference table that took up 90% of the floor space for a room that was supposed to be shared by a Sunday School class), and major changes not approved by the congregation. In a town of 1600 people, our vbs pulls in almost 300 kids. But the board fights the dedicated people that run vbs on everything. A group of 8 women work 20-40 hours/wk from Feb. to Aug. for our vbs. We’ve had other Churches from large cities visit to see how we run it because it is so successful! The congregation voted to give vbs their own (locked) storage room. The board wives jimmied the lock and threw away a lot of decorations (they claimed they couldn’t tell that they were vbs decor) because “they” wanted to turn the room into a college age lounge. What they didn’t throw away was moved to a pole barn 2 miles away. Since it was done in the off season, the vbs crew didn’t find out until they were gutting the room (it’s a huge Church)! Now that the grandchildren of the board members are teens, they think we should do away with vbs, which is the single largest outreach we have. AND the most successful! At any given time, 1/3 of our teen program is made up of young people brought in through the vbs program. Pastor used to lock horns with them constantly. But, it seems like he’s tired of having to fight them too I could go on all night. I had hoped that my grandchildren would grow up in this Church in this small town. But, unless something major changes, I expect 1/3 to 1/2 of the congregation to leave when Pastor retires. The other half will be the board, and their families and friends. When they can’t control each other….it will die. 120 year old Church, destroyed by 10 men.
I’ve had opportunity to read this article multiple times. I’ve read through the responses multiple times. I see both success and decline stories here. The main article, with 11 reality statements, could be summarized with only two of them. #9 based on #5.
9. The church had no clarity as to why it existed. There was no vision, no mission, and no purpose.
…because…
5. There were no evangelistic emphases. When a church loses its passion to reach the lost, the congregation begins to die.
Or, as the second responder (Hubbell) said much more simply back in October:
“We claim the two most important commandments Jesus gave us and we are constantly amazed at what He is doing in our little church.”
Those commandments? Stated multiple times in the Gospels: “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12.28b-31)
Read through all the comments on this article, and it’s plain. There are many who complain about the decrease, the locks, the loss of meaning. Some are more concerned about political issues than faith. Some want position and influence in the town more than they want a loving relationship with Christ and with others. Some are more interested in growing numbers than they are with growing in Christ. One of the most important things about Jesus’ ministry (other than his loving sacrifice for all), is that for him, politics are NEVER involved. Whenever a political question comes up to him, how does he answer? By saying something like, “Who’s picture is on the money in your pocket?” What does politics in the Gospel do? It leads to Christ’s crucifixion. How much political fight did He offer? None.
When the Church turns political, or wants local influence, or allows members to fight over who has power to do things, it declines. This is regardless of denomination or location. And why does a congregation or denomination get political? Because leaders– pastors, elders, deacons, whatever– get off of the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ. Many leaders think that the Church is supposed to be some government or society influence to make things better. But that’s not what Jesus taught or demonstrated. The Church is supposed to have one target: Jesus Christ. And by focusing on that target, individuals are saved and led, one at a time. And then they may make societal differences as individuals, depending on how the Lord calls them.
But in general, pastors and churches get the idea that they can skip all that. Oh sure, they preach great sounding messages that make people get all interested. But apparently those messages are wrong. Or at least not meant to be delivered to the Church.
I read Connie’s sadness about how their great church will crash when their present pastor retires. Politics has taken over, and those who want to live by faith aren’t getting the encouragement they need. So they don’t see a way to correct their church leadership. Right after that is Allan’s comment, who says they ask people if they have a church home. Do they ask these people if they know and love Jesus Christ? Do they preach his true love to all who attend? Do those members love Christ above all else, and love those vistors as they love themselves?
Allan’s little country church is down to such a small number, but it’s still there. He’s got the extra truth that rural populations are less than they used to be. Farm economy of big farms of one family, more than hundreds of small farms. That congregation is in my prayers today.
I am always extremely popular with this message. (Little dry joke here.) Actually, I may get multiple attacks for these comments. Those always come from people whose churches are declining, or who want some political point to be passed. Or any other point except admitting that they either don’t really believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, or they don’t preach him that way.
Others think that the Word of God is too harsh. It puts down too many people. It forces folks to face their sins and repent, where what folks actually want is to justify their sins. I often get accused of being too old fashioned, or judgmental, or condemning. Truth is, I choose to love and relate to all people, regardless of their sins or positions. Preaching the Truth about salvation through Christ can be done easily, without trying to pass judgment or condemnation. I just call people to Christ, loving Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and my neighbor (everyone) as myself.
First step, back off on anything that is not connected to #9 and #5. Lead, encourage, guide, pray for pastors that they will preach this somehow, in every message. Why does the Church exist? To tell people about Jesus Christ. If the pastor can’t go this way, then replace him or her with someone who will. Every message needs to lift up Christ as the only true hope. Every pastor needs to find how to add evangelism to every message and to every outreach, just like every evangelist needs to learn how to apply pastoral love for every person. Every church member needs to be challenged regularly and always, with having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I challenge you and everyone to keep Jesus first, and love all others as he loves you. Then all those other solutions will follow.
There is to much in fighting, begging for money, harsh on learned Pastors
My current church faced the very same issues in 1984 — all-white and racist in a rough and largely-African-American neighborhood, and a new pastor told congregants that it needed to change. Fortunately, the church always had prayer warriors who recognized that God had to move in that new direction, and the new pastor for six years focused upon holding the congregation together; only after that did he begin to challenge the congregation with issues of diversity. (He was able to sell that by insisting that there was a mission field just outside the church doors.) To make a long story short, from a congregation of 400 and shrinking 30 years ago it has become one of over 3,000, economically and culturally diverse with all kinds of community outreach but not sacrificing one iota of basic of doctrine in the process.
Article’s been out for a while, but still hits hard. The church you described? Wherever it is, it’s an almost exact copy of my home church. Attendance over 700 in two morning services. Now maybe 80, and still in two services.
I appreciate the analysis. Point-by-point– spot on. They need the true Lordship of Jesus Christ among them, which hasn’t been preached or taught to them since about 1970.
Hello fellow brothers on Christ I just recently joined the website not too long ago and I just finished reading the article that was posted and I must say that the article is so accurate in so many ways. For one I’m a deacon at non denominational church in NC that focus on healing, speaking in tongues, and hearing what the Lord wants to do in our life. There has been a problem since I started going to that church and its that we have always had a small congregation like barely 20 members and its still liket that now and I’ve been there since november 2010. Let me be the first to say that there are so many problems going like for one there is a cultural difference and division between the american members and nigerian members. The nigerian members have the tendency to offend the american members by saying how this country is spoiled and even I get offended when I hear it even from my pastor sometimes. I feel that’s part of the reason why some of the members left because of statements like that. Do note that even though the ministry that I’m under is suppose to for all nationalities it just doesn’t feel like it it feels more like a church one type of culture and not a church for many cultures and nationalities. Second our praise and worship team is terrible. Because we have a small congregation the members were ramdomly picked to sing and most of them are not the best at singing plus they don’t practice and almost everyone has their own agenda to lead the choir or sing solo and no one is singing for the right reasons which is to sing for the Lord. And las but not least everyone complains about everything and no wants to come up with any ideas to better the ministry they just want our pastor to do all the and since we are still unknown our communities dont even know we are the. I don’t want this ministry to fails so please tell what can I do
Hello fellow brothers on Christ I just recently joined the website not too long ago and I just finished reading the article that was posted and I must say that the article is so accurate in so many ways. For one I’m a deacon at non denominational church in NC that focus on healing, speaking in tongues, and hearing what the Lord wants to do in our life. There has been a problem since I started going to that church and its that we have always had a small congregation like barely 20 members and its still liket that now and I’ve been there since november 2010. Let me be the first to say that there are so many problems going like for one there is a cultural difference and division between the american members and nigerian members. The nigerian members have the tendency to offend the american members by saying how this country is spoiled and even I get offended when I hear it even from my pastor sometimes. I feel that’s part of the reason why some of the members left because of statements like that. Do note that even though the ministry that I’m under is suppose to for all nationalities it just doesn’t feel like it it feels more like a church one type of culture and not a church for many cultures and nationalities. Second our praise and worship team is terrible. Because we have a small congregation the members were ramdomly picked to sing and most of them are not the best at singing plus they don’t practice and almost everyone has their own agenda to lead the choir or sing solo and no one is singing for the right reasons which is to sing for the Lord. And las but not least everyone complains about everything and no wants to come up with any ideas to better the ministry they just want our pastor to do all the and since we are still unknown our communities dont even know we are the. I don’t want this ministry to fails so please tell what can I do
I am currently unchurched because it is easier to control my feelings of resentment by avoiding the church than to convince the church to change. I’m old so you might think I’m part of the problem. Age has nothing to do with it. Christ is Joy and Love and that’s what our church misses. We were an inner city church without any helping ministry, as you mentioned. The pastor would hand out canned food or a gas card to the occasional person seeking help, but with a large new facility and congregation of 500 I thought we could do more; I was told the other volunteer services had the areas well covered and to donate to them instead. Our music was plodding and not at all fun, but the words were “Christian” and that’s what mattered. In fact, I was told we didn’t want the music to be so enjoyable the words were overlooked. We offer Lent and mourning 352 days of the year. It’s permissible to sing enthusiastic songs and be joyful on Christmas and the 11 days following, and again on Easter Sunday. When I looked at your article I was expecting to find things like “lack of joy.” I think you may have overlooked something. Churches do need to teach sin and penitence but it should never overshadow joy and salvation.
Hey everyone
Well, after printing Thom’s timely and brilliant post, I am emailing people in our city, our church and burdened by the freezing weather we are experiencing at the moment (and we are not certainly alone), In preparing for my weekend message I wanted to print the short blog and my printer went crazy as it printed over 100 pages (trust me I didn’t ask for it) of comments.
Super discouraged (and admittedly broken and probably wrong). People need Jesus, the Church needs to stop debating about the ‘church’ and start being Jesus to our world. We are dying not because the gospel has lost its power but its people lost their focus. We are the church. The Bride of Jesus, the hope to our world. Gosh friends (did I say gosh) can we get a reality check here???? Come on, please. If you are reading this, you are part of the solution. We are as ‘one’ the church. Say that, and believe it. WE—ARE—THE—CHURCH of JESUS.
We can all, as Christ followers stand, look, give commentary and advice but when the day is over it is not about what you think as brilliant as you might think you are. It is about one thing, which is LOVE.
As I type these words, I am sitting in my nice warm house looking at the super cold weather in the great Pacific NW and as much as I personally hate cold weather, I don’t have to unroll a sleeping bag tonight, I have a bed, I have a home, with actual heat beyond layers of clothes and I have a family.
As much as I hate left-overs I have so much in my refrigerator. As much as I hate the stupid water heater that does ‘it’s thing’ I still can experience a hot shower, personal and unviolated or uninterrupted by any person or any place. Because I am blessed! I am blessed by the God of the Universe to be a blessing to each person I can touch for Jesus. Audacious? Yep. I believe it!!!
This isn’t ‘that’ comment and frankly I rarely comment but I just had to tonight, because people in our world are dying as we write comments, watch TV and sit in our nice warm houses, commenting (me included by the way) and debating about what is, would can or should be and as I type each word, I can’t get out of my mind the little boy or girl who might not be able to have enough warmth to just ‘survive’
As a graduate of seminary, a friend of people who are way smarter than me, I still sit in my house struggling because someone just needs to know they are loved.
We are the church, yep, we are asleep but it is time for the church of Jesus to wake up and take it’s rightful place in our generation. It is time to stop looking at what isn’t and look at what can be because last time I checked Jesus said “with God all things are possible”
It is time to stop debating about what or who we are and START being the church of Jesus.
It is time to honor men like Thom Rainer and others who love the church and are bringing things that ‘matter’ to light
It is time to stop printing 100’s of pages of comments and start being more than saying and thinking. Rhetoric and opinions aren’t working my co-workers.
Jesus said they will know we are his disciples not by what we say but what we do.
Let’s continue ‘doing’ something for the ONE who gave everything for us.
OK. For not planning to comment, this is a bit long.
Do something today. Something that will empty you and exalt Jesus.
It is what we must do.
Good night friends.
Ps. John Bishop