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
Thom, I’m sharing this post with my Long-Range Planning Team this Sunday. First Baptist Hazard was founded in 1898, reached it’s peak in the 1960s and has been fading since. This story reinforces the message I’m attempting to get my people to confront. I’m hopeful and excited for the future God has for our church, but I think people need to hear these warnings while they still have time to get a biblical vision for the ministry and get going! Thanks for the post.
Thanks Daryl.
Could you please clarify what you mean by, “4. The percentage of the budget for members’ needs kept increasing. At the church’s death, the percentage was over 98 percent.”
Does this mean the monies were being spent on “personal things- like new cars, personal clothes, etc” and not on actual ministries like, “youth, outreach, etc?”
Thank you!
Joe –
I responded to the same question in a comment below. Thanks.
Most dying churches that I have seen have also had a severe reduction in biblical content preached from the pulpit and taught in the Sunday School ministries. Without the Word, the people shriveled spiritually which led to the smallness of mind that causes the symptoms you indicate.
If you look at Church history revival is always preceded by great preaching. Yet most Church growth books seldom mention preaching at all. The pastor who spent the lion’s share of his time in the study to feed the hungry flock is all but a thing of the past. Most congregations are not hungry and are content with sermons which are the result of few hours in the study, People are starving and only a few people know it but are told by their pastors they are much too busy doing other things than studying. Some are starving and don’t even know it because weak sermons are the new normal. On the flip side of the coin there are pastors who study hard and deliver what would normally be life changing sermons but the people have hard hearts and tell their pastors to spend only very few hours in the study. One of my best friends was driven out of a Church because his sermons had a lot of Bible content. They told him that teaching so much Bible had no place in the Church and he should leave. He did.
I am the youth minister at a church which fits this description, but much closer to the end, I am afraid. Most night services we have around a dozen adults and maybe twice that many kids/teens.
When we consider the book of Revelation and imagine a church that has lost her first love, I believe these will always be the consequences. Yet, this can be very useful for us. We are at a point now where I know that anything that happens in the church is not my doing, but is the very voice of God crying out ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ When sin becomes utterly sinful, God’s grace becomes all the more apparent. I just pray that he can pluck this church and the others mentioned here back from the brink.
That is my prayer too Justin.
Sad. Just very sad. I hate to see a church die. I lean on the fact that The Church is the body and that no power- not even those of us that belong to a church- can stand against The Church. Thanks for the insights. Amy
Thanks Amy. Churches may die, but the Church will never die.
Unfortunately I live in a community where we have many evangelical churches. I say “unfortunately” for when I approached my pastor as to a proposal to bring together all the churches to have a one-day “Jesus Fest” he just looked at me and said, “This will never happen. Pastors are concerned about losing members.” I’ve been fortunate that in my job I am often asked to travel around the world and assist teachers, communities, countries. Often, I go to the local church where the outreach is amazing! One pastor, within a village in Kenya, whose village name is not any map, the road isn’t part of the map, taught me a valuable lesson: Their community had gone without food for two days, but he fed my team after the service for we were “honored guests” (I still get chills thinking about him, and my eyes are watery). He then said, “Thank you for coming, and when you go home, let everyone in the States know that we are praying for you.” That was the first time in my life where I saw one gentle pastor explain to me, in full detail, what the Christian Global Church was about. It seems, most of us don’t understand this, in our local churches here in the States. Thanks for this article Thom.
Thanks Fred.
I worked at a church that had nearly all 11 of these elements. My position was part-time in an associate role. It was also my first experience as a staff member of a church. Early in my tenure I realized that while many said that they wanted me to help the church grow, what they really wanted was to get all their old friends back and return to a previous era. My wife and I left extremely discouraged and jaded about ministry. Now, we’re fearful to even consider serving in another small church because we don’t want to go through a similar experience.
Move out in faith Jacob. Don’t hold back in fear. God has a plan for you.
The Bible has some pretty clear passages as to the purpose of the assembly. Building up the body .. the members .. for the work of service. Prompting one another to love and good works. Providing a format for those gifted in preaching and teaching to manifest their gifts in the body.
Lose sight of those and there’s no real reason to meet, that doesn’t also apply to a social club..
Totally agree Bob.
By the grace of God, we at our 330 yr old fellowship are experiencing a gospel-shaped renewal in life & ministry. I suspect when a person or group of them (a congregation) lose the gospel as central, these 11 downward trends must happen. Praise God for His sovereign rescuing work through The death & resurrection of Jesus! He is our Treasure!
This is it Danny. When the gospel is TRULY central, the opposite of this article is true and the Kingdom is advanced. Pastors and leaders, lift Jesus and His Word up. Lift His mission up. When people fall in love with Jesus, His gospel, and His purpose for us, these 11 things and 11,111 more are easily fixed.
Ken that is it put simply. When a church from the Pastor on down through the congregation is focused on ANYTHING other than the Gospel/Christ it will eventually fall apart. When Christ is real in the leadership’s life and its congregation it stays strong and can withstand any storm that blows through.
Great news Danny, and a reminder that in Christ we always have hope.
I’m afraid this looks extremely familiar. I wrote a similar autopsy last year: You can see the whole things at http://www.philippianjailer.com/2012/02/death-of-local-church.html, but these were my primary conclusions:
1. Churches die when their members stop growing in Christ.
2. Churches die when they “fish off the dock” as their primary outreach method.
3. Churches die when they over-celebrate their heritage.
4. Churches die when they are populated by members who don’t participate in ministry.
Good and insightful stuff Jailer.
churches DIE because they are focused on building their “kingdom” and not God’s KINGDOM. I grew up in a church that was like this article…it spent money on plaques, and name plates, and exterior beautification, but for ministry and needs, there was NEVER any funds for that. As a youth in the church there was zero budget for us, so we created our own. We did every kind of fund raising, all with it redeposited in the HELP fund, we reached out to the community, we did WHATEVER it took. People came in got saved and got involved, and those “pillars” of the church hated the new blood. But the youth group LIVED the Book of Acts…while the youth group thrived, the older portion of the church died off…then a Pastor scandel did us in and that was it. They couldn’t find another to even try. But those in that youth group grew up and went on to serve all over the nation. Now we are the “older” group, and most of us have “left” the church because the focus is what you can “get” from God, rather than what you can “give”. So it saddens me, that in my lifetime I have watched the same stuff over and over, and it doesn’t seem to really change. I have been through the whole gamet, lived church politics and splits, there were great times of revival, but then complatency settles in. And what I see now is people will flock to seminars, events, and concerts, anything entertaining, but serving…very few want to be involved with that. Another startling thing about my peers, most of us even though we married believers, all ended up divorced -some more than once. Not one of us had a lasting successful marriage, very sad. We love the LORD but couldn’t seem to build lasting relationships. And this was surprising, most had Pastors that had been divorced as well, usually because of an affair, sigh.
This is Right On the Mark!
Some number of years ago I was an administrator at a local church which had been founded in 1850.
Within my first year all of the items listed became crystal clear to me and even after a year long series of quiet, private conversations with the Pastor he couldn’t/wouldn’t admit to any of the red and yellow flashing lights.
They are now under the control of the local Presbytery and will be closed down and the property sold. It is very sad to me; God planted that church over 160 years ago and it was allowed to dry rot. God will not bless a church family that ignores Him and His Word.
It is a sad story Keith.