Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 11 Things I Learned

UPDATE: Listen to the podcast episode about this post.

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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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. The percentage of the budget for members’ needs kept increasing. At the church’s death, the percentage was over 98 percent.
  5. There were no evangelistic emphases. When a church loses its passion to reach the lost, the congregation begins to die.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. The church had no clarity as to why it existed. There was no vision, no mission, and no purpose.
  10. 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.
  11. 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

  • Just a question, maybe our focus is skewed? Just maybe it is not about us or how many people attend a service, or what kind of music is used, or how old body of believers are, or how many “Pastors” we have gone through etc……. Where is Jesus in all of this? Do we know Him? I mean know Him not about Him but know Him?

    The Bride of Christ is not meant to be a system or set of activities or man made roles to fill. God says………….

    12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

    15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

    21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

    27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28 And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues[d]? Do all interpret? 31 Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.
    1Corinthians 12: 12-27

    Have an awesome day

  • I purchased this book about six weeks ago. I saw it when I went to make another purchase. At the time of purchase, I had forgotten that I had bookmarked your book several years ago. I wish I had made the purchase then and perhaps my church would not be in the autopsy. It was not the members; it was the pastor. He did not do anything except draw a paycheck. With God always with us, we have the faith and courage to rebuild. Thank you for an insightful book.

  • Timely! May I also add that, INIQUITY LEADS TO ANTIQUITY.

  • Mark Wallace says on

    I am attending a church that only had a few people coming and had rented out it’s building to an ethnic church to keep going. Somebody passed around some copies of your book and the church decided to merge with the ethnic church, hire the ethnic church’s pastor and then leave their denomination for the ethnic church’s. It was quite a feat having two groups of people with very different outlooks on life come together as one and took three years to turn two congregations into one. Now the church is getting over a hundred on a Sunday, doing medical missions to the ethnic church’s homeland, spending more resources on the needs of the handful that they had and hired a youth pastor for the lunch tables full of high school and college kids that the ethnic church brought with them. The ethnic group decided to avoid speaking their native language in the building and always have non ethnic food available. The older group didn’t hope for a miracle turn around and didn’t count on getting a charismatic new pastor to “build the church back up.” They could have staggered on with a part time pastor but didn’t. It can happen.

  • I am currently in turmoil, trying to decide to leave my church that I have been a member of since birth. It is very obviously dying, and I see no way to bring it back. I ran an outreach ministry for three years, helping those less fortunate in the local community, and only had assistance from the same three church members, week after week. It became more and more time-consuming, and with no extra help, I finally had to shut down the program, which makes me still feel terrible and guilty. My husband and I tried for years to get the church to open itself up to others – people of different ethnicities, gay and lesbian, families with children – and got told by the consistory of the church that we’re here to serve our elderly members, and their concerns come first. Well, my parents were two of the elderly members, and they’ve recently left the church themselves. We haven’t had a full-time pastor for two years, and the pastor who was hired as a long-term interim pastor was chased off by members of the consistory who didn’t care for her sermons (in all honesty, she was not very good at sermons, but was great at pastoral care, and was treated very badly by our consistory.) While our denomination is open and affirming, it is left up to individual churches to decide for themselves to be considered that as well, and members of the consistory told a young woman who grew up in the church that they would be friendly to her and her girlfriend, but they would never be accepted in the church. The church now has less than 20 members who attend services regularly, and the average age is about 55. My husband has said for several years that this is a dying church and wants to leave. I’m a member of committees that have things planned for the next several months, and I’m relied on heavily by the consistory to do those things. This makes me feel guilty for leaving, but at the same time, I feel this is the time to leave. I have found that attending services, meetings, etc., exhausting, both mentally and spiritually. But I’m having a hard time getting past the guilt, even though it’s obvious to me that the church can’t continue down this path, and neither can I. Reading this article pretty much re-affirms our belief that our church will not survive much longer.

    • Thanks for sharing. If you have people who care for you and vice-versa triple think about thinking there is better out there. A lot of what you are saying is the way Americans express their Christianity in ‘churches’. We have strengths and weaknesses.

      Many of us are alone after we get up from our pews and head back to our lives. If you’ve got a friend you are doing better than you think.

    • Mark Wallace says on

      A sure sign of a dying church is that it uses things like guilt as a motivation. They have made you a co-dependent for their dysfunctionality. It’s time to check out. Sometimes you have to just step back and watch something that deserves to fall, fall.

  • Rev Tincy Burns-Moore says on

    Wow shows we are into our same old selfish ways we the church cares not about the dying world just about some on to say smooth things no repentance that for sure now we must get back to the preaching of the truth and let the prophetic voce arise in our mist.
    We are in need of the of the consulter Holy Spirit. We are in need of pray and fasting.. Lord Jesus helps us at this time oh Lord we are surely lost without you!

    in his keep tincy

  • I respect the points Thom came up with. Let me ask beyond this though in spiritual concerns. Where’s the word taught with accurateness based on Christ and the Apostles? Where is the learning to strengthen our faith correctly, how to walk in the Spirit, prayer together, breaking bread together, and body ministry. Where’s the spiritual? Cause you can have 1,000’s congregating and too many ‘missing the mark’ in our lives. Where’s the spiritual emphasis? Business administration marketing demographic understanding and research are not enough–it’s all about the Lord!

  • Thom
    Our story is difficult to put into a few sentences so if we can talk through email that would be great.
    Summary
    The church where I pastor went through a lot of problems.
    Their pastor committed suicide. The next pastor had a severe nervous breakdown.
    When I came the congregation was on life support.
    God has been good but we almost closed two years ago. The congregation was very small, elderly and the finances were a problem.
    The church has grown but we still our represented by a number of items on your list.
    There seems to be a disconnect from the community.
    The building is being worked on since it is old and was in bad condition.
    My greatest concern is that we are very weak in the area of evangelism.
    I would like to talk with you further if you are open to it.

  • I am taking the staff and deacons through the Autopsy book. Chapter 4 relates to the church looking like the community. I have been at this church almost 3 full years. When I asked about community outreach I was told that the church had tried and tried, but with no success. I hate to say this, but it seems as if the surrounding community doesn’t care. It is a community that has transitioned over the last several years, going from an older population to a younger population. We have worked hard to be a light to the community. The congregation has been very opened to receiving new people. They have been extremely flexible in worship style. Yet, as we go out and attempt to minister, we are met with ambivalence. I have read many authors who talk about meeting the needs of the community, but have yet read anyone who will address this question, “Does there come a point where you simply do as Jesus said, shake the dust off your feet and move on?” The church is not in a location that will attract from outside the community. My fear is that the church has less than 5 years viability and 10 years survivability.

    I look forward to reading your thoughts and comments.

  • I was wondering if you or someone from your staff offers church growth consulting? If so I would like to talk to you more about this for the church that I serve in. Thanks

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