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
One comment on your observation of members 67 and over. Older members are just as much a part of the body of Christ as the young. The megachurches always gear to the young and marginalized the older members.
We have all ages in my church, but the older members are a part as well as the young. When an 80 year old man in our church passed recently, the church was packed out with members of our community because of the effect he had on them.
I will be 65 in July. Do I need to quit being a part of a church community because I am getting older>
Dennis R., I am not sure which person you are replying to, but I have seen no one say Seniors should stop being part of a church community because they are getting older. The original observations in the article just said that some were refusing to engage the community the church was in.
I was replying to your comment in the original blog:
“All of the active members were over the age of 67 the last six years of the church. “
We live in a shrinking community, and one of the most impoverished counties in the US. This article is true of 99% of the churches in this area, especially those that come from strong denominational background. Your #1 is my biggest gripe (and I have communicated that to them), that their view of evangelism is doing VBS and inviting people on Sunday mornings.
This article speaks loudly to a generation where going to church could be considered the norm. But as society began to change so few congregation were willing to. Most developed very conservative patterns of worship with same old program repeated over and over. I am in my second year of pastoring a church that was dying. It didn’t take long to realize that the Pastor before was just working to maintain. It had been years since they had really engaged in evangelism. No one seemed to know what to do because they hadn’t had the leadership to teach them and challenge them. When I became the Pastor there were only 23 people on average attending. When I began to challenge them and work to rebuild the very foundation and up it didn’t take long before I began to lose people for reasons that just weren’t true. Attendance feel to just 12. Now in my second year and in just the past month we have seen that number double. There have people who were too afraid to do anything who are now working in leadership and volunteering. God is blessing because we are moving in the opposite direction of these 10 things that kill a churches ministry. There is a great spirit where at first there wasn’t. I am just so thankful for leading and seeing His Spirit at work in the people.
This is happening to my home church. I left there a little over 3 years ago because they stopped having anything to offer me and I had become hungry for the Lord, to serve him and to worship him. It breaks my heart to see it, but they have no outreach and all the children have gone. There are just a few diehard folks still there and a couple of families who think they own the church. But for one or two things, this autopsy could describe that church.
Dear Thom, Thank you for the blog. What do you recommend the church do, when it doesn’t have a lot of financial resources, for numerical growth?
After reading your story and the 11 points, I was suddenly reminded of a remark from years ago by an old friend: “What you tolerate, you soon embrace.”
Very insightful. In particular, I think your first point deserves its place up top. And I think too many congregations that don’t look like the community in which they’re situated too often mistake so-called “outreach” ministries in which a few members “help” (often the activity chosen doesn’t really provide anything the surrounding community wants or needs) “those poor people” without listening to them or engaging with them as real, gifted human beings.
I think in particular of one time when I was going to a church that had a “homeless ministry” of leaving bag lunches in the courtyard once a week that homeless people could pick up and a “20s/30s ministry” designed to attract “those young people.”
One week, a homeless man in the community dropped by on the wrong day for the “homeless ministry,” but it happened to be right before the “20s/30s group,” and the man was in his 20s. I brought him to the 20s/30s group with me. I was mortified by the conduct of many who were there, who kept asking whether the man understood that he was there on the “wrong” day. Many expressed anger — some quite heatedly — at me for bringing him. And I was disappointed that the priest in charge of the group was one of the angry ones.
Or there was the time when, on my Sunday of employment in a congregation, a congregant approached me at the end of the service asking me to “do something” about the homeless man who had come to the service, worshipped with the rest of us, and was now praying in the back pew. I agreed immediately to do something — I invited the man to coffee hour and introduced him to parishioners as a guest. Oh, and I gave him a set of our newcomers’ materials. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I got a ton of flack about it, and was fired by the head of the lay parish board as soon as he could.
A congregation that distinguishes labels charitable activity to non-members “Outreach” and does not welcome those to whom they’re “reaching out” in the same way they welcome folks of their own social class and/or ethnicity is missing out on a lot of abundant life God wants for us.
Good word Sarah. Thank you.
Sarah, you are spot-on. The parish where I was received into the Episcopal Church has a lunch ministry for everyone each weekday. One of the great things about that church then was that some of the weekday guests became weekend worshipers, and the church was accepting of that. It made me feel good that I was part of that parish family.
Our congregation has been generous in its support to a day center helping unhoused and one-the-verge people. We’ve given money, donations in kind, and volunteers. Recently at Sunday service a woman came whose packed shopping cart and oddly assorted clothing signaled she was homeless. She was welcomed and treated with respect, although a church staffer felt called to warn her that we had no food bank. She parked her cart, accepted my companionship, and enjoyed the service. Later in the week she came to two activities, where she was again received with warmth. On the following Sunday, one who had welcomed her previously was upset to find the woman “camping out.” She had again brought her shopping cart. I reassured the congregant that the woman was not trying to live at the church and was proactively pursuing improvement in her life. After service, the pastors blithely greeted people, standing right in front of the cart. I am so thrilled that many people in my church were happy to share worship and engage the woman in conversation as a dignified person.
Good discussion. I did my Doctoral dissertation on dying churches. The most striking thing about the research was that you can’t stop a congregation from dying. It is going to happen. The question is will they be open enough to allow something new to begin and will they support/fund it? The other thing to note is there is a growing need for “Hospice Pastors” . These are specially trained pastors who help congregations die well and leave legacies that matter. The disciplines of the emerging field of palliative care are brought into play for the congregation in similar ways that they are utilized with people. I believe this to be an emerging specialty, much the same way that Interim Pastors emerged as a specialty. It will be interesting to see if seminaries will respond with special courses or if those who wish to focus here will need to get training in other ways.
Thom,
Thank you so much for posting this. As a young pastor in the SBC, I feel particularly called to replant/ revitalize churches such as the one you described. The problem I find is the same that you described in this article. Most churches are unwilling to have a young man, like come in with a fresh vision/ breath and lead while honoring the legacy that was laid before our time. I, as well as many others, realized it’s a difficult task but we are willing to take it on with the power of the Holy Spirit. My wife and I are praying for opportunities to encounter a church that is willing to stand on it’s Gospel DNA while reflecting the socioeconomic and cultural changes that are happening around it. If there are places like this around I would love to know. Again thank you so much for posting this article and warning other Pastors of the impending closure if change doesn’t happen.
SDG
May I repeat Joe’s question, “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.” “
“Members’ needs” refer to any expenditures other than those that are used specifically to reach and minister to those outside the church. So staff salaries, building costs, materials for members, etc. would all fit under the nomenclature “members’ needs.”