It broke my heart.
Another church closed. This church had unbelievable potential. Indeed, it had its own “glory days,” but only for a season. But, 10 years ago, few would have predicted this church’s closure. Today, it is but another statistic in the ecclesiastical graveyard.
I know. We don’t compromise doctrine. I know. We must never say we will change God’s Word.
But many of our congregations must change. They must change or they will die.
I call these churches “the urgent church.” Time is of the essence. If changes do not happen soon, very soon, these churches will die. The pace of congregational death is accelerating.
What, then, are some of the key changes churches must make? Allow me to give you a fair warning. None of them are easy. Indeed, they are only possible in God’s power. Here are nine of them:
- We must stop bemoaning the death of cultural Christianity. Such whining does us no good. Easy growth is simply not a reality for many churches. People no longer come to a church because they believe they must do so to be culturally accepted. The next time a church member says, “They know where we are; they can come here if they want to,” rebuke him. Great Commission Christianity is about going; it’s not “y’all come.”
- We must cease seeing the church as a place of comfort and stability in the midst of rapid change. Certainly, God’s truth is unchanging. So we do find comfort and stability in that reality. But don’t look to your church not to change methods, approaches, and human-made traditions. Indeed, we must learn to be uncomfortable in the world if we are to make a difference. “We’ve never done it that way before,” is a death declaration.
- We must abandon the entitlement mentality. Your church is not a country club where you pay dues to get your perks and privileges. It is a gospel outpost where you are to put yourself last. Don’t seek to get your way with the music, temperature, and length of sermons. Here is a simple guideline: Be willing to die for the sake of the gospel. That’s the opposite of the entitlement mentality.
- We must start doing. Most of us like the idea of evangelism more than we like doing evangelism. Try a simple prayer and ask God to give you gospel opportunities. You may be surprised how He will use you.
- We must stop using biblical words in unbiblical ways. “Discipleship” does not mean caretaking. “Fellowship” does not mean entertainment.
- We must stop focusing on minors. Satan must delight when a church spends six months wrangling over a bylaw change. That’s six months of gospel negligence.
- We must stop shooting our own. This tragedy is related to the entitlement mentality. If we don’t get our way, we will go after the pastor, the staff member, or the church member who has a different perspective than our own. We will even go after their families. Don’t let bullies and perpetual critics control the church. Don’t shoot our own. It’s not friendly fire.
- We must stop wasting time in unproductive meetings, committees, and business sessions. Wouldn’t it be nice if every church member could only ask one question or make one comment in a meeting for every time he or she has shared his or her faith the past week?
- We must become houses of prayer. Stated simply, we are doing too much in our own power. We are really busy, but we are not doing the business of God.
Around 200 churches will close this week, maybe more. The pace will accelerate unless our congregations make some dramatic changes. The need is urgent.
Hear me well, church leaders and church members. For many of your churches the choice is simple: change or die.
Time is running out. Please, for the sake of the gospel, forsake yourself and make the changes in God’s power.
Posted on March 27, 2017
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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173 Comments
I wish the church would withdraw from the political arena. It’s a distraction from the church’s primary spiritual purpose. I’m dismayed that many evangelical leaders endorsed Trump despite his offensive past.
With all due respect, we wouldn’t have a United States of America if our founding fathers had adopted the attitude you just expressed. As Lincoln so rightly stated, our American government is BY the people, FOR the people and OF the people. We are a self-governing nation. God forbid that Christians would exempt themselves from this patriotic duty! P.S. Should a study be done on the character of past presidents to compare them to our current one, we would no doubt find most all of them in like company (our current technological age has allowed us to be privy to much more information that we have ever been privy to before!).
While not specifically applicable to a local congregation, another thing we must do or suffer the consequences is totally turn around and transform who we are graduating from seminaries and placing as pastors in churches, and who we are choosing to be Bishops.
A huge number of new pastors believe their ministry is another form of social work or social activism. For a stunning number of these people, the notion of being “Born again” or seeing Jesus Christ as a real, living, personal entity in their lives who relates to them on a personal level and names them and claims them, might as well be words spoken in Hindu. The process of selecting and consecrating Bishops is dead in the water because it has become so saturated with political correctness, racial, gender and ‘quota’ agendas. Little wonder the entire denomination is in a 4o year straight down nosedive.
I understand what you’re saying about the pc agenda; however, there were too many cases where mere mortals from various demographics were ignored by people in church hierarchies. People wondered just how these leaders got and kept their positions. Some of this pc effort was meant to just get someone who cared. That is something that seminaries can’t really can’t teach.
It sometimes seems not so much that the church has evolved to stop favoring or offending groups, but rather that we have simply changed the groups we find blessing in favoring or offending. I apologize for the cynicism.
The list has some brilliance that sets it apart from others. I will spend some more time in it for sure.
Thom, that’s one of the best articles that you’ve ever published; and that’s saying a lot because you’ve published some extraordinarily good stuff. Simply put… That’ll preach, and I hope that an abundance of preachers will preach it.
You are a great encouragement, Joel. Thank you.
This article is correct on all nine points. I believe it misses the bigger points, though. You are right in saying people don’t come to church because of how it looks any more. Tradition is also something people do when grandmother is in town. There are some points most miss, though.
1. Memories of wrongdoing are long and unforgiving while good things are quickly forgotten. People know that we have 1000 years of behaving badly. They are taught about the actions of the Holy Roman Empire in school. In the name of Christianity thousands, if not millions, were slaughtered in the crusades, our hunting of witches, all of the wars fought over whether a nation had the right to not be Catholic, executions of citizens who weren’t publicly good Catholics (let alone, not believers), and more. During the dark ages, “The Church” dramatically held back scientific progress and social reform. Even in more recent history we have the name of God being used for manifest destiny, holding back civil rights, women’s rights, and a huge number of other problems. Instead of acknowledging this, many ignore or worse, deny our past. Not only that, there are current groups like Westburough in the public eye, continuing to tarnish our name. Acknowledging and taking mistakes made seriously, is the first step to showing people we are different.
2. We are seen by many as judgemental, legalists, and hypocrites. This isn’t completely undeserved. Many churches have hurt people by exhibiting these traits. We need to realize that God convicts and changes people, not us. He takes us how we are. It is our mission to introduce people to Christ and his love, not to tell them about all of their failings. God has different priorities in different people’s lives and we should not be trying to take His place in that. What seems to be an obvious flaw to us, may not be the one God wants to be fixed first and trying to get people to focus on what we want them to change often takes focus away from His work in changes in their lives. As far as the last one, it is important that we practice what we preach, so to speak. There are too many who aren’t and we need to remember that we have a reputation to overcome.
3. We are all guilty of this next one on some level. We try to plant the seed before preparing the field. Instead of taking time to simply be accepting and demonstrating the love God has placed in our hearts, we start off everything with a sermon. People don’t want to have God shoved down their throats, not do they want to be beaten with a Bible. They already know who we are and who we represent. If we allow our lives and outreach to be examples of God love, peace, and forgiveness, people will want what we have and that is when they will be receptive to the word. This is about a relationship with Christ, not merely checking the box and being saved. Relationships and introductions take time and cannot be forced. That being said, the polar opposite is also wrong. We need to be careful to learn to recognize and watch closely for the time when a person becomes receptive to what God has to offer. We need to be ready to pray with people who are hurting and ask but careful not to be pushy with theology and dogma. God is a comfort to those who believe but often people who aren’t yet ready see it as platitude.
There is more, but those are the bigger ones I’ve seen.
Thanks for your insightful thoughts. I’m a senior citizen who attended SBC churches most of my life, but I’m not attending at all now. I’ll add one thought here that you alluded to: most SBC churches that I know about seem to be trying to fit a First Century culture into a 21st Century world. That isn’t working well with a lot of folks.
Yes, relevance would be number four on my list. It’s not just the SBC churches. That problem affects congregations in every denomination. Thankfully, there are congregations in just about every denomination that are fixing that problem, though.
Actually, the SBC churches (and Reformed, and Nazarene, and Brethren, and non-denom, etc.) that I’ve visited appear to be forcing a 17th – 19th Century Christendom culture into a 21st Century Post-Christian world.
Good point David. God has giving some very specific instructions for believer function that are trans-cultural for any time period or any location on the globe. They will work anywhere without adaptation. That are based on our spiritual identity. We are an organism, a body, with many members. Any culture can practice that identity. It’s driven by the Spirit who can guide any culture to practice being “members of one another” with Jesus as the “head”.
Great article! In my opinion every point is valid, but 4 & 7 echoed loudly in my mind and spirit. In my experience, we definitely spend more time talking about not only evangelism but also authentic discipleship and especially prayer. Hardly no one would disagree about the importance of all these things, but , for far too many, it is mostly talk and little doing.
I think we probably all know of amazing churches that God is powerfully working in and through. I’ve studied several of these and one of the common threads among them is prayer. They strongly practice corporate prayer and depend on God for results.
Well said, Tom.
We slowly moved away from having “business meetings.” We now have “What’s Happening Times” at the start of each Wednesday and Sunday Evening Service. Anyone can bring up anything or give a report (they now usually do this in a form of prayer request or praise report.) Anything needing an answer or decision is referred to the proper committee for action. I limit this to only 10 minutes. It may not work for all churches, but it has for mine.
It seems to me that many of those concerns would be solved if in our discipleship we aimed at developing Kingdom-minded believers.
We have one, two hour, meeting per month. It works great. Anything more, I have come to believe, is just part of some denial process.
Thanks for a great perspective. Wrote my blog and linked my readers to this.
Thank you!
Great post! I’m afraid many of our churches are already dead and have been for years. They are the walking dead of the church who are hanging on just to take care of a building.
My wife and I took a small church that had great potential. We tried to teach them how to be a praying church and how to do evangelism. Then we many one small change in the bulletin and it became a lynching mob wanting to call a business meeting to vote on disciplinary action.
Ouch.
The “Holy Bulletin” needs to be replaced with the “Holy Spirit” and “Holy Bible”. Two for one deal there. Can’t stand bulletins!!!
My first church had no bulletin and an offering drop box at the rear door. Church never grew in numbers but had all walks of life represented.
At the very least, I wish people would actually read out bulletins!
So, if you’re in a second chair position, how do you affect these changes without usurping the Senior Pastor, especially if you believe change like this needs to come from the head under-shepherd?
Patience and prayer. I’m currently reading a “second chair” book, and am reminded that God has ordained my senior pastor as the leader and shepherd for this congregation. I am ordained to serve under him (gladly), and part of my responsibility is to build a relationship with my pastor on trust so that I can speak truth openly. He may not always agree with me, or implement my suggestions or ideas, but I know I’m heard. I’m not always right so I trust my Pastor’s leadership and I will follow patiently for God to work change in me, in my Pastor and in my church.
Thank you very much Dr. Rainer. Well said.
Thank you as well, Dimas.