A sobering post from another blog by Thom Rainer. Are there things we need to learn from it?
Autopsy of a Deceased Church
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?
