How Did We End Up Like This?

When my mother celebrated her 80^th birthday, I gave her a T-shirt that said, “If I had known I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself.” Having lived to be more than twice the age I thought I would live to, I guess I could use the same shirt.

I think the same could be said of the church. Churches have, by nature, life cycles. Many churches have been living at end of life portion of the cycle for so long that they are several generations into it. Thus, those who have populated those churches have never experienced church life in any other way. Near death is how they have always known church and think that is just the way church is. Such churches, like many people I know, spend most of their time just staying alive – existing instead of living.

At these churches Board meetings are always a weird combination of boring and stressful. From month to month the agenda remains unchanged. The main topic of conversation is how are we going to pay the bills; we need to fix the roof; who is mad about what; how can we get more people involved in a ministry that has been around for 40 years and the people who started it have been gone for over 10 years; why don’t more people come to our friendly church; this must be the preacher’s fault. Same board meeting month after month after month. There is never any mention of the mission and vision of the church. If a new ministry initiative is brought up it is quickly shot down as something we tried last decade or we can’t afford or we don’t do things like that here. As if what we are doing is so phenomenally successful that we don’t need to investigate doing something new or different.

Far too many of our churches are at the end of life portion of the lifecycle and don’t even know it. Where they are is where they have been for so long the people of the church think it is normal. They look around at other churches and see many of them in similar circumstances and that gives them some sense of relief. The occasional “successful” growing church pops up in the neighborhood but it is written off as an anomaly; a church that lacks depth and substance. Those churches must be doing something wrong because they aren’t like the rest of us.

I know I sound like a “Johnny One Note” by saying this again, but many churches ended up where we are today because we have lost our vision. Without a vision; without a direction; without clear, Kingdom thinking, we stall in place. We lose our momentum; our reason for living. So, we begin to spend most of our resources, our time, energy and money on just staying alive – instead of living. In that way, churches are much like people. Those in the know tell us that the average American incurs 75% of his or her lifetime of medical expenses in the last two years of his or her life. We spend an inordinate amount of money just trying to stay alive a while longer. It sounds eerily like the church. I believe the church can make a different choice.

1.     The church could recognize that it is dying and decide to do something positive with the information. The church could choose to close its doors, sell its property and invest that money in a new church initiative.

2.     The church could realize that it is very sick and dying and decide to do whatever it takes to get well.

Neither road is taken by many dying churches because making such a choice requires two important components often lacking in church leadership. The first is honesty. It is difficult to take that honest look at oneself and conclude that you are very ill; that you are failing. We call it denial. We are much more comfortable continuing on with business as usual. This approach doesn’t require anything new: Any new thinking; any new visioning; any new people; any new ministries and no deeper commitment. It is difficult to see and then admit that what we are doing is not only failing to grow the church, it is killing the church. Some churches I have consulted with remind me of an experience I had during my student ministry days. At the request of a family member I visited a lady who was extremely ill. In our conversation I discovered that the onset of her illness coincided with her divorce – a divorce that happened several years before and that she was still very bitter about. When I pointed this out to her and suggested that if she forgave her ex-husband God might heal her. She said, “You are probably right. But it would rather die.” And she did.

Secondly, for a church to decide to do whatever it takes to get well takes courage. Strong and consistent courage is necessary to face some unhappy truths about your beloved church; to make those difficult and unpopular decisions; it is necessary to stop doing some cherished ministries that are no longer productive; it is necessary to change what you are doing; it is necessary to move new leadership into place; to move members from being the served to being the servants; to move the focus from inward to outward; to make decisions based, not on what the present membership wants, but on what will attract those who have yet to come to the church. All of this takes courage.

Lack of clear vision caused many churches to end up like this. The good news is, you don’t have to end up like that.

Copyright © 2013, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved