Is Church Death a Part of Church Life? tagged: , , ,

Is Church Death a Part of Church Life?

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We had one of those “teachable life-lesson moments” at our home around this time last year. Our beloved cat, Lizzie, passed away quietly on the sofa in my study around 6:00 AM one cold autumn morning. Over the years, Lizzie had become, almost exclusively, my daughter Laura Beth’s cat. Laura Beth had a very strong connection with Lizzie. They spent a lot of time together. Lizzie slept with Laura Beth every night.Laura Beth was with Lizzie in that moment when she drew her final breath. It was heartbreaking, and there were many tears. But a little while later, after we buried Lizzie under the shade of the pines in our yard, I got a chance to talk to Laura Beth alone. I shared with her a simple reality. The older you become, the more that death becomes a more common … even an expected … part of life. Sometimes it is even welcomed.

Might this attitude toward death be applicable in church life, as well?

I found an interesting article written by Frank Walton of the Northside Church of Christ in Tucson, Arizona, entitled “The Life-Cycle of a Church.” In that article, he proposes that there are three stages in the life of the church. They are:

  1. The Risk-Taker Stage – A stage of zealous ministry and growth.
  2. The Caretaker Stage – A time of comfort zone and “status quo.”
  3. The Undertaker Stage – A time of “living in the past” and, ultimately, death.

Insightful stuff. I do, indeed, think we need to help our pastors, church members, and even our denominational leaders, understand that death is a natural part of life, even in the life of a local church. I don’t know the exact statistics, but the last time I looked, we were closing the doors on some 3,000+ churches a year in the United States. Local churches are, indeed, dying. While on a mission trip in Port Arthur, Texas, last summer, we drove by one dead, empty church building after another. The stories were all so incredibly sad. In many cases, the financially bankrupt congregations simply walked away and abandoned their facilities.

Based upon the yearly baptism and growth figures in the SBC, I would venture to guess that a huge number of our churches are in Walton’s “Caretaker” and “Undertaker” stages. We often talk about how the majority of our churches are “plateaued.” I think that’s being a bit on the optimistic, generous side (if one pays attention to the ACP reports). As the Gen-Xers and Postmoderns remain largely unreached in North America, I’m guessing that we are about 10-15 years of funerals away from a drastic demonstration of church closures in the Southern Baptist Convention. That incredible generation that has been the backbone and the financial foundation of the SBC will soon be going to be with the Lord in greater and greater numbers. Southern Baptists must plan. We simply cannot afford to live in the past.

Something must change … very dramatically … within the next few years.

So, what’s the answer? Frankly, I don’t know. But I do think we need more “Risk-Takers.” We need more new churches that intentionally attempt to reach the unreached and fringe groups within our culture. We use that methodology overseas, so why are we so reluctant to use a “people group” approach in our own society? There seems to be an overwhelming aversion to ideas such as “target groups” or “niche churches.” But I believe that aversion is more based upon how we think things “ought to be” rather than upon how our culture really is. It is fragmented and divided. Our culture is full of a huge diversity of “people groups” and sub-cultures. We must do something to reach them where they are, rather than try to convince them to desire and long for (as we do) a generationally homogenous church.

We must develop this “missional” mindset that all of the “hot” new books are talking about.

We need a strategic, concerted effort to rejuvenate our vast army of plateaued churches and urge them back toward the world of risk … the task of engaging the 21st century culture (not the 1950’s culture) with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I believe we need to find ways to partner existing churches and their facilities with church planters for the purpose of starting new congregations. Evangelical Presbyterian blogger (and, I thoroughly believe, Great Commission Christian) Rob Mitchell of Memphis, Tennessee, recently wrote about this on his blog, The Naked Church, in an article entitled “Embracing Congregational Death to Plant New Churches.”

Rob wrote two particularly insightful, thought-provoking, and (for us Southern Baptists), biting paragraphs. Consider his insights:

“There are thousands of moribund churches across America where a few dozen septuagenarians gather each Sunday morning and reminisce, treasuring memories of what it used to be like and wishing the clock could be turned back. The facilities may be maintained if there is money saved, but in some the incoming offerings cannot cover the expenses of maintaining a facility that once was home to a far larger congregation, and the signs of slow decay are everywhere. These churches are like museums. No one updates the bulletin boards any more, and walking through the old church everywhere you can see old pictures left over from when there was some life and vibrancy left. Now the church is on life support. An influx of cash from a bequest or sale of part of the facility may give the appearance of life for a little while, but the reality is something other, like the macabre 1989 comedy “Weekend at Bernie’s”, where living people hang out and party with a dead body (the dead character Bernie Lomax), propping up the corpse and pretending it’s alive so they can continue to have fun.”

How true is that? We all know it is! How many of our Southern Baptist churches are on “life support,” sitting on a wealth of decaying real estate, waiting for the last surviving member to “turn out the lights” before they leave? What would be a true “kingdom response” to the reality of dying churches? Here’s what Rob suggests …

“There are hundreds of heritage congregations … who have unused facilities in prestigious locations. The facilities may not be useful for churches any more, but the sale of these facilities could easily support many new church plants. Most church plants struggle through their first years of existence. If a fund the size of the sale price of Eudora’s old facility (a declining church’s building sold for $1.3 million in Memphis) were to be devoted to church planting, how many new churches could be kick-started? Fourteen churches with a startup fund of a quarter million each? Now THAT would be kingdom thinking.

More than three thousand churches close each year in America. A majority have facilities to be disposed of. What better end could come for these churches than to fund a new wave of church planting? Sure, it’s an impossible notion. But with Christ, all things are possible. Who knows but that the Holy Spirit can even speak to older Christians in moribund congregations?”

So, what do you think? Does Kingdom thinking compel us to continue the consumption of Gospel resources within dead and dying churches (I know that sounds harsh, but is it not true?) … or does true a Kingdom economy say that we should embrace congregational death for the sake of TRUE church life?

Hopefully, we won’t have to see many more signs like the one in the picture. What do you think? Is church death sometimes a part of church life?