Presbytery was last Tuesday. Presbytery meetings are pretty much the same as the last thirty-five years of report I have seen--the same old stuff about rotating pulpits, student sermons, examinations that are virtually interchangeable. Perhaps one day we'll just record the whole meeting and play it back at the next meeting, thus saving us the trip. I doubt if anyone would notice.
However, there are always one or two bits of business that makes this enjoyable expediency impossible. Those are the few minutes of presbytery where something gets done. One in this case was the report on small, struggling churches and how we can help them.
Helping small churches is a lot like trying to get rid of poverty. Churches begin, grow old, and die just like everything else. The church universal continues forever just as the Bible says, but as it does it sheds its individual cells, just like our bodies do. God's church survives. Individual churches do not. They fall like autumn leaves.
The average life expectancy for a church is around fifty-six years according to the last statistics I saw. Furthermore, the average church is small, around seventy people. It would be smaller, if churches were more honest. I don't think this is any different worldwide. If anything, American churches are above average in size when compared to the rest of the world.
There are all kinds of reasons that churches shrink--moving populations, cultural inflexibility, aging leadership, and the general headwind of apostasy that the church faces worldwide. The church's enemies have certainly been active of late.
But if these were the only reasons churches die, I 'm not sure we should be concerned about it. After all, does anyone really think we can cure old age in people? What makes us think we can cure it in churches? Age is a part of life. The closer we get to the grave, the closer we come to our heavenly reward. A closed church never really ends except on earth. The reward of its members continue forever in eternity. It is the premature death of churches that should concern us.
One reason churches die prematurely is found in this report, and hundreds of similar reports lost in the archives of countless denominations. It's not what we do, but what we don't do that dooms our churches revitalization efforts to an early demise.
What do we do to help dying churches? We appoint committees. We launch studies. We conduct interviews and reach concensus. We counsel the churches to get better pastors. We counsel the members to be evangelists. We send church leaders to seminars and educational opportunities. We urge them to participate in evangelistic activities. We provide forums for the free interchange of ideas.
In short, we do everything that any failing business would do and achieve the same results. Nothing happens.
We have all the information we need to revive churches. All the plans are already on the books. All the studies were completed long ago. It isn't knowledge we need. It isn't organization we need. It's passion, plain and simple.
Churches die prematurely because they choose to give up the fight. They go gentle into that good night. They have the Word, but they lack the Spirit. They accept their obsolescence and embrace it, instead of crying out for God's heart.
As I listened to the discussion at our last meeting and heard for the umpteenth time resolutions that churches be encouraged to evangelize, it suddenly struck me why these resolutions never work. (Was there ever a single soul saved from hell because a presybery put a resolution in their official minutes?)
We know we should evangelize--we just don't want to. A heart for evangelism is really just a heart for the lost. We do not even like them. We send missionaries to reach foreigners we distrust. We pray that God will reach young people whose dress, music, language, and lifestyle we despise. We invite our neighbor to church, but only if they look, act, and think exactly like us. We do not want to bring in new members. We want to replace old members with ones just like us. Then, if we are successful in bringing in a few, we complain about too many newcomers.
People will never effectively share the good news to people they do not love. As effective as the Gospel may be, it will never overcome the indifference of thousands of churchmen who are too tired or too afraid to love the lost. Until we actually start experiencing the supernatural love of Christ in our lives, and feeling that same love for people, no amount of urging or scolding will make any difference.
Recently, I sat in a prayer meeting in a small ARP church with an African-American lady from a Pentecostal background who was in attendance. Everyone forgot to tell her that in ARP churches, we prayed sedately, so she just prayed from her heart. I wish I could reproduce the prayer, but any attempt to do so would miss the mark. Suffice it to say that she did not sound at all like a Presbyterian.
She prayed like a Christian. I say that not because of her style, but her content. She prayed for people she did not see and did not know. She prayed for a drug addict out on the street, a soldier on lonely duty, policemen and firefighters, a child who had lost his way, and the soul who was at that moment nearest hell. She did not pray for the lost as a monolithic entity, but as people like ourselves who are lost and hurting and alone.
We go to shopping malls or sit in traffic surrounded by other people. We regard them as a crowd, a nuisance, and impediment to our happiness. Jesus looked at a crowd and saw them as people. "harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
Frankly, I do not care whether any particular institutional church survives. Neither, I think does God care. It's the people in them that He cares for; just as it is His lost sheep in the world's pasture that was His reason for dying. It's like that finger game we used to play when we were young
"Here's the church
And here's the steeple
Open it up
And see the people."
If only we can open the walls of the church to see, not just the people in it, but also the ones who are around it. If we do, then church growth will cease to be our biggest problem.
However, there are always one or two bits of business that makes this enjoyable expediency impossible. Those are the few minutes of presbytery where something gets done. One in this case was the report on small, struggling churches and how we can help them.
Helping small churches is a lot like trying to get rid of poverty. Churches begin, grow old, and die just like everything else. The church universal continues forever just as the Bible says, but as it does it sheds its individual cells, just like our bodies do. God's church survives. Individual churches do not. They fall like autumn leaves.
The average life expectancy for a church is around fifty-six years according to the last statistics I saw. Furthermore, the average church is small, around seventy people. It would be smaller, if churches were more honest. I don't think this is any different worldwide. If anything, American churches are above average in size when compared to the rest of the world.
There are all kinds of reasons that churches shrink--moving populations, cultural inflexibility, aging leadership, and the general headwind of apostasy that the church faces worldwide. The church's enemies have certainly been active of late.
But if these were the only reasons churches die, I 'm not sure we should be concerned about it. After all, does anyone really think we can cure old age in people? What makes us think we can cure it in churches? Age is a part of life. The closer we get to the grave, the closer we come to our heavenly reward. A closed church never really ends except on earth. The reward of its members continue forever in eternity. It is the premature death of churches that should concern us.
One reason churches die prematurely is found in this report, and hundreds of similar reports lost in the archives of countless denominations. It's not what we do, but what we don't do that dooms our churches revitalization efforts to an early demise.
What do we do to help dying churches? We appoint committees. We launch studies. We conduct interviews and reach concensus. We counsel the churches to get better pastors. We counsel the members to be evangelists. We send church leaders to seminars and educational opportunities. We urge them to participate in evangelistic activities. We provide forums for the free interchange of ideas.
In short, we do everything that any failing business would do and achieve the same results. Nothing happens.
We have all the information we need to revive churches. All the plans are already on the books. All the studies were completed long ago. It isn't knowledge we need. It isn't organization we need. It's passion, plain and simple.
Churches die prematurely because they choose to give up the fight. They go gentle into that good night. They have the Word, but they lack the Spirit. They accept their obsolescence and embrace it, instead of crying out for God's heart.
As I listened to the discussion at our last meeting and heard for the umpteenth time resolutions that churches be encouraged to evangelize, it suddenly struck me why these resolutions never work. (Was there ever a single soul saved from hell because a presybery put a resolution in their official minutes?)
We know we should evangelize--we just don't want to. A heart for evangelism is really just a heart for the lost. We do not even like them. We send missionaries to reach foreigners we distrust. We pray that God will reach young people whose dress, music, language, and lifestyle we despise. We invite our neighbor to church, but only if they look, act, and think exactly like us. We do not want to bring in new members. We want to replace old members with ones just like us. Then, if we are successful in bringing in a few, we complain about too many newcomers.
People will never effectively share the good news to people they do not love. As effective as the Gospel may be, it will never overcome the indifference of thousands of churchmen who are too tired or too afraid to love the lost. Until we actually start experiencing the supernatural love of Christ in our lives, and feeling that same love for people, no amount of urging or scolding will make any difference.
Recently, I sat in a prayer meeting in a small ARP church with an African-American lady from a Pentecostal background who was in attendance. Everyone forgot to tell her that in ARP churches, we prayed sedately, so she just prayed from her heart. I wish I could reproduce the prayer, but any attempt to do so would miss the mark. Suffice it to say that she did not sound at all like a Presbyterian.
She prayed like a Christian. I say that not because of her style, but her content. She prayed for people she did not see and did not know. She prayed for a drug addict out on the street, a soldier on lonely duty, policemen and firefighters, a child who had lost his way, and the soul who was at that moment nearest hell. She did not pray for the lost as a monolithic entity, but as people like ourselves who are lost and hurting and alone.
We go to shopping malls or sit in traffic surrounded by other people. We regard them as a crowd, a nuisance, and impediment to our happiness. Jesus looked at a crowd and saw them as people. "harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
Frankly, I do not care whether any particular institutional church survives. Neither, I think does God care. It's the people in them that He cares for; just as it is His lost sheep in the world's pasture that was His reason for dying. It's like that finger game we used to play when we were young
"Here's the church
And here's the steeple
Open it up
And see the people."
If only we can open the walls of the church to see, not just the people in it, but also the ones who are around it. If we do, then church growth will cease to be our biggest problem.
You sir are a visionary that many churches don't want to hear..........because they are waiting to die out. Sadly I am currently part of one.
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