The Church is Dying
This entry was posted on 5/17/2007 10:29 PM and is filed under My Assertions.
Assertion # 1: The current form of the institutional church is singing its swan song.
(Yes, that means your congregation, I don’t care how seemingly healthy and how big it may be. Don’t bother writing to me and telling me how your congregation is different. It isn’t. It is in the process of dying. If it isn’t, it should be.)
But do not fear… God is always faithful.
Little churches are shriveling and dying. Big churches are growing by adding members from these little churches and by adding those who already have a proclivity to church. Yet, the majority of America doesn’t give a rip about church.
Do you know that a recent Gallup Poll says that 45% of Americans attend church on a given Sunday? Hogwash! Surprisingly, people lie when asked about their worship patterns. Shock! According to Dr. David T. Olsen (a church sociologist who had the novel thought to actually ask churches how many people were actually in church on a given Sunday) only 12% to 14% of Americans actually worship on any given Sunday.
The reason for America’s turning their back on the church is not, as atheists proclaim, because Americans don’t believe in God anymore. It’s just that they are sick of the church (for many good reasons). The church is doing nothing to reach the 86% who are not in our pews. Believe it or not, even though it appears that there are lots of churches, there are actually only 1/2 the churches per capita today that there were in 1950!
WAKE UP CHURCH. STOP YOUR SLUMBERING!
So what is our future? The big churches (your church that you think is healthy and doing well) will just keep getting bigger, for another 10 to 15 years, until there aren’t members from small congregations to scavenge. Pretty soon, that 10,000 member church will be a 9,000 member church, but no-one will notice or worry, because 9,000 is still a pretty darn good size. Then, that 9,000 member church will only be a 5,000 member church. Not to worry. Fire the pastor, and get a new one. The new pastor will help the congregation grow to 6,000 by scavenging that 2,000 member church down the street, and everyone will be happy again. In a decade, that 6,000 member church will be down to 1,000 and someone will finally wonder, “WHAT HAPPENED?”
What happened is that we have forgotten the Great Commission. It isn’t about making members, but about making disciples. It isn’t about taking people from other congregations, but about going out and reaching the lost sheep who do not have any historical connection to the church. It isn’t about “converting” Roman Catholics and Episcopalians and Lutherans to our “brand” of Christianity, but bringing Jesus to those who do not know who Jesus is.
As I said, God is faithful.
There will be a remnant. The remnant are those who have not forgotten their purpose within the mission of God. They will be worshiping in homes and in the highways and byways, though probably not in those white elephant buildings that hold 10,000 people a Sunday. They won’t even have professional clergy. (gasp… pastors, we might actually have to find alternative employment!)
No, the remnant’s financial resources won’t go into buildings or pastor’s salaries, but into feeding the poor, caring for the needy, comforting the dying, and bringing Jesus to the hopeless. Gosh, it will kind of be like the church in China or in many places in Africa… and, even kind of like the early church in the book of Acts in that dusty old thing we call the Bible.
For those who believe that Christ will return before then, I think that is wishful thinking. Now, more than ever, the world needs the church, and I can’t see Christ taking the church out of the world at the time when the world needs the church the most. I may be wrong, but I think we had better prepare for the long haul and stop wistfully putting our eggs in one basket and hoping Jesus will return so that we do not have get off of our fat collective rear-end and actually BE the church in the world.
