How to kill a church. . .

It is not new and it is a fairly common Facebook meme but that does not make it any less true.

Churches die all the time -- not because God's Word has failed or because of persecution from the enemies of God but simply because the people don't care.  They don't care enough to welcome new families with the Gospel.  They don't care about how negatively they speak of their congregation and their leaders.  They don't care enough to attend regularly (or, perhaps I should have written often!).  They don't care enough to give of their time or their abilities to make sure the work of the Lord is done.  They don't care enough to pass on the faith to their children, grandchildren, or any children.  They love to complain and hate to encourage or speak well of their congregation, their pastor, their parish leaders, or their faith.  They don't care what the Bible says -- especially when it contradicts what they love to think or say or do.  They don't care about eternity as much as they care about today and being happy in the moment.

We close a lot of congregations.  Some of them close because the people have left.  Rural areas are filled with ghost towns as big farms replace family farms and the age of the average farmer continues to climb.  Some of them close because the neighborhood changes faster than the congregation can adjust and the people in the pews are no longer local to the parish.  But more of them close because they were aided into death by fights between pastors and people, among the folks in the pews, or with their denominations.  More of them close because the people just stopped coming and who is interested in a church whose members have lost interest?  More of them close because the cost of keeping them open became too great -- not simply money but time and energy.  More of them close because the programs detracted from the central purpose of worship and worship became a secondary activity instead of the core purpose for which the parish existed.

God may close congregations.  But we are doing such a good job of it, why would He need to?  Maybe it is time for us to stop closing them and start fighting to keep them open.  Maybe it is time for us to take more seriously what we believe, teach, and confess and hold to that faith when it costs us everything that we value most of all.  Maybe it is time for us to pay attention to the core values and purpose of the Church -- something often overlooked in our quest to look busy and active.  

I don't know if the congregations that close have no choice but to close.  I am sure some of them have no choice but I am also sure that other congregations could survive if we worked as hard to keep them open as we are working to close them.  I am not talking about new ideas or new strategies or new paradigms or anything like that.  We have killed as many churches with change as much as they have died because we did not change.  What we need is faithfulness more than invention, endurance more than innovation, and loyalty more than creativity.  God's Word has not failed us.  But we may have failed it.