Through a Different Lens

It is no secret that churches are facing declining membership. It is a cause of much handwringing and angst among church members and leaders alike. According to the Religious News Service the most recent survey of faith communities revealed a median decline in church membership of seven percent between 2015 and 2020. Half of the country’s 350,000 congregations have less than 65 people in the pew on any given Sunday morning. The exodus of members due to death and attrition is not balanced by the influx of new members. Average new member retention rates are less than fifty percent over five years. Taken together, it is not long before the projection of church longevity is in the single digits.  In 2019 over 4,500 hundred Protestant churches closed according to estimates from the Nashville-based Lifeway Research.

The truth is, there are good reasons for declining membership and none of them have to do with cultural influences. In the interest of putting forth the biblical argument that we all tend to look at the speck in another’s eye while ignoring the tree growing out of our own face, here are a few thoughts about why the church is struggling:

• The church is on the cutting edge of obsolescence. People make time for the things that are important. The late Phyllis Tickle said that once every two hundred years the church has a huge yard sale and ditches the practices that are no longer furthering the work of the church. We are about a hundred years overdue for the yard sale.
• Religious language has little or no meaning to many people.
• Beyond the biggies like the Ten Commandments, Moses in the bulrushes, the virgin birth and the resurrection, most people have no clue about the bible. And many people are loath to admit they don’t believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection.
• Safe places for people to struggle with honest faith questions and real life struggles are hard to find.
• Churches are not the most welcoming places on the planet. I think walking through the doors of a church for the first time is a very courageous thing. It is made worse if some clod says, “You are sitting in my seat.”
• Churches don’t make worship easy to follow. Fumbling through an unfamiliar hymnbook to find a responsive reading, creedal statement or hymn doesn’t send the “we’re glad you’re here message.”
• Churches are often more concerned about institutional survival than about the mission to which they are called. Potential new members are pounced on to serve on committees and boards when they have scarcely walked in the door.
• Headlines about sex scandals and financial impropriety continue to crop up with alarming regularity. It makes it difficult to take the church seriously when the primary goal of the church is not getting its butt sued off.
• Unstated dress codes and behavioral expectations like when to sit and when to stand can make visitors feel extremely uncomfortable.
• The message of Jesus has been traded in for worshipping Jesus. Following Jesus has been seconded to claiming Jesus as Lord and Savior. Caring for the poor, seeking justice for the oppressed and creating a society where all are cared for equally is subverted for the ease of going with the flow in terms of societal norms and values.
• Spiritual formation and growing mature people of faith is secondary to becoming members of the organization and participating in the organizational structure.
• It’s not that churches aren’t trying, they are. But many are trying to get new members rather than raise faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
• Churches are often more concerned about their buildings than they are about their ministries. The church does not have a ministry, it IS a ministry.
• Few people walk in the door of a church for the first time because life is going along swimmingly. They come because they are struggling, they have questions, their lives are falling apart, their kids are on drugs, their spouses have ambled out the door for greener pastures or they are worried about how to put food on the table. There are a zillion other reasons that draw people to the church. They often discover that church is all about putting your best foot forward, smiling and making nice. Leading with brokenness is not the ethos of the church.
• People often walk out the door of the church for the same reasons; it doesn’t feel safe to share their brokenness.
• There is an over focus on right belief, right action, right doctrine and right creed.  

It may be that 4,500 churches closing is a good thing. It may make room for a resurrection of what the church is called to be.