When Should A Church Close?

The Tennessean, the daily newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee, featured an article today on small churches and when they should close.  In the article, Short on Cash, People, Small Churches Consider Closing, reporter Bob Smietana profiles three Nashville area churches that had to face their own mortality.  Bob was kind enough to quote me in the article, and I appreciate the approach he took in writing the piece.

The article also quoted Dr. Israel Galindo, author of The Hidden Lives of Congregations, which I think is the best book any pastor can read, especially pastors of small, established churches.  Galindo helps pastors and church leaders identify what “style” their church reflects, and where their church might be in the life cycle of churches profile.  I’ve written about this book before, but it’s worth mentioning again.

The article also points out that churches have taken as much as a 40% hit financially in the economic downturn that started in 2008.  When he interviewed me for the article, Bob asked me what factors indicate that a small church might need to close.  The three factors I identified were people, money, and mission.  The loss of any one of those is like kicking one leg of a three-legged stool out from under it — without a significant balancing act, a two-legged stool isn’t going to stand very long.

So, when is it time for a church, usually a small church, to close?   When the combination of people, money, and mission no longer works.  Churches don’t exist just to exist; churches exist for the purpose of mission. When the mission is no longer viable because there are not enough people or financial resources to support it, then a small church ought to seriously consider how it might re-invent itself, or even plan its own funeral.

What do you think?  Are there other factors that suggest when a church might close its doors?  Or are people, money, and mission the big three?

Small groups are the building blocks of small churches

Our church is typical of many established, small town churches.  Three years ago, our congregation was made up mostly of older adults.  Of course, older adults are the backbone of many congregations.  They provide a higher-than-average amount of financial support, they attend with above-average faithfulness, and they love their church.

Our senior adults are wonderful, and they realized that for our church’s future we needed to reach out to younger adults and young families.  But the mass mailings we had tried did not produce new visitors.  To add to our difficulty, the region in which we live has been in an economic downturn for several years.  Few jobs exist for younger adults, and few young families were moving to our area.

But three years ago we started a younger adult Sunday School class with about 5 younger adults.  I’m using the term “younger” because age is a relative thing.  We needed to reach folks in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, but we weren’t going to do that all at once.  We believed that if we started lowering the age-range, we would eventually reach young families with young children.

Yesterday at our church-wide covered-dish lunch, 12 children were running around the fellowship hall while the adults finished eating and talking.  Six of the 12 were preschoolers; 5 are elementary schoolers; and, 1 is a middle schooler. These are our class members’ children.  As the sound of giggles and laughter bounced around the room, all of us were glad to see children playing around us, again.

Our class also had a record attendance yesterday with 19 present. A couple of our class members were out, so the number could have been higher.  These younger adults have already begun taking leadership positions.  One was elected a deacon last year, another takes a turn once a month leading our children’s time during worship, and 6 of the class members are leading our new Family Ministry Team.

Three years ago we started with five.  Now there are over 20.  Our class with their children now account for 20-30% of our attendance each week.

Starting a new class or small group isn’t glamorous, and it’s not a new idea.  But, starting a new class is a strategy that works.  I remember years ago Lyle Schaller, author and church consultant, saying “new people need new groups.”  If you want to attract new people to your church, start a new class, be patient, practice hospitality, and watch as the group grows and matures.  Small groups are still the building blocks of small churches.

Two Churches Die, One Emerges To Reach Out

“I’m the most unsuccessful pastor in Pacifica,” Jonathan Markham observed four years ago.  Markham’s church in affluent San Mateo county southwest of San Francisco was growing spiritually he thought, but not numerically.  Church attendance hovered around 15-20 each week with few visitors attending.  Located near the Bay area, the coastal town of Pacifica boasts an upscale, affluent California lifestyle where churches compete for residents’ attention.  But Markham’s church had failed to attract many from the community.

In an unusual but providential twist, Jonathan Markham was asked to serve as interim pastor of a second congregation which met at a different time.  Attendance at this church ran about 30 each week.  It wasn’t long before Markham wondered if the two struggling congregations he led might become one.  He approached church leaders of both congregations with the idea of creating a new church to reach Pacifica.  By March 2007, both older congregations had disbanded and a new church was born.

This brand-new congregation, New Life Christian Fellowship, opened its doors to the community for the first time in September, 2007.  Attendance shot up into the 80s each Sunday.  But, the real confirmation of their church rebirth came on Easter Sunday, 2009.  The church packed 153 people into its sanctuary, and church members had personally invited each guest.

Here’s how they did it:

1.  One pastor led two congregations. In typical church mergers, two congregations with two pastors have to sort out vision, staffing, finances, and worship styles.  Jonathan Markham was uniquely positioned to guide both congregations toward one dream — a viable, effective church for their community.

2.  Discernment involved each church. An exploratory work group of six people, three from each church, was selected to answer one question posed by Pastor Markham: “Is it God’s will for two churches to die, and another one to rise in their place?”  Markham thought discernment would take six months.  Instead, the group unanimously answered, “Yes” by the end of their first meeting.  The positive responses of both groups created momentum for the new church.

3.  Everything old had to die. After the initial decision to combine congregations, details had to be worked out.  Both groups agreed everything was on the table.  Old church names were scrapped in favor of a brand-new identity.  Meeting space

Evangelical leaders overlook minorities in expected US church decline

In a National Association of Evangelicals survey from May, NAE board members polled were pessimistic about the growth of churches in the U.S.. However, according to the NAE website, there was overall optimism that Christianity would grow worldwide, but that growth would primarily occur Africa, South America, Asia, and even China.  The NAE site stated:

“Evangelical leaders are very bullish on the future growth of Christianity, except in America,” according to Leith Anderson, President of the National Association of Evangelicals.

The group surveyed, all NAE board members, is made up of CEOs of 60 denominations, plus other evangelical organizations from publishing to education.

But, are these NAE leaders overlooking minority ethnic groups and churches in their pessimism?  According to Soong-Chan Rah’s new book, The Next Evangelicalism, they might be.  The book is subtitled, Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity, and Rah pulls back the curtain to reveal a burgeoning ethnic church that is alive, well, and growing in the United States.  These ethnic minorities, many of them immigrants from majority world countries, are often overlooked in the count of congregations and in leadership conferences.

Soong-Chan Rah, a Korean-American who teaches church growth and evangelism at North Park Seminary, contends that these ethnic churches and their leaders are often invisible to the white evangelical community.

“Contrary to popular opinion, the church is not dying in America; it is alive and well, but it is alive and well among the immigrant and ethnic minority communities and not among the majority white churches in the United States.”  p. 14

Rah cites three areas which he contends form the “western, white cultural captivity of the church” in the US:  individualism, consumerism and materialism, and racism.  These he calls the heartbeat (individualism); soul (consumerism); and residue (racism) of the white church culture.

My online friend Shaun King, a young African-America pastor in Atlanta, recently decried in no uncertain terms the closed circle of white church experts who are featured in conference after conference.  Rah echoes King’s frustration:

“While the demographics of Christianity are changing both globally and locally, the leadership of American evangelicalism continues to be dominated by white Americans.”

The message a sea of white faces sends, according to Rah, is that “the real experts in ministry are whites.  Nonwhites may offer some expertise in specialized areas of ministry (such as urban ministry or racial reconciliation), but the theologians, the general experts, the real shapers and movers of ministry, are whites.”

When you couple Rah’s book with Mark Noll’s new book, The New Shape of World Christianity, you begin to sense that the ground has shifted under an aging, and perhaps ethnically insensitive evangelical church.

Noll recognizes the growing church in the majority world with these words:

But today — when active Christian adherence has become stronger in Africa than in Europe, when the number of practicing Christians in China may be approaching the number in the United States, when live bodies in church are far more numerous in Kenya than in Canada, when more believers worship together in church Sunday by Sunday in Nagaland than in Norway, when India is now home to the world’s largest chapter of the Roman Catholic Jesuit order, and when Catholic mass is being said in more languages each Sunday in the United States than ever before in church history — with such realities defining the present situation, there is a pressing need for  new historical perspectives that explore the new world situation.” p. 10

The question I have about the NAE board is how many are white?  If the answer is what I think it is — probably 95% — then no wonder they are pessimistic about the future of Christianity in the US.  The next question is this — When will we open our eyes to see the diversity of the followers of Christ who may not look like the old face of evangelicalism, but are certainly its new face.

Frankly, I am encouraged by both books by Rah and Noll, which are different perspectives on the same subject — the rise of multi-ethnic Christians around the world.  Maybe if the current crop of evangelical leadership looked up from their reams of reports indicating the decline of their churches, they might see the next wave of new believers ready and eager to step on the stage of Christian history worldwide.  What do you think?

(As is my policy, I purchased both books referenced in this post and received no incentive from anyone to mention these books.)

If God were GM, He would close a lot of dealerships

Both General Motors and Chrysler have announced that up to 25% of their dealerships will not have their franchises renewed.  Reasons cited were:

1. Some dealers did not carry the full brand lineup. Chrysler wants dealers who carry their entire line from trucks to cars to Jeeps.
2. Some dealers also carried competitors’ brands. That’s pretty common in smaller communities where one dealership might carry brands and models most suited to their market.
3. Most of these dealers under-performed. Chrysler said that 25% accounted for only 15% of its total sales.
4. Some brands are being discontinued. Wouldn’t want to be a Pontiac dealer right now, would you?  Also, Saturn, Hummer, and Saab are on the chopping block one way or another at GM.

But what if we applied that same criteria to churches?  Would your church be in business next week?

Some churches don’t carry the full lineup.  Many prefer to emphasize only the spiritual side of the faith, while leaving off any attempt at physical ministry.  Others are just the opposite, with lots of social programs, but little in the way of evangelism and discipleship.  You get the picture.  Should these churches keep their doors open?

Some churches carry the competitor’s brands, too. Okay, we’ve got to tread carefully here, but I’m thinking particularly about Fred Phelps’ church, Westboro Baptist.  They spew hate and venom towards any and everyone at any opportunity they can get.  They would be the extreme example, but other churches also help the “competition” by either not living the difference Christ makes or by taking a stand in an unloving manner.

Some churches under-perform. GM and Chrysler use an objective criteria to weed out the under-performing dealers — sales numbers.  But, some churches also under-perform in attendance, missions, programs, and outreach.  What should happen to these churches?  I have often contended here that we need to measure more than attendance, especially in small churches; but, even when measuring other factors some churches aren’t cutting it.  What should they do?

Some brands are being discontinued. Denominational identity is fading, as are a host of other emphases that once were very popular.  Remember the 1970s charismatic movement, or spiritual gifts surveys?  Lots of “brands” come and go, and if a church is heavily invested in one narrow perspective, it may find itself out of business in a changing culture.

Fortunately, God is not GM or Chrsyler and churches aren’t dealerships.  Churches tend to rise and decline in an organizational life cycle which can be accelerated by forces outside the church.  But even if we aren’t automotive dealership managers, it might help us to take an inventory of effectiveness periodically.  We might be either surprised or horrified at the result.  What do you think?

101 Outreach Ideas for Small Churches

I’m playing around here and this is the rough draft of  101 Outreach Ideas for Small Churches.  Any others you want to add?  I’d love to hear any stories you have about any outreach ideas you’ve used.  I’m working on a book, and would like to include real stories from real churches.  Time for your 15-minutes of fame!  Here’s a start —

101 Outreach Ideas for Small Churches

1. Sponsor a school or classroom
2. Angel Food Ministry
3. Family movie night
4. Super Bowl party
5. Resource center for senior programs, etc
6. Host a music concert
7. Block party
8. community festival
9. Halloween alternative
10. Community heroes
11. Christmas nativity tour
12. community garden
13. art show
14. build a labyrinth
15. free hotdog lunch
16. school supplies
17. parents’ night out
18. mothers morning out
19. partner to raise money for a local cause
20. invite former members back — homecoming
21. themed worship
22. recognize special groups
23. pulpit exchange or joint worship with other congregations
24. community vbs
25. community thanksgiving service
26. thanksgiving for singles, seniors, and others
27. trunk-or-treat
28. day camps
29. multi-generational groups
30. crafting, scrapbooking, quilt-making groups
31. day trips for seniors
32. senior adult programs, lunch
33. talent show
34. church yard sale
35. blessing of the animals
36. free carwash
37. make a difference day
38. martin luther king day events
39. english as a second language
40. computer access 
41. computer training
42. grief workshop
43. grandparents day
44. mothers day
45. fathers day
46. advent activities, booklet, devotion guide
47. milestone celebrations — anniversary, debt-free, etc
48. achievement recognition — ball teams, championships, etc
49. election day activities
50. county or state fair booth
51. tradeshow booth
52. tourism booth
53. homebound ministry 
54. grief ministry
55. nursing home ministry
56. report card rewards
57. skate park
58. soundcheck like event
59. lock in
60. lock out
61. youth service corps
62. door-to-door food collection
63. christmas parties for seniors, kids, families, target groups
64. school recognition
65. college day
66. financial peace courses
67. driving courses that target very young or AARP groups
68. election forums
69. non-profit helping agency fair
70. volunteer recognition and thanks
71. social services, community action partnerships recognition
72. literacy program
73. addiction programs
74. single adult programs
75. single parent groups
76. special needs events
77. health screenings
78. diet and cooking classes
79. book discussions
80. neighborhood inventories and assessments
81. prayer ministry
82. open sanctuary or prayer room
83. daily office
84. taize services
85. community celebration events
86. community unity events
87. community newsletter or bulletin board
88. newborn gifts
89. newcomer welcome baskets
90. graduate recognition
91. community music program for children, seniors
92. helping resource inventory and volunteer directory
93. home blessings
94. weddings and funerals
95. boy scout, girl scout, b&g club sundays
96. second sunday fellowships
97. personalized invitation
98. Easter, palm sunday invitations
99. food, clothing, and cleaning supplies pantry
100. civic club sunday
101. family skate nights

“Summer” for churches is over

Debbie and I have learned a lot about growing vegetables this year.  We learned that mulch under your raised beds acts like a big sponge and makes the beds too wet.  But, we also learned when you remove the mulch and create drainage that the beds return to a productive, healthy state.  We learned not to fertilize beans because you get more vine than beans.

 

We also learned that plants start to play out as the season progresses.  Tomatoes get smaller, insect attacks increase, and the general quality of the veggies is not as good as the first harvests.  I think we picked the last of the tomatoes last week.  We pulled up some plants a couple of weeks ago, and the rest will go this week.  We also learned that voles like potatoes, especially russets, and that they will chew on as many potatoes as possible, without actually eating a whole one.  We lost most of the russets that way.  But apparently voles don’t like red potatoes because they didn’t eat the Cranberry potatoes.  Or maybe the voles had so many russets to eat they didn’t make it to the red potatoes.  But, either way, we harvested some late red potatoes that are delicious.

 

The garden looks pretty sad right now.  All the lush cucumber, watermelon, and cantaloupe vines are gone. The sugar snap peas gave out long ago.  The remaining tomato plants are stalky and almost leaf-bare.  The bean vines are drying up, and the compost heap has grown dramatically.  To look at it, you might think that the garden was dead.

 

But it’s just the end of a season.  We have already received our lettuce and celery seeds, plus we’ll plant more spinach, too.  As you know, these cool weather crops don’t like the July and August heat.  But, this fall, if all goes well, we’ll have fresh salads again.  Plus, the freezer we bought this year is over half full of frozen tomatoes waiting to be made into soup and sauces; frozen apples that we bought locally; frozen blueberries picked in July; some beans from the garden; and, frozen peaches.

 

My point in all this is that seasons bring changes to gardens and churches.  What works in the garden in the summer doesn’t work in the fall and winter.  Experienced gardeners know that and adapt.  Experienced church leaders do the same.  Our culture is changing, and so must our churches.  Church attendance nationwide has fallen from about 40% of the population to only 17.5% on any Sunday.  “Regular church attendance” is now considered to be 3-out-of-8 Sundays. Older adults are more likely to attend church than younger adults.  And the list of changes goes on.
 

We can bemoan the fact that it isn’t “summer” for churches anymore.  But, like the garden, that won’t do us much good.  Instead we can figure out what will “grow” in this new environment we find ourselves in.  Like our experience in the garden this summer, we’re still learning.  Some things will work and others will not.  But churches, like gardeners, are optimists.  We believe that next year will be better.

Review: The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle

Phyllis Tickle’s newest book, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why, arrived yesterday. At 172 pages, this small but elegant volume (aren’t all Tickle’s books elegant?) both informs and disappoints.  Tickle takes on the daunting task of reviewing the major turning points or ‘Great’ events in the life of the Christian church.  Her contention is that every 500 years or so the church goes through a ‘great’ transformation.

Counting back from the present, the Great Reformation took place about 500 years ago — 1517 to be exact. Prior to that, The Great Schism occurred when the Eastern and Western churches split over icons and statues. Five hundred years earlier, Gregory the Great blessed and encouraged the monastic orders which would preserve the Christian faith through the Dark Ages.  Of course, 500 years before that, we’re back in the first century and the time of the apostles.  Today, Tickle contends, the church in in the throes of The Great Emergence.

But, the Great Emergence is not just religious.  It is also cultural, technological, and sociological.  Of course, context shaped each of the other ‘great’ church transformations as well, and this time is no different.  Tickle takes the reader on an overflight of church history, world events, and charts the shifts in the center of authority in the life of the church.  In the Great Reformation, of course, the cry of authority was sola scriptura — only scripture.  Tickle traces the diminution of the authoritative place of scripture in culture and Christianity from its heady beginnings in the Reformation to its marginalization in the current postmodern era.  The book provides thoughtful tracing of influential elements as Tickle leads the reader on a quest for a center of authority.

But, while Tickle’s insights and examples provide clues to the transformative forces in our culture and society, the book disappoints when we arrive at the present.  Tickle sees all denominations, all churches, all movements in the quadrilateral of Christianity — conservative, liturgical, renewalist, and social justice — as converging toward the center.  Granted, there are those denominations and groups that cling to their identities in a kind of resistant pushback, but Tickle’s vision is that we are all being swept up into the next great moment of the church — The Great Emergence.  Every church, not just the cool emerging church types, are part of The Great Emergence.  I’m not sure that is happening, but I could have lived with Tickle’s opinion except for some examples she uses.

Tickle uses John Wimber and the Vineyard churches as an example of this new kind of emergence.  She correctly credits Quakers — Richard Foster, Parker Palmer, etc — with great influence on the spirituality of the Great Emergence.  I might add Elton Trueblood to that list, as mentor to Foster, but Tickle doesn’t.  But, in her citing of John Wimber, she goes off track.  She credits Wimber with being a “founder” of the Church Growth department at Fuller, and calls Peter Wagner his colleague.  I was present at Fuller during Wagner’s tenure, and I was enrolled in the DMin program in church growth.  I attended one of the Signs and Wonders classes, heard Wimber speak, and got a sense of his idea of ‘power evangelism.’  

Wimber was not a founder of the church growth movement.  He was an adjunct faculty member at Fuller.  Dr. Donald McGavran was the founder, Peter Wagner was his protege.  I met McGavran once, although he had retired when I was enrolled at Fuller.  Tickle misunderstands Wimber’s approach, and also overestimates the Quaker influence on Wimber.  Wimber left the traditional church in which he had become a Christian because he wanted to ‘do the stuff’ — heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, and so on.  I also attended the Vineyard church that Wimber headed, and it was no Quaker meeting.  So, at the end of the book, Tickle disappoints.  Simple fact-checking could have offered a corrective to her inclusion of Wimber.  

While Wimber did create a powerful new church community called Vineyard, he used signs and wonders as power evangelism to win people to Christ.  All of that was very much part of the church growth movement that believed in attractional evangelism.  Wimber’s brand just happened to be one of the more interesting versions of church growth techniques being used to gather people.  She also wrongly attributes the concept of bounded sets and centered sets to Wimber when actually it was Paul Hiebert, the missiologist, who used those concepts to illustrate new approaches to understanding the place of persons in the Kingdom of God.  

Would I recommend the book?  A qualified yes is in order here.  The book succeeds in all but the last chapter.  If you want a great overview of where Christianity has been, what the influences were that got it there, and where it might be headed, Tickle’s book provides a good, concise overview.  My disappointment was that it fails to see clearly the way forward, and misinterprets some of the church’s most recent experiements, such as Vineyard.  But, Tickle is an elegant writer, and the book is a valuable resource to those aware of its short-comings.

One reason small churches aren’t growing: saturation

Thumbing through an analysis of our community today, it hit me.  There are too many churches in our area.  Within a 5-mile radius of our church, there are 25 other churches.  And, this doesn’t even count churches without telephones, which include at least 8 more that I know of.  That’s 33 churches for a population of about 4,000 households, or about 8,000 people.  

Take out the 10% of the population that is totally unaffiliated, and you have 7200 people.  Divide 7200 people by 33 churches, and you have an average of 218 members per church.  Of course some have more and some less, but 68% of all the churches in our area have between 125 and 350 members.  Our church fits right in that number.  

Of course, this doesn’t mean that everyone attends faithfully, or even comes at all.  We have several dozen members who never show up, but so does everyone else.  But, it does help us get a realistic handle on the potential of our outreach.  When I pastored in suburban areas, if we didn’t add 100 new members each year and baptize at least 25 per year, I was disappointed.  Here I’ll be lucky to see 100 new members in 10 years, and we are baptizing about 3-7 people per year.  

Those are the reasons we’re focusing on community transformation.  We hope to help others become more faithful disciples of Jesus by bridging racial divides, providing tangible help to families in need, and creating gathering places for our community.  We hope to be good news to our community, as well as to the individuals within it who might come to our church.  What is your experience?  Is your community “churched” and if so, what does that mean for your ministry?  

The report also noted that our area is highly “churched” (duh), and skews older than the national average.  Did I mention that our county population actually declined since the last census?  You’re beginning to get the picture.  

The great news is our area is higly churched.  The downside is that numerical growth of any of our congregations is limited.  Our primary strategy is building relationships, and adding new members gradually over the long term.

This attitude toward small churches doesn’t help

I started to let this go. First, because you can’t comment on everything you read in blogs; and, secondly, I could not believe I was actually reading it.  But, I can’t let this go.  Here’s why:  Small churches deserve better than Bill Easum’s recent response to Tony Jones at Emergent Village.  

Easum critiques the emerging church community because most of its churches are small.  Tony Jones asks Easum to explain why he is critical of small churches, and here’s part of his response:

“You have to put this in the context of my experiences with small churches and my understanding of evangelism. Small churches are usually small because of their small, petty attitude. That attitude can be negative, it can be elitist, it can be mean-spirited, or it can be just plain content with the status quo. But I have never found a small church that has been small for many years to be a healthy environment.”

Ouch and wow!  Okay, I’ll try to keep this rational and courteous, but for the life of me I can’t imagine why anyone, much less a leading church consultant, would make that statement.  Almost 90% of the churches in America are small churches.  Are all those churches “negative….elitist….mean-spirited..content with the status quo”?  The answer clearly is a resounding No!  

But, Easum quotes scripture, or at least refers to it, to make his point…

“My experience has been if the church is faithful to the Gospel it grows—period. I could say the same thing about a house church or small group. I base this on the Book of Acts—it is about the growth of Christianity and suggests to me that God wants the church to grow and spread. Read the story—it goes progressively from addition, to multitudes, to myriads of growth.”

Of course, if Easum had read Rodney Starke’s book, Cities of God, he would know that Christianity actually grew at about 3.4% per year for the first 300 years.  So, Easum overstates the growth of Christianity, and fails to note that many of the gatherings of Christians in the book of Acts were small gatherings.  

But, more disturbing is Easum’s contention that there is something wrong with small churches by virtue of their smallness.  In The Way We Will Be, John Zogby, of the global polling firm Zogby International, writes…

“The church of the future will be a bungalow on Maple Street, not a megastructure in a sea of parking spaces.  It’s intimacy of experience people long for, not production values.” -p 215.

Small churches thrive with the attributes that many people seek — intimacy, hands-on ministry, an opportunity to participate, and the ability to know other members.  It is the kingdom of God whose growth we seek, and for God’s kingdom to grow each community of faith plays a different and vital role.  I’ve seen more church pathology in churches who value growth at any cost than I have in the small churches I’ve encountered.  

Easum owes small churches, small church pastors, and members of small churches an apology.  Or at least the opportunity to hear our stories, walk in our shoes, and witness first-hand the effectiveness of ministry in America’s small churches.  What do you think?  Am I wrong, or do you have a different perspective?