Death and Doing: How Not to Save Your Dying Church

The following post was originally shared on the New City Church Macon website:

“Fewer Than Half Of U.S. Adults Belong To A Religious Congregation, New Poll Shows,” is the title to an NPR article from March 30, 2021. According to the article, “In 2018, 50% of adults polled said they belonged to a religious congregation, down sharply from the 70% who said so as recently as 1999. That figure fluctuated only a few percentage points over a period of six decades beginning in 1937 — the first year of the survey — when 73% of U.S. adults said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque.”

Once thriving churches in Middle Georgia are dying. We are watching from afar as some creep closer and closer to death, and it is painful. New City is committed to doing all that we can to see more healthy, thriving churches in Middle Georgia through church planting, replanting and revitalization (you can read more about that HERE). In reading on church health I ran across a post on the Church Leaders website from J.D. Greear that is well worth the read. You can find the post HERE, but let me tell you why it was so helpful before you read it!

I have read a LOT of posts, articles and books on dying churches and how to change the death spiral. The vast majority are really good and helpful in listing things that have been done to lead to dying and things that should be done to bring life back into the church.

One example of a common theme in dying churches is an inward focus and loss of mission/purpose. Dying churches are built for the church members and their budgets are spent on the church members. The solution is to get back to doing the mission of the church and adjust the budget for doing that! Invest in the community and even in foreign missions. Get busy painting and cleaning up schools and community centers.

Another example is dead programming. Many dying churches continue to operate as if the world hasn’t changed since the 1980’s. Weeknights are filled with church activities. The problem is that the world has changed and many of those inwardly focused programs are draining the church of resources and bearing little or no fruit. So, what do you do? Stop doing those antiquated, resource-draining, inwardly-focused programs.

DOING. Most of the articles, posts and books jump right to DOING. The message, intentional or not, is this- change what you are doing and your church will be great. From afar I watch churches who are taking that advice and with all that they have left, they are trying to DO better… and it is killing them.

Let me share 2 of J.D. Greear’s points in talking about his own church’s turnaround:

The church I pastor, the Summit Church, was planted in 1962. In 2001, however, the Summit Church (then Homestead Heights Baptist Church) was a plateaued, declining Baptist church. The current pastor had been asked to resign after being caught in immorality. The pastor prior to him had unsuccessfully attempted to impose a Willow Creek model, and the pastor prior to him was a theological moderate. When I arrived, the church was in its fourth straight year of attendance and offering decline, and the outlook was bleak.

Five Life-Giving Factors

Only God brings life to dead things. But here are five lessons I learned that I believe contributed to our church’s revitalization.

1. Inward transformation drives external change.

Just as external moralistic changes cannot transform the human heart, so external changes to a church’s programs or structures cannot revitalize a church. You might as well try to bend a metal rod without first heating it. It will either resist change altogether or simply snap in two.

Internal change in the believer happens only through the preaching of the gospel. People become willing to extend themselves to reach others as they learn more about God and what he has done.

There is a time to push change and a time just to preach Jesus. It takes wisdom to know what to do when. A church that has forgotten its “first love” (Rev. 2:1-10) is likely to undergo even the most uncomfortable changes to complete the mission.

As the Summit Church developed a love for the lost, changing our structures to reach more people became relatively easy.

There are certainly things to DO when a church is dying but not to the neglect of the biggest DO - working to see the hearts of the people changed! This is more than an admission that we have done things incorrectly; it is a genuine seeking to remember who God is and what he has done for us. It is a return to our first love- Jesus. The reason our “doing” in the church was not what it should have been- inward focus, loss of mission, etc- is because our love for him slipped somewhere along the way.

Without the inward change of loving God and loving people our works toward new life are just as misguided as the works that have led to dying. When our hearts are filled with love, we gladly and joyfully work as an overflow, not as a duty or task that must be completed to save our sinking ship.
Fixing our love will fix our works.

5. Lead your people to yearn.

The French mystic Antoine de Saint Exupéry once said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” As people yearn for the salvation of the world, they will not only put up with the changes you propose, but will probably instigate a few of their own as well. That’s when the church is really revitalized.

Again, it is the preaching of the gospel that creates this yearning. The gospel makes us stand in awe of Jesus, who was rich, yet for our sakes became poor. It moves us to pour ourselves out for others as he has poured himself out for us. The gospel awakens people from their middle-class slumber to follow Jesus as he seeks and saves the lost. It moves them to love the poor, the stranger and the outcast.

The gospel teaches us to see the world through the lens of the compassionate God demonstrated at the cross and revealed in the resurrection. The gospel fills us with audacious faith, making us (in the words of William Carey) “expect great things of God and then attempt great things for God.”

The gospel makes us yearn to see the glory of God cover the Earth like the waters cover the sea. It gives us a passion for his kingdom that outweighs our comfort with the status quo. As the gospel has become more of the center of our church, I have seen our people do the most amazing things—from moving from richer neighborhoods into poorer ones, to adopting unwanted children, to loving refugees, to sharing Christ with their neighbors.

So personally dwell on the gospel. Meditate on it until it burns in your breast and you can’t contain it. Then preach it, letting it do the work of revitalization.

I see dying churches trying- trying to figure out a program to reach their community, a visitation program, a big event, church work days in the community, and so on. They work but have no real yearning. Without the yearning the work becomes exhausting and the lack of immediate results are demoralizing, as our hard work seems to accomplish nothing.

The gospel leads us to yearn! The gospel reminds us of who God is and what he has done for us, especially in Jesus! The gospel reminds us of our brokenness and great need for him. It reminds us that he is great and glorious, good and gracious! It reminds us that he not only loves us but others as well, and he is seeking them just as he sought us. The gospel reminds us that we are not only family - his sons and daughters, brothers and sisters together, but that we are also servants to those around us, and missionaries to a lost and dying world - just like Jesus.

As we grow in knowing and loving him, we will grow in our love for the things he loves and that includes people. When our love for him grows our yearning for him grows, as does our yearning see others come to love and follow him.

Dying Churches,
Don’t let not doing be the death of you.
But don’t let doing be the death of you either.
Remember your first love.
Grow in the gospel.
Grow in loving God and loving others.
Grow in yearning for him and you will yearn for the good of others.
Let your work be an overflow of love - love for God and love for people.

How do you NOT save your dying church?
Get busy doing without a heart filled with love.

If your church is dying and you think that New City might be able to help, please let us know! We want to see your church healthy, thriving, growing and reaching others with the gospel.