Should Your Church Close?

Facing Tough Question About Your Church's Future

How do you tell if your church should consider closing its doors?

We don’t usually talk much about how to approach the potential of end-of-life conversations about a local church. There are (a relatively small percentage of) North American churches that have been thriving numerically during recent years. At the same time, there has been (a surprisingly large percentage of) churches that have watched their attendance numbers and budgets dwindle. Pray as they might for God to lead them forward, they face only growing challenges.

Over the past decade or two, I’ve walked alongside churches that have faced their own mortality. Some have closed (including one that my wife and I had planted), while others re-tooled and moved on with greater efficiency and vitality. One church held its own funeral, celebrating the years of its ministry together before moving out of the building for several months of fasting from their church-hood together while they worshipped together in homes. At a previously-determined time they eventually returned to their building to become a different church in the same building. Along the way, a lot of conflict surfaced, which proved to be part of their healing process.

So what should a congregation actually do when facing questions about their church’s longevity? Let me offer a few thoughts, based on what I’ve learned, and am learning:

• Don’t avoid talking about the question. Sometimes leaders keep the question of closing from their congregations, supposing that if they don’t name the issue, their people won’t think about it. That’s not realistic. As a congregation dwindles, people find themselves wondering about their church’s life expectancy every time they look around on a Sunday and notice who’s not there. The problem with this passive approach is that it doesn’t help a congregation move towards consensus. If everyone is thinking about the issue differently, based on different criteria, they begin to lose their ground for future dialogue.

• When naming the question, name it thoughtfully. Is closing its doors the answer for any particular church? Well, that might depend on what the question is. And that question is probably driven by the congregation’s understanding of its mission, whether spoken or unspoken. If the reason its people keep volunteering on committees or giving in the offering baskets is because they keep hoping that God will suddenly turn on his “church-growth” faucet like He seems to have for other nearby churches, (resulting in their Sunday school teeming with children and their families)…well, realistically what are the chances of that happening any more? If that’s how you ask the question, closing your doors might indeed seem to be the only answer.

  
  On the other hand, if a church has a different understanding of its purpose, it may come to a very different answer. For instance, if the primary purpose of a church is to offer the biblical “cup of cold water” to neighbors in need, that will lead to a very different conversation. Is there still a need for the kind of grace and truth that we can provide? If not, could we re-tool to meet the needs that now exist? And organizationally, what would it take to adapt to our changing environment in a way that could allow us to continue to carry out the purpose that God seems to have had for us? Generally speaking, if there’s still a need for what God has equipped you to bring, and you can find a creative, sustainable way to keep doing it—why would you seriously want to quit on God’s call? Wording the question carefully has a powerful impact on the answers we come up with.

  Sometimes it’s helpful to bring in someone from outside the church family to help that conversation happen better. That’s where the right consultant can be so helpful.

• Consider other ways God might accomplish His mission. What does your church have that your community really needs? What does your church lack that another group of God’s people might be able to provide? Take a little while to prayerfully look around to discern whether God might be setting up some unique partnerships in your community. For instance, what if your property-rich established congregation were to partner with a property-challenged ethnic group better positioned to reach your changing neighborhood? Imagine your long-time members serving as older brothers and sisters in Christ supporting a struggling young group looking to get its feet on the ground in a community where God wants to use them. That’s mission, too!

• Don’t complicate God’s call for your church. Sometimes God’s call for a church is pretty simple: He’s put you in a neighborhood where you can bring grace and truth in forms that are really needed. But sometimes Jesus’ simple call to mimic him can become handcuffed by all sorts of unnecessary organizational trappings. One church I worked with had concluded that they were incapable of moving forward together. It felt like a divorce, even though everyone was grateful for the years they’d had together. As pent-up conflicts surfaced, it certainly looked like all the wheels were falling off the wagon. The half-dozen remaining members of the steering team began to seriously doubt whether they had any future (their re-start plans notwithstanding). However during a critical month God moved powerfully to change the hearts of several key members of the group. Some research turned up some additional resources, and a few other new ideas cleared a way past several other roadblocks. A decade and a half later that church is thriving today.

  My point is this. Those half-dozen steering members had no assurance that anyone else would join with them as they moved ahead. But they knew that they had to, out of obedience to God. And so they did.

  I’ve learned that God is remarkably unimpressed with the contemporary North American idea of a thriving local church. God loves growing children’s ministries or powerful small group ministries. But God also delights in using a tiny band of people to give a few proverbial cups of cold water to neighbors who could really use it.

• I’ve also learned that God is remarkably unconcerned about our particular preferences when it comes to our church involvement. We live in a land of “church-shopping”, the absurd idea that we could kick the tires just right on various local churches we could determine which was the one where God wanted to help us thrive.

  Turns out that that’s more an us thing than a God-thing. Pretty much every church I’ve been involved in as a pastor or a member has turned out differently than I’d hoped. My plans have often gone awry. But God’s plans, I’m realizing, have proceeded right on track. I guess that shows why He’s God and I’m not.

So…how has God been leading you?