The Five Choices of Declining Churches

…would be better. There are really two choices for declining churches in my view:

• figure out why the church is not effectively reaching the community and address the problems
• close

And within the latter, you can close gracefully and get your resources (if any) to others who will present the Gospel faithfully, or you can be like Pillsbury or Family Christian Bookstores and stick your creditors with a big pile of debt.

“The Queen of De-Nile”

Real case in point: This church, in existence for ten years, is losing members to other churches in the area. The board meets to address the problem that includes a huge budget shortfall this year. At the follow-up meeting the elders produce a new mission statement and resolve to start a more aggressive evangelistic outreach to their community.

….I think I was at that church, Ron! :^)

More like “one much like it”, really. They got a lot of people to pray the prayer, and then they wondered why those who stayed in church migrated to the church across town. Actually, when my family migrated to the other church, we found that we were not the only ones that had told that church exactly why we hadn’t stayed. So lack of effective discipleship is one huge issue, and Cleopatra syndrome is also huge.