Why churches fail

About 30 percent of people believe they can find God outside of the church and 20 percent reported feeling that God is missing from church, Barna research found. Some people who once loved their church are seeing disgruntled and leadership falling into decay despite the elaborate buildings and programs. This is not about loving God—this runs deeper as His representatives on earth are losing the very essence of the Great Commission.

More people over 18 are moving towards being unaffiliated. The main drop off in Christianity has been driven mainly by declines among mainline Protestants and Catholics. Between and , the Christian share of the population fell from About 78 percent of people who once identified with Christian groups like Protestants, Catholics and Mormons have switched religions because they feel those traditions are no longer serving them.

Just as followers started getting out of the legalistic churches, legalism was replaced with a focus on church growth. With this, secularism crept into the sanctuaries. What started as an ideological focus of growth has turned the church into a cash cow.

What blinders are we wearing? Where did we miss it? George Barna, the founder of the Barna Research Group, unearthed that success is one of the reasons for the mess the church is in. If the lost choose Christ then that is another subject. Read your Bible woman. The pastor is lazy! He claims that his church could grow too, if they did what the big church in town does, but he is too lazy or proud to change anything.

Change means work. Too many pastors are just lazy. The miinistry is a job you can do poorly and still get just as much money as if you did it well. So some get lazy. Some pastors are lazy for sure.

Many work incredibly hard. But it can be a reason for sure. Most I know work hard. Yes, many churches have leaders, but are the Spirit minded? I have seen a rural church near collapse a year after its spiritual leader passed away. You want your church to grow? This is a very serious idea from one of the many, in your church pews…. Sunday, instead of parroting phrases and boring unintelligible songs to back of blue-heads in front of us, get us out of our stale, boring church!

Rent a bus and take us — even for an hour — take us to do what Jesus wants done. Do this, in a dramatic way, during the time people would be sitting in church will force members to talk about it.

Imagine, just imagine every single member of your congregation enthusiastically telling their family, friends, workmates, neighbors, etc… about how exciting church was?

I would add 1 to this list. By the way, I think all the above is true. In most churches there is 1 No expectation for Christians to reach out to non-Christians and 2 If there is an expectation, there is no formal training to help people do so. Until we get out of the mindset of just telling our people to invite people to church, our churches will not grow.

Having sermons on how we should be evangelizing without training people to do so just makes people feel guilty. We need to help them be effective. How many churches have any kind of training whatsoever in teaching members how to make disciples? In my experience it starts with friendship.

Otherwise it will be just cold calling which, as the person above posted, is awkward and mostly ineffective. Not sure about yet another meeting to formally train people. Us families are busy enough. Start with being a good neighbour and friend. Then an invite can naturally flow. Very good point Jeremy. Happens in our church regularly- invite and invite.

But no training. I think you are confusing the term culture. But where there are people there will be a culture and subcultures of that culture. Christianity is part of its culture wherever it is. If what you say is true than our purpose in this life is to fight cultural wars same-sex marriage, abortion, conservatism.

I think that we are to live and tell the Gospel in our culture in a way that redeems it, not defeats it. When people believe the gospel and experience gospel transformation they will affect the culture…but the culture will remain albeit reshaped if the church is being the church.

Christian Singer Shares Struggle […]. I firmly believe that the culture IS an enemy. You actually point to this same truth. The culture is the enemy. The people are the unwitting dupes of the culture, because politically correct language sounds so nice. Culture is just the style in which we do things.

The world, however, leads us into sin. Making style culture an issue is the same as what the Pharisees were doing, and Jesus rebuked them sharply, telling them that they were teaching as doctrines the traditions of men. Even the church has its own culture, and that is often a stumbling point for people coming into the church.

Am not in the ministry, saw this post from my daughter. Probably more than any time in the recent past churches seem to be splitting into 2 major camps. You seem to be speaking to the first. Which as can see from reports are declining.

The Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, etc. Meanwhile the fundamentalists are growing. It is a split in culture and mindset. Answers to BIG questions will vary based on individuals and their understanding who God is.

The denomination, the church or a leader has the answers to all BIG questions. The Bible is referenced as the source, but it is all based on a specific way of reading and interpreting it. One group requires introspection, the other faith not so much in the Bible, but in the leadership who has heard and read the word from God himself.

The rules for membership requires this. The second is better served by minimizing interaction with others to avoid infection. The more difficult culture becomes, gays for example asking to be treated the same as all others. Exactly the same as blacks, women, inter-racial marriages in times past. The more enticing the fundamentalism mindset becomes.

Science challenges as harshly as culture, but like culture accepting a portion creates a crack in the belief system. For some science is a way to understanding the world and universe around us from genes to the history of our earth and universe. For the fundamentalist it is a challenge to belief systems.

Accepting, being inclusive is creating cracks in this system. The things listed here to me seem secondary to first making it known that you are inclusive and challenging.

Ron, I had no idea this post was about mainline v. Thanks for your input. I read it that way, because the things oyu discuss are not an issue within the fundamentalist mind set…..

Ron, fundamentalist churches are declining as well. And fundamentalist youth have absolutely no use for the homophobia. True Biblical Fundamentalists do their dead level best to impact people with the love of Jesus. Hate will always attract a crowd — loving people like Jesus requires work, patience, long-suffering, thick skin, humility and an understanding of who we are in Christ.

WE are commanded to go, to love, to share the gospel, etc. I think our little church is stuck on no. I feel sure after 7 months we should be able to retain and grow but we keep losing people. Very disheartened!

You forgot one. The blaming your congregation is awful. But the excuse was always there to explain away failure after failure in the mission. They also exhibited a host of other issues from the list, but that one was a biggie. I might be possibly reiterating what others have said or alluded to, but I might put it in different ways. But what about the main reason, which is that many people think that going to church requires one to believe in obvious impossible things which nobody who has any integrity could do.

The remedy is I think is clarity — what in those beliefs is symbol, and what is physical. Great I thought at first, then I thought that people who are not christians are obviously going to look to christians to see what a life supposedly in relationship with Jesus is like. Your point no 3. Some people are prepared to suspend critical thinking faculties and go to church anyway for the benefits of ritual, community, support etc.

Which introduces another problem: double standards — why are some Bible verses referred to to justify prejudices anti-gay for example — a major reason people often cite first when you ask them what is wrong with the church and not others women are unclean when they have just given birth, and more so if the baby is a girl, etc.

This last one is, I think, generally regarded by everyone as ridiculous. People want reasonable answers to many things which they do not get from their churches. There are great answers to the questions that you allude to. One must ask who determines what good is? Do you, or does God? A faithful person believes that God determines good.

A secular humanist believes he determines what good is. That is an example of the age old sin called pride, inherited from Adam. Through this people God would bless all nations Gen 12 , this is understood and fulfilled in the NT appearance of Jesus the Christ. People who think that growth is a bad thing have to realize that what we are working for is to make the Kingdom of God a reality on Earth as in Heaven. We pray this every Sunday Actually!! Eliminating these ten barriers to growth in each church is only an answer to our most basic prayers.

I think it is also very important to establish what you mean by church growth. But does that mean they are truly being made a disciple of Christ, or just a familiar social environment? On the other hand…we can so ignore opportunities to advance in our methods that we not only drive people away, but we drive away the freshness of the Holy Spirit. Neither extreme has biblical backing.

Growth needs to be about seeing people bear spiritual fruit. That is the sign of a church that is maturing believers. The parable of the sower lets us see that there are many cases where the seed actually takes root, but does not endure.

Where I personally have been convicted lately is for the need to make more disciples, not just to deepen the faith of those who already believe. Would you agree that growth should include both? Once again it feels like you are writting right into my situation. They were insider focused. Catering to those inside of your church is a great way to make everyone happy and also a great way to kill your church.

The church only survives if new people keep showing up. They ignored the numbers. The church became more concerned with meeting preferences than gaining new people. They ignored technology and social media. They fought against change every step of the way. By the time they were willing to change, it was already too late. Related Posts 0. Andy Wiebe Reply. Sonny J.

List Item 1 List Item 2 List Item 3 Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system. Here are a few simple tips to help! Why Church Branding Matters Interested to know why church branding matters? Find out what a branding expert has to say.

Here are examples on how to make your Christmas Day sermon memorable, unusual, even life-changing? We'll highlight a variety of Thanksgiving sermons about giving thanks you can watch or listen to. Read here! These 5-steps will enable your church to expresses its call to worship God. Look no further. Read below for a recap! Lessons from Life. You're in the right place. Read below! What is church leadership? We'll highlight the top 5 biggest upcoming church technology trends to keep an eye out for.

Find out here! Read more here! Kanye West? Need to catch up on this week's Modern Church Leader episodes? Have no fear - Read below! Here are 7 principles you must-know. We also talked about avoiding COVID burnout and the 7 media hacks that could change the engagement of your church. Inside Tithe. Here are 5 Ways to Be the Church in a Pandemic.