Mark's Blog

Resurrection Requires Radical Action!

Sherrylee and I were just in California for a week, doing Let’s Start Talking Training and visiting with good friends and family—many of whom are church leaders in their respective congregations.  Much of our conversation revolved around the situations in which their local congregation and other congregations in California found themselves.

For instance, one congregation—very stable and financially secure—was struggling with being very stable and financially secure! Being comfortable may be the most precarious situation of all. At least one of these churches had recently hired a new preacher that was thinking out of their box, getting involved in the community and not staying put in his office!

The question for these kinds of churches is: who gives up first? Do the members give up the comfort of predictability and familiarity or does the New Guy give up . . . .just give up?

Then there were the churches discussed that had had glory days 10-20 years ago, but today they are either below or about to slip below a critical mass of members. They may have had as many as several hundred, but now they are in double digits—low double digits in some cases.

The leaders of these churches are burdened with their dilemma. They know that to do nothing is to die. They have been trying everything they know to do these last few years, and nothing seems to have stopped the constant seepage of members, moving away or going to other churches—usually the lively community churches.

The question for these churches is: in spite of the desire of the few remaining, can this congregation be resuscitated or is it time to pull the plug? As painful as it sounds, even Jesus said that sometimes death must precede life.  If planned well, the death of one congregation might even spawn multiple new congregations that have a chance at life.  But something radical must happen or life will just slip away.

What kinds of radical actions might result in resurrection of a dead church to any kind of new life?

1.            Close the doors for a year. Re-start with a new name, a new concept—and new leaders!

2.            Import new people as “missionaries.”  Do whatever it takes to support them, both financially and with permission—no, begging them to be as aggressive as they will in penetrating the community.

3.            Liquidate the assets and distribute them to new church planting efforts.

4.            Seek out a healthy church and either merge into something new or unconditionally submit to the leaders of the healthy church!

Radical is the operative word here!  Nothing less will succeed.

The faithful few who keep a church’s doors open are almost never the ones to resurrect it in any form. Regardless of the magnificence of their service or generosity in previous years, there comes a time in almost everyone’s life when they have to step back and let others lead the way. Those who do that graciously finish as great leaders and are well-loved! Those that cling to power or reputation are destined to wither with the congregation or even worse—be asked to leave by the new leaders.

The last of our church groups are those new churches, either new plants or migrations of people wanting a new start. The heady first days of these churches are full of great promise, new ideas, experimentation, fresh wind and fire.  I’ve experienced this as a church leader, and I would wish it for everyone.

Nothing is more exciting than a fresh new congregation birthed out of a desire to expand the Kingdom of God.

There are big questions for these churches as well, but for the moment, it feels like enough just to celebrate them!

Thank you for launching out, thank you for accepting the challenge of starting ex nihilo! Thank you for the courage  to risk failure. Thank you for the boldness to follow God into the Unknown.

Does your congregation fall into any of these categories? If so, what radical action are you going to take?