When and How a Church Should Close

According to one estimate, in the U.S. alone more than 3,200 churches close their doors every year. On average, that’s 267 churches every month, 62 every week, and 9 every day. Recent editions of the directory Churches of Christ in the United States indicate that hundreds of our congregations have closed over the last decade.

In their book Legacy Churches, Stephen Gray and Franklin Dumond ask a hard but important question: What should church leaders do when the congregation that they love and have been a part of for many years is slowly but surely dying?

The authors begin with the story of Moses who was succeeded by Joshua as leader of the ancient Israelites. They point out that just as the death of Moses did not mean the end of God’s plan for his people, the closing of a congregation does not mean the end of Christ’s kingdom. On a related note, they emphasize that the obvious decline of a church is not necessarily the result of unfaithfulness. None of the churches of the New Testament exist today. But who would insist that all of those congregations were spiritual failures? Observation over a long period of time indicates that virtually all churches experience a life cycle that features a number of stages. These include birth, growth, maturity, plateau, decline, drop-out and, finally, death. Much like people, all congregations eventually go into decline and die.

Next, Gray and Dumond discuss three unique temptations encountered by churches in the last stages of the life cycle. First, churches are tempted to fire the current preacher and hire a new one. Their assumption is that if they can simply find the right minister, then their congregation will become healthy and will grow once again. This growth-by-preacher strategy is fatally flawed at a number of points. It overlooks, for example, that the new preacher didn't create, and can hardly undo, the non-growth systems that led to the downturn in the first place.

Second, churches in steep decline sometimes believe that their better days will return if they will build a new facility in a growing part of town. But the growth-by-construction strategy confuses physical structure and location with the church. As the authors point out, a dying congregation in a new facility is just that. They conclude: "Growth by construction is never a good strategy for a church in decline" (46).

Third, churches in the last stages of the life cycle sometimes want to merge with another congregation. But as the authors point out, this strategy frequently ends in disaster. Why? Because in a merger, the two groups show up with alternate visions of what it means to be a church. Also, the leaders of the respective groups tend to compete for control of the newly formed congregation.

How can a church determine if they should consider making plans to close? In response to that question, Gray and Dumond name “Six Indicators of Potential Closure”:

1. Public worship attendance has drastically declined.
2. Staffing of essential ministries is no longer adequate or effective.
3. Annual income is no longer adequate to do effective local ministry.
4. The church has not consistently grown over the last five years.
5. The age or tenure of the membership is unusually high.
6. Survival has become the main mission.

The authors contend that when a church exhibits several of these indicators, leaders must not panic, but plan. Rather than survive at all costs, congregations nearing the end of their existence should become “legacy churches.” Specifically, they should use their financial assets to fund the start of one or more new congregations. In this way, the “spirit and the purpose of a faithful church” can be carried on “even if the worshipping congregation cannot be sustained” (65).

The final chapters of the book offer specific recommendations for the process of closing a church. The authors describe the legal and financial tasks that should be done. Above all, they urge congregations to host a closing service. They even provide three different outlines for conducting a unique and meaningful celebration of faith.

Appendixes include “Frequently Asked Questions,” which covers much of the content of the book in Q&A fashion, and “Life Cycle Survey,” a tool that can help a congregation determine its current position.

Legacy Churches is an excellent resource for leaders in congregations that have entered the last stages of life. These churches should not slip away in shame. Instead, they can and should close with dignity and a sense of hope for the future.

My main caveat (based on the comments on this post, and which the authors of the book do not discuss) relates to those small churches in isolated, rural areas. What should they do? Although they often struggle, these congregations praise God, lift up Christ, and moor the faith of their members in areas that would otherwise not have a church. For that reason, they should continue on much longer than dying churches in more-populated areas.

500 Fewer Congregations of the Churches of Christ

A few weeks ago on a Saturday morning, I sat at the kitchen table scanning the obituaries in our local paper, the Amarillo Globe-News.

"I want to know what happened to them," I said.

"Who?" said my wife.

"All these people who just died. I mean, I don't want to be crass or voyeuristic or whatever. I just want to know how they died. Especially the young ones."

"I know what you mean," she said. "They never give the cause of death."

I had that same sort of feeling last week when I read for the second time that story in the Christian Chronicle, the one that reports the recent decline of Churches of Christ in America.

So many things come to mind. Most of them have been batted around the blogosphere over the last few weeks. Here's the part that I can't get out of my head: Apparently, over the last six years, Churches of Christ have lost over 500 congregations. Five hundred. That's more than one congregation a week closing its doors. I have a lot of questions about that. Don't you?

How did they die? Why did that happen? Where did the people who were still there go? Churches don't just disappear.

Of course, members of a now-closed congregation either became a part of another Church of Christ, or joined up with some other group, or dropped out altogether. That's something I wonder about too. What are the percentages for each category? Where did those people go?

Some of the churches that died had a lone preacher, presumably doing what he could to sow the seed of the kingdom and help others grow in the likeness of Christ. Where did he and his family go?

Some of the congregations that closed owned real estate and cash. What happened to that?

The more I thought about those questions, the more I remembered some of the stories from my past. During my years in New England, there were a handful of small, struggling churches that just couldn't hang on and eventually closed their doors.

One of them, a congregation in suburban Connecticut that had been around for several years, had come to depend heavily on one man. When he suddenly died, the church was at a loss. They closed up not long afterward. The church owned a building, which was sold. Over the next couple of years, the congregation where I preached received in the mail a few sizable, anonymous donations. I always figured that the money came from the proceeds from the sale of that building. But I wasn't sure.

Another church had been started by a group of young, bright, energetic Christians. They had worked for years, establishing an outpost for the kingdom of Christ. One of their leaders, a young man, tragically died. The group kept at it until many years later the congregation finally closed.

In the church closings I know of, the majority of the members went to one particular congregation of the Church of Christ because of convenience (it was the next nearest congregation), because of a studied consensus (that's where people from our group would fit in best), or because of some combination of those and other factors.

We should expect that congregations will die. One of the many things I learned from Evertt Huffard is that, unlike the kingdom of Christ, congregations are like people. They are born, they grow and reach a certain size and maturity. Sometimes they give birth to one or more congregations. But invariably, they get old, start to shrink, and finally die. I still wonder about the closing of more than 500 congregations in six years. Why did this Christian group I love so much lose so many churches in such a short time?

Turning to the future side of my question, if the cutting edge of the kingdom is the local congregation (a Phil Slate-ism), and if Churches of Christ want to do better than we have of late, wouldn't one of our main concerns be the planting of more new congregations?

Yes, as well as exciting, that sounds kind of scary. And it's got to be a lot of hard work. And, no, not every newly-planted church survives. But I believe that any emphasis designed to help us become more faithful and effective will include the intention to plant more, viable new congregations in places where there are lots of people.

That's what I'm thinking about today. What do you think?

1. Have you been a part of a congregation that made the decision to close? How did it come to that?

2. Have you been a part of a new church planting? What's that like? What are the ups and downs, the dos and don'ts of that process?

3. What are some of the church-planting bright spots among Churches of Christ today?

4. What does it take to adequately shape and train successful church planters? Who's doing an especially good job of that these days?