A Prominent Church Consultant: More Churches Than Ever Will Soon Close


A regular columnist on Christian Post wrote this week that his church consulting business has never had so many requests for help. He said most churches asking for help now will be closed within five years. He discusses traits of churches that are in trouble.

The first one he lists is "lack of evangelism." He means lack of recruiting new members. To stay constant each small church needs to recruit five new members each year. I suspect that with the pool of people open to joining any church getting smaller each year and all churches competing for members five is a number out of reach for most. Any church can try to steal members from another church but other churches can steal its members. It's a zero-sum game.

A common theme of churches about to close is turnover of preachers. There is a view held widely in these churches a new pastor is out there somewhere that will bring in members. This reflects the myth there is a silver bullet that will save their church. The most common pattern is preachers coming and going and the downward path continues.

While the link author does not discuss this, the most interesting variable in churches and denominations is the term, "one in five." Currently, 20% of young people who grow up in churches remain active in them. Scholars have used this number to project the size of denominations in 40 years. Of course, the size of denominations will be 80% smaller than they are today. We don't know the future, it's possible the 20% will become 30% and people will have more children. It's also possible, I would say probable, the 20% number will become 10-15% and the birth rate will decline yet further. 

The dilemma in most every failing church is the same. A paid preacher is unable to reverse the falling membership. New members need to be brought in by current members. Current members say that is what they pay the preacher to do. 

In reality, neither members nor preachers can bring in enough new members to reverse the decline. Empty churches or memories of churches can remain even if the institution is gone.

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