The End of One Church

A few years ago I attended the last service of the rural church I grew up in. I was not part of those in charge of closing or disposing of the building or property. Recently, a professor who studies the decline in church membership wrote about the closing of the church he pastored as a side job. A church owns lots of mundane items with emotional attachments, choir robes, hymnals, pulpit, etc. Several of these disposals take place every week in the U.S.

Of course there is an emotional attachment to lots of church items and sending them to the local dump is a painful thought. I'm sure it happens often.

When one compares the economics of a church to other small businesses, it has failure written all over it. The offices are used every work day but the rest of the building costs a bundle and is used little. The beloved sanctuary is the biggest drag on a church's bottom line. I suppose the concept of a sanctuary goes back to the Catholic church in the old countries. The hierarchy could demand and obtain money from those in the pews and a huge but mostly unused sanctuary enhanced the importance and mystic of those demanding the money. Now, sanctuary after sanctuary are becoming homes and pizza parlors. It's goodbye to economic folly. I would guess a lot of congregations could continue if they had a tiny multi purposed property and no paid clergy. 

There remain, of course, thousands of churches still prospering that will do so in the foreseeable future. The influence of Christianity, however, is mostly tied to its universal presence in ever voting district. With fewer of them and more people unaffiliated with organized religion, it's role in marriage, birth control and abortion will surely decline. The common response to the decline in church numbers and church membership is often, "But we're right. That's all that matters."

Actually, what matters is counting votes.