Diagnosing the Dying Church

“Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain” Revelation 3:2

The Elephant No One Will Acknowledge.

You’ve noticed it. Your church is dying. It’s not like it used to be. You remember a time when the sanctuary was full on Sunday mornings - not just on communion week or when there was an important business meeting or chicken dinner after service. You remember when you had evening meetings. You remember when the midweek was so active you had to shift the paradigm to split into multiple classes. You remember when people were excited to serve. You remember when the altars were flooded with the penitent. You remember a time when evangelism was anticipated…

But now, you struggle to even make it through a normal Lord’s Day without stopping half-way through the sermon because of the grief and discouragement.

Understanding the Issue

Why is your church dying? Why does it seem no matter what strategies you employ, nothing seems to work? Do we need another program? Do we need more creative sermon illustrations? Do we need more comfortable seats? A better website or live stream platform? These things are all fine, but what God is most concerned about is the thoughts and intentions of your heart.

Friend, whether you are a pastor, a deacon, a committee leader, music team member, custodian or landscaper, or simply a member who longs for the Glory of God, it matters not. It is a good thing you are experiencing grief over the lack of fervor your church once had, and even better if you see your own heart failing to line up with the enthusiasm you once had. But these problems will never be solved or even effectively addressed by the arm of the flesh. Many of these problems are the result of the arm of the flesh!

Somewhere along the line, the seed of pride, greed, and selfish ambition was sown in the field of someone’s heart and it was ignored and allowed to be nurtured, coddled, and cultivated. And now, almost all the members of your church are fighting for control and position. Everyone is swinging around their title and authority, building their towers and making names for themselves, or striving to preserve the past because “we’ve always done things this way.”

Oh friend, you may even have a decent number of attendees in your meetings and events, but you’re full of Marthas who are busy with much serving (and their hearts are failing them!), when what you need is a few more Marys who choose the better portion and just gather to sit at the Master’s feet for a while. Serving is good if it’s done out of a faithful heart of love, but if anything is not done in faith it is always sin. It would be far better for you to steward faithfully in the little you’ve been given, rather than dominate and manipulate others with grievous burdens to vainly build something the Lord never intended to be built by you (see 2 Samuel 7).

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Galatians 3:3

What We Need is the Power of the Holy Spirit.

Oh that God would blow his mighty rushing wind upon us again! O that we would burn again! Do you remember that flame, that tongue of fire that once rested upon you, and consumed your entire being? There once was a fire burning bright and hot, but now the flame has dimmed and the coals are even beginning to cool off! We’ve replaced the (super)natural blazing fire of God’s altar with gas logs that we can turn on and off at our convenience. We believe we are eternally secure because of the perfect atoning work of Christ, but we’ve lost our relationship with the Lion of Zion because He was too wild for us. We’ve got to get in line at Cracker Barrell, Lord. I’ve got to do some work on my business. I have to help so-and-so with this. I’ve got this meeting to get to. We had plans! We’re too busy running around creation to stop and enjoy time with our Creator!

Ought we not rather resound with what Moses said, Lord if Your presence does not go with us, what is the point in going on one more step? Even the calvinist puritans understood that the Church needs the abiding presence and power of the Holy Spirit to continue marching on so that the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. This is what is often referred to as “the anointing”, although many misnomers and misunderstandings surrounding the term have been superfluous. Often times people have attributed the Anointing to a mere adrenaline rush. What they said was the glory of God was just a gifted motivational speaker who knows good crowd control techniques. Many times what was believed to be dunamis power was nothing more than delusional pretense.

We’ve seen so much abuse, misuse, and false attributions of and toward the Holy Spirit in fringe charismatic circles, that those of us in the conservative camps have been tempted to swing the pendulum to the opposite side and place our stakes in the mud of ritualistic stoicism. Many of us have been so afraid of making a mistake that we’ve settled for scholasticism over true spiritual fervor. But God is not the God of the mind only, but also the God of the heart and soul. He is an all-consuming fire. We must be willing to release our preconceived notions and the traditions of men if we wish to see the Word of God begin working mightily in the people of God.

The traditions of men which have no basis in the actual inspired Scripture will continue to stifle and hinder the Work of the Spirit (see Mark 7:13). The err which brings about malaise and idleness is caused by an ignorance of not only the Word of God, but also an ignorance of the Power of God (see Matthew 22:29).

My people perish for lack of knowledge . We experience a sense of spiritual death because we don’t have a proper Pneumatology. And also, zeal without knowledge is not good. On the flip side, we’ve seen many people err in blasphemous sin because of hastiness to run after anything that sounds supernatural or enticing, mistaking works of the flesh (and even doctrines of devils) for the true manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

We must give up on every idea of our own - even the things which ‘worked’ for others, and even that which was positively pragmatic for our own experience in the past. We must become totally and completely dependent upon Christ alone - for in him we have sufficiently and abundantly all that we need for life and godliness.

When Israel crossed the Red Sea, God had Moses hold a staff and they walked across the dry land. But when they came to the Jordan, God had the priests step into the water first before the waters were cut off. We’ve got to realize we’re on a relational journey with a Living Being, not a dead rigid set of principles. We’ve got to remember Jesus said he would be with us. Why do we ignore him and his presence? It’s because just like the Israelites before Mt Sinai, we would rather have men tell us what God wants, to make it more palatable for us while we build our golden calves, rather than actually meeting with God ourselves and risk being deafened by his thunderous roar and scorched by his all-consuming fire.

Many of us like to think we would enjoy the idea of revival, but none of us are willing to pay the price. We would like the blessings and benefits without one iota of sacrifice. We don’t want to deal with the mess that true revival brings. We would rather go back to making bricks without straw so we can keep our leeks and onions by the Nile, rather than endure the thrill of being fed fresh manna every morning and following the pillar of fire by night. We will never receive the blessings of the Promise of the Father if we do not labor to enter His rest. We will never see the milk and honey unless we leave the land of our fathers and go to the place where He shows us. We would rather imagine being served by the gods we’ve made with our own minds than actually serve the Living God who created our imagination. 

This type of surrender is not easy. It will be costly. But if you want to see God move, if you want to see God truly move by his sovereign Holy Spirit in your church, you must step aside from every ounce of inkling that you know what you’re doing because you’ve done it before, or because you’ve read about it happening to others before. God will always resist the proud, but He will give grace to the humble. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. He is always a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. And you will find him when you search for him with all your heart.

Why don’t we just take God at his Word and believe him? Try this; no, seriously take this into consideration: stop what you are doing right now and go to the secret place of prayer and lay everything at his feet, asking him to remove from your fleshly mind every preconceived notion you’ve ever had about the Christian life and spirituality, to remove every teaching of man out of your heart, and ask that HE would teach you. 

Celebrating Diversity

Now we have to be flexible in our methodology and give liberty to God working through others, knowing what He puts into the heart of one may be just as pure as a different thing that He truly puts in the heart of another. One may be moved to minister on the streets passing out tracts and praying with moms at murder mills. Another may be moved by the Spirit to sell his house and move his family to an undisclosed mountain range in Eastern Europe to spend the rest of his life translating the Bible for a people who’ve never had their language even written before. God may call you to the fields at the ends of the earth, or He may call you to remain faithful to your secular job and shine the light of the Gospel in that place, turning the culture upside down for the glory of God. Whatever the outworking of the Spirit’s power in your heart, there are certain factors that cultivate a true genuine move of God. We must align ourselves with His revealed will if we want to see his blessings poured out. God said plainly, “IF My people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; THEN will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Herein following are five keys that have been the foundation and catalyst of genuine revival and spiritual renewal throughout the history of the Church.

1 - We Need the Presence of God.

How do we get it? Preacher, be strongly exhorted from this moment on to obey the Scripture and “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent” - Revelation 2:5

Step #1: GET BACK TO PREACHING THE GOSPEL! Drop all the cute stories and secondary issues. If it does not have a weight of eternal significance, don’t even touch it. You are employed by heaven’s throne under the most dangerous occupation in the world. When you stand behind that pulpit, when you go for a home visit, when you lead the deacon meeting, you hold men’s souls in your hands. Fear God, not men. Your responsibility is to hold men and women, the young and the aged, all in your hearing, accountable to the Word of God. Expose sin - not merely external habits of cultural faux pas and taboos, but expose sin to its very core and root: the failure to love God and neighbor perfectly. God is holy. He must be revealed to your congregation as He is. Do not downplay his might and authority and power and seriousness he has about himself. Be certain to always magnify the Cross. Never forget the blood of Jesus! Never forget to point to the power and effectiveness of the blood and the empty tomb! Never neglect the magnificence of the perfect love the Father has had toward sinners in the perfect sufficient atoning work of Christ - his death burial and resurrection. Every time you speak (if you wish to speak with power) must be the Gospel. For the Gospel is the power of God. (See 1Corinthians 15:1-4)

Step #2: Understand and submit to your calling: Shepherd the Flock of God. Pastor, you are an under-shepherd over the King’s flock. You must be faithful to Him and His word. If the sheep are sick, your job is not to be a candy striper. You are not to make them comfortable in their sickness, but to point them to true healing - even if it means cutting open the flesh and going through traumatic treatments, maybe moving a few organs out of the way to get at the cancer, or going through the necessary pain to pop a joint back into place. Your end goal is to see men made disciples of Christ, not for people to like you. You are called to be God’s witness to them. In all love and care and gentleness, yes indeed. But never compromise or sacrifice God’s truth for the sake of being afraid of potentially hurting someone’s feelings.

The fallow ground must be plowed before the seed can be sown. “Consider what I say; and the Lord give thee understanding in all things.” (2Timothy 2:7)

2 - We Need Repentance.

The reason we see hard-hearts and hard-heads is because men and women have become comfortable in their sin. They have come under delusion that because they walked down an aisle once when they were 13 years old or that they give 16% of their paycheck in the collection plate that they have arrived to the pinnacle of their spiritual journey and are now just waiting for the day they can rest their eyes to be swept into the sweet bye and bye on some glad morning. But for now, they’ll carry the tune of “nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.” They give no regard for sanctification, at least what’s going on in their own heart. They will, however, look down their long noses at the weakness and struggles of others. Oh, they won’t ever lift a fingernail of love to carry those burdens in serious prayer (though they may shamefully bring it up as gossip masked by prayer-request). Friends, we need to humble ourselves and pray. We need to ask God to expose sin in our own hearts, and not let us hide behind the bushes sewing fig leaves on ourselves. He is just and faithful. If God has called us to himself, he will not turn away any who come to him. We must embrace the rebuke of the Lord and let the hammer of his word crush us to powder. We must be broken and contrite if we do not want to be despised by him.

We must not linger under the condemnation, but stand in the faith of his promises that not only is he just, but he is also faithful - faithful to forgive us our sins when we confess them, when we truly confess the truth from our hearts spilling out from our lips - be like David before Nathan, not like Saul before Samuel.

3 - We Need Unity.

What God has joined together applies to more than simply a man and his wife. It applies to the Church as well. Not only the universal body of Christ, not just the regional collective of churches, but especially the local congregation. Continue to carefully watch out for divisive dogs and rabid sheep. But do not be a Diotrephes yourself, seeking to exclude others and just kick people out all the time. The earliest church documents outside of the canon, warn strongly against division and exhort a high priority of the unity of the body, but further encourage the faithful to pursue troublemakers in love, seeking to restore them. Remember the chief end of your sanctification is the reflective image of Christ. In such remember the grace that has been shown to you by God - even in your darkest hour.

4 - We Need Love.

It doesn’t matter how many doctorates you have, whether real or imaginary. It doesn’t matter how many miraculous gifts you’ve operated in, whether real or imaginary. It doesn’t matter if you can explain every mystery of the Bible in a 52 volume set, or even if you can raise the dead by your shadow. None of this is by your own power or might, Simon of Samaria. None of this is by your own wisdom, Nebuchadnezzar. All that will remain on the Day you stand before Christ is that which was worked in pure unadulterated love. So therefore seek the gold, silver, and precious jewels of faith, hope, and love. Leave the hay wood and stubble for the wild beasts. It will all burn up one day in the presence of His coming.

5 - Preserve the Power by Pursuing the Presence.

Exhort one another to never become lazy like the Laodiceans thinking the blessings you experience are by any amount of your own labor. Keep your own poverty and inability in constant sobriety and exult yourself constantly before the throne of God, keeping yourselves humble before the Lord, constantly kicking the corpse of the old man to ensure his death. Reckon yourselves dead indeed to sin. Remember your First Love, forever continue the pursuit of your Beloved. Forsake all others.

Amen.