AUTOPSY OF A DECEASED CHURCH
12 Ways to Keep yours Alive
By Thom S. Rainer
B&H Publishing. 102 pages. £8.56
ISBN 978 1 433 683 923
What can be done to help small and dying churches? Many in conservative evangelical-ism have no wish to get involved. They don’t want to be associated with anything that looks less than ‘successful’.
But Christ’s glory is tied up with every Christian church and we can’t just walk away if we love the Lord Jesus. Thom Rainer is an American pastor of some note and he has researched into the ‘causes of death’ of churches but focusses particularly on 14 cases where they have now dwindled and folded. His investigations include personal conversations with former members of congregations now closed. So there are human stories here, not just the statistics.
