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.
Reasons for decline
Many of the conclusions Rainer comes to are unsurprising. Churches go into decline when members are always looking to the past, when the church refuses to get involved in its community, when it starts spending the majority of its money on looking after itself rather than reaching out to others, when prayer dies, when church decisions are to please the members’ preferences rather than forward God’s kingdom, etc. One of the signs that a church is in trouble, even if it has a large attendance, is when pastors stay for five years or less. This section of the book makes sober reading.
Practical suggestions
The final section is about giving practical suggestions for revitalising churches. He looks at three categories. These are: firstly, churches which are outwardly okay but sense they are in trouble; secondly, churches which have dwindled and the symptoms of impending death are obvious; and, thirdly, churches which are staring closure in the face or which have already closed. For each he gives four suggestions. These are brief and generally very helpful. Some of the suggestions are extremely radical. The book is meant for a US market. Scripture is not always handled accurately. But the book is very much worth reading. It may be a very painful exercise, but there are many small churches scattered across the United Kingdom which would benefit from biting the bullet and finding out what they can learn from Rainer’s work.
