Is Your Church Dying?

A lot of churches are dying. That’s true in this denomination and that one. Lots of them. Lots of churches are dying in lots of denominations. You may be a member of one of them; everyone just holding on until the last member goes to glory.

Is your church dying?

I hope so.

But not that way. Not in the way you think. Not dying in the sense of declining, decaying, disbanding.  Rather dying in the way Jesus talked about. Dying to self.

As Jesus sent The Twelve out on their missionary journey, he said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25)  This though wasn’t just for The Twelve. In Luke 9 it is clear this is a word for all of his followers. “And he said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’” Luke 9:23-24

To be clear, bearing a cross is more than dealing with a tough situation. The point of the cross was death. People who bore crosses were headed for more than a bad day; they were destined to die.

That is the way of Christ. He did more than suffer. He died. He humbled himself. He emptied himself. He was obedient to the Father. But the key to all that was connected to carrying the cross was that he died. He was all in, to the point of being lost completely to himself in death, for others, you and me.* He died for the glory of God and the good of other people near and far.

For us to follow him, by his own words, we will meet the same end. We are to die to self. To give up our lives, ways, agendas, desires, ambitions in surrender to him. This is to carry the cross. This is to die to self. Dying to self is our ongoing way of life. We too, metaphorically and more, die for the glory of God and the good of other people near and far.

But back to your church.

What Jesus calls Christians to do, he calls their churches to do as well. Churches are simply an aggregation (hence congregation) of Christians. Our churches, like each congregant, are to die to themselves. They are to die for the glory of God and the good of people near and far.

How do congregations die in that way?

• They make decisions based on blessing the community around them not themselves.

• They are open to letting the structures, programs, and ways of doing things be changed.**

• They let new people be involved in leadership.

• They hold onto old traditions as a helpful transfer of Christian life while at the same time they allow for the development of new ones.

• They never say, “We have always done it this way.”

• They leave their building and engage with the neighbors and what they are doing.

• They open their building and other resources to the community.

• They “roll with it” when someone does not put something back where it always was or leaves a mess from children playing.

Do you know the phrase, “Death by a thousand cuts?” It’s in these ways and more hundreds more that Jesus by his Spirit invites congregations to die to themselves.

Is your church a dying church? I hope so. May it welcome death, even embrace it,  in this latter manner, or it surely will experience death in the former manner.

*That matches the definition of love I like. Love is to be fiercely committed to the wellbeing of another no matter what the cost.

**We don’t change our doctrine. Indeed, we’d rather die first!