5 Signs of a Dying Church

By Tim Spivey

The last year has been hard on churches and church health – how can we tell the difference between Covid declines or fatal flaws? I think it’s true to say there are symptoms your church may be on the path to death. Misdiagnosing the actual state of the union and what the real issues is a difficult business, but there are some sure signs of a dying church.... Read More

I was a part of a dying church. Its congregation was small and made up largely of middle-aged or older people. They had tried a number of things to grow the church but they did not understand what they were doing and how it would benefit the church and when it did not immdeiately benefit the church, the stopped doing it. They eventually adopted the pessmistic attitude, "We tried that! Nothing works!" 

The congregation had negligible conections with the community in which the church was located. Most of the congregation lived in other communities. The church was not a good fit with the community--demographically, yes, in the way the church worshipped, no. The congregation did not want to make the kinds of changes that would have made the church's worship a better fit with the community. The COVID-19 pandemic sped up the death of the church.

I moved on before the church closed its doors. I realized that if a church is going to thrive, its congregation needs to live in the community where it is located and open the church's doors to the community and get involved in the community. It was not going to flourish as long as the congregation wanted to quietly gather on Sundays and worship in their preferred manner, fellowship over coffee and sweet pastries and then go their separate ways. The church lacked the horizontal dimension critical to thriving.

I mourn that the congregation has disbanded and the building auctioned off. But the congregation lost what vitality they had left and were unable to keep going.