John Benton writes:
“The truth is that there is now a marketplace of churches. This marketplace stretches across denominations and church ‘brands’. People are quite willing to switch and travel long distances. Churches are in competition for members. “Market forces are in play and that being the case, sadly, it seems that a number of those forces are working towards the destruction of local churches—churches where people live in fairly close proximity, where the congregation is intentionally aiming at being a family, and where every member has a responsible part to play in the life of the church. Such churches are finding things increasingly difficult to attract members. Many are fragile and dwindling. Thankfully that is not the case everywhere. But it is happening.”[1]
There’s plenty of truth in the comments about consumerism and marketplaces. However, I would like to throw in three challenges to it.
- This is not a sudden new phenomena
- It’s not always about sheer selfish consumerism. Those choosing churches may well have a point
- There’s a lot of evidence of the opposite
There’s nothing new under the sun
Two things mean that there have been people choosing between churches even if it meant travelling a distance. First, you have the birth of dissent and independency several hundred years ago, not long after the Reformation. Once you have different denominations, networks and independent churches, then people will choose to go to a different church, the parish system’s monopoly is broken. The other has been the development of travel options. This means that “local” has got bigger. If the church I am a member of is in the city centre and that means a car journey or a bus ride, then that might not be in the ultra-local neighbourhood of where I live. However, if that city centre is where I go to shop, where my teenage children head to after school on a Friday night, where those a little older go to clubs and where I go to the cinema, theatre or to eat out, then is it any less a community church than one up the road from the house where I sleep and eat my meals? If I work in that city centre then my colleagues and friends may well live out in the opposite direction, inviting them to come to church near where I live may be anything but local to me.
The result is that there’s always been some who have travelled to church, for good reasons and less good reasons. The church where I grew up in was a commuter church back in the 1970s and 80s. Why? Well because it had started as a mission to an inner city deprived area but as people had trusted in Jesus, they had turned their backs on alcohol and gambling, they and their children had been lifted out of poverty and moved out to the suburbs but they kept coming back into the church. Go back further still and there’s the account of a pastor who began preaching systematically through books of the Bible. Something about his preaching drew people in from far and wide and the church was packed with about 2000 people, not just on Sundays but Friday evenings too. I’m referring of course to Lloyd Jones at Westminster Chapel.
They may just have a point
Now, I agree with John that there can be bad reasons for choosing one church over another and my preference overall, noting the points above is to encourage people to join a church in the community where they live. I will probably come back to that at some point. Sometimes, people go to a church because it is in effect a preaching centre, as with Westminister Chapel under Lloyd Jones, not only did that prove damaging to local churches in other places but it, arguably damaged the Chapel longer term because those people disappeared when the Dr retired. Others are, as John suggests, drawn to entertainment.
However, I think there can be other things at play too. Let me throw in something controversial. We can emphasise the local church in an unhelpful way. If Westminister Chapel was a preaching station, we can act as though the local church is just a mission station. We then see people joining us as primary fodder for serving the missional priorities of the leaders.
The local church is an expression of the family of God. Yes, we are called to serve but it isn’t one way traffic. We are meant to receive too. It is meant to be a joy and a blessing. And if this is the case and if people are meant to be fed, built up and encouraged, then I don’t think it is completely wrong for them to be asking questions about whether this will happen for their family. Now, in my opinion, it is very well possible that your child may thrive and grow in Christ as part of a small church where they are the only kid in Sunday Club. If I was pastoring a church with a small congregation, it would be right for me to say this to you. However, it would be wrong for me to try and push you to come on the basis that you should willingly sacrifice your kids on the altar of my mission and vision.
This brings us to another point. Yes, there are examples of people choosing not to opt into faithful, fruitful, loving local churches. However, sadly there are also examples of churches were there are sadly lots of reasons why people are not joining them, whether Christians transferring or new believers getting converted. My dad, tells the story of going to preach at a church in the 70s. He went there on his motorbike. He arrived in his leathers, with his helmet under his arm and was greeted at the door with the words:
“Oh I don’t think we want your sort here.”
Now, if he had been visiting not as a preacher but to check out the church near where he was about to move his family to, do you think he would have gone back there.
There may be reasons why a children’s work is small or non-existent. When we started congregation multiplication at Bearwood Chapel as the early stages of church planting, we went from having a congregation of about 70-80 to two congregations of 30-40. We suddenly had much smaller Sunday Schools and on some weeks there might only be one or two kids in a group, even though actually there were more children coming along over all.
However, if your church is not a young plant or hasn’t just planted out and sent a lot of families off, then I don’t think it is wrong for the visiting family to be looking at the state of your children’s work and asking questions. It could be that whilst you’ve been preaching faithfully that the Sunday School has been neglected. I remember another church we visited with my dad. The church carefully chose good, evangelical preachers to speak each week but whilst dad was opening Scriptures and getting to the heart of the Gospel with the adults, my sister and I were being treated to a dull bit of story telling by someone who didn’t seem at all interested in and I’m not sure if they even believed in the good news. Alternatively, there may be enthusiastic people ready to share the good news with the kids but there are no kids because there are no parents and that may be because we’ve put off the young adults at the door, as mentioned above or because we’ve failed to evangelise, disciple and care for people in their 20s and 30s.
Linked to this is unresolved history. Sometimes you find a church and there’s a missing generation or two. You discover that the reason is because about 10 or even more years ago, the church had gone through a horrendous split. Now, even if the church seems to be thriving now, you may well find that the sores and wounds are still there unhealed. The causes were never really dealt with, they were just covered over.
Another challenge is this. We assume that a smaller church will be a place desperately needing people to serve and so where it is easy to get involved. This is not always the case though. What newcomers may hear is that the church is led and controlled by a few faithful people who have always been there. They may discover that the key jobs have been filled. There are few people but few recognised ministries too. Once you have someone to preach, play the piano and serve the refreshments, what else is there to do. So, in fact, it is often easier to get involved in a larger church where there are teams to join and where there is a mindset of seeing new opportunities.
There are therefore all kinds of reasons why a local church may not be a healthy place for families to join and before we judge those who don’t stay, denouncing them as consumers and nomads, we may do well to reflect on whether there may be issues for us to address.
To put it another way. Think about what we tell our young people when they head off to University. We usually advise them to find a good church, where the people love Jesus, love the Bible, love one another and love evangelism. We pray they will find a church where they will be well-fed on God’s Word and be able to serve. Can we want that for them and not for those who visit us.
There’s lots of life
John acknowledges that the picture he paints isn’t true of everywhere. However, I would suggest that it is still too bleak a picture. I’m not claiming that things are perfect but I could tell lots of stories of local churches where people have chosen to join rather than travelling further afield. I can also give quite a few examples of larger churches actively seeking to send and support.
There’s lots of this happening here in the West Midlands. City Church for example is a largeish FIEC church in the University area. Whilst I’ve been here in Birmingham, they’ve runa preaching team supporting smaller local churches (just as the city centre church I grew up in Bradford did), they’ve been involved in a number of church plants and revitalisations too. The New Frontiers church I’m now part of was one of 3 plants from a larger church meeting close to the centre of the city. Our family of churches have supported mission and planting around the world too.
At Bearwood Chapel we weren’t a mega-church, even by UK standards but over a decade, we grew and before the pandemic hit had 4 weekly congregations and about 180 people regularly attending with more still who would have considered it their church and been there less regularly. We saw part of our responsibility as a church to support, help and encourage those who were struggling as well as looking for opportunities to plant ourselves. We provided preaching support to a few churches and we also had some conversations about possible revitalisation. A day of my week was set aside by the church to support training and equipping other leaders. We hosted a hub for urban planters and pastors. We knew that kingdom growth was about more than our own patch of that kingdom.
The result was that we were linked up with one church that seemed to be dying. They had about half a dozen people left. We began to meet with them regularly to talk about revitalisation. The result was that we were able to find a couple of people to come and join them, one being a pastor who at that stage was part of the team of a large church in another city. I believe that the members of that church may well have helped with some initial financial support too. This young pastor is now getting mentoring, coaching and support from the pastor of a larger FIEC church as well as from me. A couple of families have joined them from other churches, with the blessing and encouragement of those churches. The first time I preached there, it was to 6 people, all enjoying the space of a pew to themselves, spread around a building built to hold 100. There were no children. Last time I was there, it was a different picture. There were about 40 people with South Asians, Francophone Africans, Iranians and Chinese joining together. There was also a thriving children’s work too. This is one example of things happening here in our city.
The good news is that the local church remains under the sovereign care of the Good Shepherd. If it could speak, then the local church might say:
“Reports of my death have been much exaggerated”[2]
[1] Goodbye Local Church? – London Seminary
[2] Quote originally attributed to Mark Twain
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