1. Has worship attendance declined in at least seven of the past ten years? 2. Has budget giving declined in at least seven of the past ten years? 3. Does my church look more like the community or less like the community than ten years ago? 4. Are church conflicts significantly more frequent today than past years? 5. Is your church’s budget decreasing its focus on reaching and ministering to others beyond the church?

Please forgive me for the morbid and depressing title and content. I don’t think posts such as these encourage many of you.

I guess the impetus for writing such an article is the work I am doing to finish my next book, Autopsy of a Deceased Church. I have dealt a lot with the death of churches in my research and writing for that book.

The Research

Before I go further, let me define a dying church. A dying church is a congregation that will close its doors within 20 years if it continues its current trajectory. “Trajectory” includes many variables such as attendance, financial giving, demographic trends, and age of members.

Why would I include such a long period of 20 years in the definition? Simply put, churches hang on to life tenaciously. The members, despite how few remain, are highly reticent to close the doors of the church.

According to my estimates, about one in four American churches, or around 100,000 churches, fit the definition of a dying church. My estimates seem to have been confirmed with a recent study by LifeWay Research. The research team conducted telephone interviews with 1,007 Protestant pastors.* One of the response statements the team asked the pastors was: “I am concerned that the church where I am serving is dying.” Here are the responses:

• Strongly agree: 7%
• Somewhat agree: 15%
• Somewhat disagree: 19%
• Strongly disagree: 58%

So 22 percent of the pastors either strongly or somewhat agree that their churches are dying. That number is close to my own estimates of 25 percent.

Read More