Ross Woods, rev. 2021
This book is about the life cycle of a church, how it is born, grows up, lives through adulthood, and eventually faces death. Follow the story of Oak Valley Community Church, as each chapter time-warps them to the next stage of the life-cycle. It is based on lots of real churches, but to some extent it's a hypothesis. Churches don't always follow the cycle, and there are variations on the theme.
I believe that the church life-cycle explains why churches have many of their most exhilarating times and why they can fill us with frustration or boredom. But please don't think that it's the total answer; some churches are so creative and fresh that there's still a lot to learn. And some think of many more mistakes to make than are outlined in this book.
People probably don't learn as much as they can from the healthy stages of a church's life. And very few people suspect that the first signs of age will creep up on their church.
Is the life-cycle an inevitable part of being a church? (That's a euphemism for Are you doomed?
) Yes and no. Yes, it is probably inevitable; statistics indicate that your church almost certainly will develop midlife problems. Christianity Today (1991, p. 69) reported that the life cycle of an American church is now down to only forty years, and only the first fifteen years are spent in good health. That's down from the sixty years estimated by Forest C. Bush. Managers have studied organizations and generalized that they go through four stages; the embryonic, visionary, risktaking stage, the growth stage, characterized by clear purpose and stability, the mature but moribund stage, and the dying stage (e.g. Rothschild, 1994). It seems there's something in human nature that makes the life cycle happen.
But your fate is not sealed; don't throw in the towel yet. True, most churches do. But if your church realizes what is happening, it can take corrective action. Forewarned is forearmed; you can prevent the effects of aging on your church.
NOTES
Bush, Forest C. N.d. Why Plant Churches
Unpublished typescript.
Christianity Today `Churches Die with Dignity' Jan. 14, 1991, p. 69-70.
Rothschild, William E. 1994. `The Four Faces of Leadership' World Executive's Digest May, pp. 60-62.
Before reading further, try this questionnaire:
1. Over half our church members have been in our church for more than five years. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
2. Quite a number of people with no Christian background come out of the community to our church. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
3. Most members in our church are between 30 and 50 years old. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
4. The majority of people in our church were brought up in Christian homes. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
5. Our church leaders are known and respected in the community for their Christian views. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
6. Most people in my church believe non-Christians are now generally closed to the Gospel. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
7. I think that church is exciting. AGREE/DISAGREE/SOMETIMES
8. Our church spends almost all its budget on its internal programs and denominational work. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
9. Our church has deliberately tried to find out what outsiders think of us. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
10. In the last three years, our church has deliberately tried to find out whether or not we are effective in evangelizing our community. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
11. We review and change our style of worship about every five years. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
12. Some people in our church suspect that the church is run by a secretive inner circle. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
13. Numbers of men and women attenders are about the same. AGREE/DISAGREE
14. Most church members do not actively take part in making the church's major decisions. AGREE/DISAGREE/DON'T KNOW
Finished? (Don't cheat, now.) If you really have finished, go to the end of the book and see how you went.
Steve and Mary started a Bible study for a small group of interested friends meeting in their suburban house. They didn't seeing themselves as a church at that stage, had no real plans to establish one. They never imagined that their group would become Oak Valley Community Church. Steve and Mary thought of themselves as ordinary people with no special talent. He worked as an accountant in the city, and she worked several days each week as a nurse in a small suburban hospital. Like their friends, they had mortgages to pay and kindergartners to bring up.
The group made time to have fun together, taking the kids to the zoo and barbecues in the park. They borrowed each other's lawnmowers and learnt about each other's hobbies. When Emma, another member of the group, was sick for two weeks with a mysterious virus, the others babysat her three children and did some cooking for her.
Not everything was easy; minor disputes occasionally flooded the whole group with disillusionment and whispered the thought that they might as well disband.
Steve and Mary ran the group informally, usually by telephone. At first there were no elections but most group members could point to them as the people who usually organize things.
Later on, though, they were officially chosen by consensus in discussion, mainly as a measure to stave off chaos.
Many churches start like Steve and Mary's group. It's an exciting time that nobody forgets. Being part of a little nucleus church is an emotionally intense experience; those who learn its lessons well are wise people.
Much of what they do is personal and happens outside their group meetings. They talk about what is real and important to them, and it's helpful that they can relate it to what the Bible is talking about. The problems discussed in the New Testament are much the same as those that they face. They perceive very clearly the intensity and vitality of Paul's letters, and understand his struggles to overcome continual obstacles and disappointments.
A little later on, the members realized that they are pioneering a new church, and they make big sacrifices of time, energy, and money. Growth is slow; being a small group, they feel they don't know many people and they continually look for ways to connect with community around them. They have few resources other than their own vision and enthusiasm.
Tips:
The little group in Oak Valley started to grow rapidly, bringing in people from outside. Nobody knows exactly why, but John and Kay seemed to play a role. They recently had an exciting experience of coming to Christ, and knew lots of people whom they could invite along. New people found meetings to be friendly and attractive, so they tended to want to stay and find out more. When Mark and Kathy became believers, they had the same ability to influence people. Not all the new people lived nearby, but eventually it became clear who was willing to become fully part of the group and who would make occasional contact.
They had lots of young people, including young families with children. Men were easy to find, comprising about half of the group.
With more people, they found that their interpersonal style was becoming increasingly inefficient. They realized that they needed to get organized
and talked a lot about how to do it. The basic problem was that they wanted to stay a group of friends and didn't want to become a bureaucratic institution. But, like it or not, they had to formalize some of their structures. Eventually, Steve was elected
chairman of a three-person committee, but the group still made most of its important decisions by consensus in informal discussion.
Not long after, they realized that they should call themselves a church and give themselves a name. Clarifying their biblical base was most difficult. They wanted something that was biblical so they looked at Scripture again to see what it taught. They also wanted something that would work but they saw the shortcomings of many of their options. Besides, several members at Oak Valley had come from other churches and were not happy to sacrifice some of their denominational distinctives.
Eventually they agreed on a well-written compromise and a very functional constitution. Perhaps they could have done it earlier when the church was still a small group in a house, but at least now it was done and almost everyone was happy. One couple, Jim and Wendy, wanted something more like their previous church. They still came occasionally and were good friends of the group, but never asked to become formal members.
Churches in the rapid growth stage have a burning vision. They know that they can reach a considerable proportion of their community with the Gospel. Perhaps because they have functioned as a group of friends, they believe their group is somehow unique and identify very strongly with it.
Nobody professes to know the real reason why pioneer churches start growing. It might be their sense of excitement, their closeness and warmth, a new housing development, or the vision of their leadership. But the sense that God is at work is often unmistakable.
In any case, meetings are stimulating and creative, especially as there are often new people coming for the first time. The church works very hard at being understood by their community so that they will maintain their credibility. They are very sensitive to the real problems of the people around them and still care about individuals. In fact, they've thought so much about people that they haven't thought about the underlying principle; that is, that they need to have very open relationships with their surrounding community so that the church functions as a kind of community center.
The church is probably at its most creative. Like teenagers unwilling to accept all the routines of their parents, they want to find new ways of expressing their ideas. They seem to be unhappy with the way that many older churches try to communicate, so they struggle to find new and interesting styles that their community will find attractive.
But not everything is bliss at Oak Valley. The mood may be positive but they all know that they face myriads of problems. And they are real problems. What people don't see is that many of their problems are direct consequences of their health. Look at the list:
| Problem | Hidden Strength |
|---|---|
| The influx of new Christians brings all their personal problems from their old life. The few people at Oak Valley with counselling skills are deluged with work. | You are ministering to people with real needs who are learning for the first time how to trust Christ. |
| Many of the group seem too willing to compromise with the clearly non-Christian values around them. Unable to retreat to a Christian ghetto, the leaders feel that they must give more teaching to counter it. | You are meeting the world face-to-face because you have open channels to the community around you. (Don't give up; you're achieving something important.) |
| Facilities are a problem; the church grows out of meeting places very easily. | If God has blessed you with so many new people, this is a problem to enjoy. |
| How can a small church disciple and teach so many new Christians? | Not very easily; the feeling of falling behind is probably inevitable. But it's better to be struggling to feed the starving crowds than to be trying to cram more food into the obese. |
| New Christians aren't interested in some kinds of teaching. | It's not all bad that they don't like the old squabbles of the Christian ghetto. |
| The church is ignorant of worldwide missions. | They envisage their mission field to be their community, which is healthy. They are also open to the challenge of worldwide opportunity if the right people present it. |
| Choosing a pastor is especially difficult; too many of the people available are best suited to relatively stagnant churches. | At least you want the right kind of person—a fellow pioneer with the ability to lead you to further growth. |
Another problem deserves special mention. The young, growing church lacks ministry expertise and leadership. Its leaders make many mistakes on the way and sometimes want to give up. But the church has the commitment to pull through, and the hard-pressed leaders are learning lots on the way. Most importantly, they are committed to training people, and they welcome new, gifted people into the leadership structure. The leaders trained at this stage are most likely the leaders of the future church and the young church will give them plenty of high-quality experience.
The other major development in the church at this stage is to buy a building. It takes lots of commitment and sacrifice, either to raise all the funds necessary for a simple building, or to take on a mortgage. But a visionary church can do it; they not only see that it is useful for their ministry to their community, it is downright necessary. They also feel that they are doing it for God's Kingdom, not just for the institutional church.
1. Keep your vision clear; plan to keep growing. Avoid the temptation to stagnate and run your church just like the old churches around you.
2. Keep an eye on your culture. Your ability to communicate with the people around you is something that others wish they could copy.
3. Don't feel that large prestigious churches have something you don't. In fact, many of them are not as healthy as you.
4. Teach, teach, teach! New believers need all the teaching they can get. But be sensitive to its effectiveness. Teach for real
understanding, changed lives, and hands-on able-to
skills. Don't just try to stuff people's minds with facts.
5. Train new leaders. They are in desperately short supply.
Oak Valley Community Church battled through and kept on growing. Even though it had to fine-tune its structure, the church was basically positive and forward-looking. The handful became dozens, and the dozens crept to hundreds. At some stage, nobody knows really when, many people felt a vague frustration that they couldn't easily describe.
Some of the original small group started becoming disillusioned. Some decided to leave, feeling that the good old days were happier. Others felt hurt at being eased out of the church's leadership structure by newcomers who could do the job better. Some enjoyed the anonymity of the crowd, which gave them the opportunity to sit back and do very little. Others suffered the loneliness of knowing that nobody notices whether they come or not. Many of them could not accept that the church no longer wanted the old building that they had sacrificed so much to build and where they had felt so happy, even though it was not at all adequate for the church's needs.
The church was now more professional. The music had to be better. In the old days, everybody knew the musicians and didn't criticize mistakes. Eventually the church was too big for everybody to know each musician, so people wanted a professional show. Some of the less talented (or less disciplined) musicians from the old days were pushed aside.
And not only music had to be more professional. Everything else had to be done better, and that means more expensively. Speaking and teaching had to be more polished, and people came to expect a wide range of niche ministries, requiring the pastoral team to have increasingly specialized skills.
When a growing church nears about two hundred members, churches experience another set of growing pains. Very few churches respond positively to the 200 barrier, and most give in to the aches and pains of continued growth and start stagnating.
Clearly, the leadership needs to teach that nobody can attend every program; in fact, it's kind of nice to go only to those meetings that are important for you. (It might seem amazing, but some people will disagree with proposals for new ministries for no other reason than they can't get out to another meeting.)
Finances are a niggling cause of concern. Although the church has seen healthy growth in its income, some of the figures are staggering. The responsibility of the huge buildings (and perhaps the larger mortgage) causes some wrinkled brows, although they could easily pay it off if they were as sacrificial as their founders. The salary bill for the increasing number of staff means that the budget never shows a healthy surplus.
Other members of the original group of founders have stuck with the church and now occupy a unique place in its power-broking structure. Having an intimate knowledge of the people and history of the church, as well as quite clear ideas of what the expect from it, they almost have veto power in any important decision.
Professionalism might be good, even unavoidable, in many ways. In churches so big that a personal touch is increasingly difficult, people expect higher standards. For churches that can afford it, the extra plush is sometimes no more than a reflection of the living standards of the surrounding community. People don't easily accept amateurish service anywhere else, and they don't listen to music with mistakes in it.
But the down-side of professionalism is that the larger church risks losing the contribution of its silent majority. First, many of these people do not easily emerge as highly-skilled church leaders. With training, many could make a valuable contribution, and the church cannot afford to let church-going degenerate into a mentality of sit back and watch the show.
Second, ordinary members are now further from the church's decision-making processes. Decisions are more complex, detailed work is delegated to committees, and there are too many members to allow as much open discussion as would be possible in a smaller church. A hierarchy develops and the people at the top become more powerful. Clearly, the church has become far more institutional.
Finding a pastor with the vision and ability to provide positive leadership is increasingly difficult.
But the greatest problem facing the church is the temptation to consolidate its gains. Pastoral care has an increasingly prominent role, with a corresponding decrease in evangelism and church-planting. There are now more people in the church, so even meeting the routine needs for pastoral care is strenuous. If the matter ever gets discussed, the excuse is almost always that the church needs to re-focus on strengthening the church after a period of rapid growth.
Beware! Probably the majority of growing churches respond badly to these pressures, thinking that they are doing what is right. Of great danger is a deliberate decision to consolidate
; it will arrest growth and the church will begin to stagnate. It may seem easy to regain momentum later (after all, you've had no problems so far), but the truth is that it will be far more difficult than simply maintaining it. The decision to consolidate is not quite in keeping with Scripture. Faced with runaway growth, the apostles simply redoubled their teaching efforts and delegated work that would disrupt it. (Acts 2:42,46,47, 6:1a,4)
1. Having become bigger, you're probably struggling with new structures, and the pain involved in your size. Don't give up. Discuss the issues openly and value the feedback you get. Some turnover of membership is inevitable. Try your best to help those who can't handle the changes to become part of a Christian group that meets their needs. In many cases, it can be a small group within the church.
2. Face any of these pressures and respond in a way that promotes further growth. You can keep the mother church growing, but putting resources into planting daughter churches should also be a high priority.
3. Your money, size, and prestige are giving you increased power in denominational circles. Give positive input to other churches, but keep humble and keep on learning. Don't feel you should have more privileges and power than smaller churches; pride would be your undoing.
4. Don't let the tendency to professionalism let you forget to train your second-tier leaders.
Oak Valley Community Church had been growing so well that other Christians decided that they wanted to join. Some had recently moved into the area. Several dozen families were frustrated or disillusioned with their old churches; others were looking for an alive
church so that their children wouldn't want to quit church-going.
The new people from other churches brought with them a rich store of desperately-needed skills and experience. Invigorated by the atmosphere of freshness, some were overjoyed to be offered an opportunity to take on a fruitful ministry and became remarkably effective. It was especially easy now there were so many niche ministries.
Others brought the unwanted baggage of hurts and frustration from their previous churches; they had almost lost the ability to enjoy anything fresh and different and optimistic. The pastors suggested to the Lay Ministry Committee that these newcomers should be left to sit and absorb life for a couple of years to heal their wounds. Only then might they have the energy to become positive, responsible members.
Over coffee one day, Jan aired her feelings of tension on another issue. She said to Mary that now the church has more programs, she can't get to every meeting at church. There aren't enough hours in the day. Not long ago it was fun to go to everything and get involved. Now it's just hard work. I need to put more time into the business; Rob can't do everything himself. Besides, nowadays I don't even know a lot of people at church.
In the early days, not only could Jan know everybody well, but close friendships were the hallmark of being part of the church.
The first gray hair. The wrinkles around your eyes that linger after a smile. Churches grow old just like people. The signs of age might be different but the way they creep up is just the same. It's a critical time; the church has a mid-life crisis looming ahead. Imagine being thirty-eight years old and getting fired from a job in a dying profession where you've worked for over fifteen years. And coming home and realizing for the first time that your kids have become teenagers. That's what it's like for a church to become aware that it is showing signs of age.
But people don't usually realize that their church is changing and are unprepared to do much about it. Perhaps that is why the first signs of age mark the most interesting stage of the life cycle; they explain how vibrant youth can become tired middle age.
The church keeps on growing strongly so nobody realizes that there are fewer and fewer new converts from the surrounding community; growth is increasingly transfers of membership from other churches. And church leaders are so busy keeping all the programs running smoothly that they don't realize that the kind of growth has changed. According to one source, most new churches reach their peak attendance, financial giving, and evangelism within only twelve years, and their evangelistic effectiveness is already on the wane only three years later. (`Churches Die with Dignity' Christianity Today, Jan. 14, 1991, p. 69.)
Another major reason for the change is the subtle changes that transformed an open group into a closed group. At first, the group saw their mission as being faithful to Christ in their surrounding community; they welcomed outsiders. But it was natural and fun to want to be with other like-minded people, so they came to spend more of their time in each other's company. Before too long, members had to be faithful in service to Christ, especially to church-related people. After all, they had to shepherd and teach new believers and wanted to guard against letting their group identity dissipate into the wider community.
But eventually, this came to mean attending ever-proliferating church meetings with the resultant loss of time for caring for outsiders. The law of diminishing returns came into effect; the increase in number of meetings ceased helping members to become more spiritual. At the last stage, the church has developed a full-blown case of stagnation syndrome; it has become a sub-culture with an ''us-them'' attitude to outsiders.
Several other things happen during the transition stage. I suspect that it is at this stage that churches tend to have their first heated argument. They usually resolve the matter successfully. Perhaps it is the first sign that the church is becoming inward-looking and starting to suffer stagnation.
Whether or not the church makes it to the 200 barrier, its administration becomes more hierarchical and the pastor becomes increasingly responsible for the ministry. The concept of church membership is changing; it's now more important to be a formal member of the institution than to be actively part of a circle of friends.
At least one good thing happens. Churches start to have a vision for worldwide mission; they develop a good missionary support program and start to send their first missionaries. The unfortunate corollary is that, for all practical purposes, the church does not see its surrounding neighborhood as its primary mission field.
Take deliberate steps immediately to get your church back on track. You have already started to lose momentum and the stagnation syndrome has started to take root. Lose your drive now and it will be far more difficult to keep your church healthy.
Check your creativity. If you're the pastor of an aging church, then your ability to innovate is probably becoming a little tired.
Here are some thoughts on creative communication. Try them. They stand a better chance of success if used with people who want something fresh. But don't be surprised if dwellers in church ghettoes dislike them.
a. Can outsiders understand what you say? Do they find it attractive? Avoid cliches and jargon and see things from their perspective. Non-Christians might validly see things in a very different light because they don't live in Christian ghettos. And Christians are generally blind to the concerns and perspectives of non-Christians.
b. Do you use creative new metaphors and similes to communicate? Do you create living images for people?
c. What are you learning that is fresh and new?
d. Which Scriptural truths are relevant for people? Are you meeting pressing needs? Are you quite sure that what you are saying is absolutely important? Dump anything trivial and get something else.
e. Compare the truth with your own experience. What insights emerge? Are there new ways of understanding and looking at situations? If you meet and observe people each day, you might find that they illustrate unexpected spiritual truths or truths about human nature. Don't just adopt the church status quo. And don't fool yourself that the Christian status quo is always biblical.
f. What will work for people? Can people really put it into practice?
g. Can people personally identify with the experiences, feelings and motives that you talk about? Do you admit that you too have feet of clay?
h. Find the core truth and express the point clearly. If you can't do it in six words, think again. It might be blunt and honest. It might be remarkably positive, or a rebuke. But don't water it down with lots of technical-sounding stuff or with pseudo-intellectualism. Above all, don't apologize for it or make it so tactful that you hide the point. (The present trend is to pad it with empty feel-good patter.)
i. Is it biblical and theologically accurate? Remember, conceding a point can make what you say much more powerful.
j. Are you sincere? Or are you using your phony church voice?
The leadership at Oak Valley Community Church became entrenched. Several influential families ran the church, even when they didn't always have a place on the board. Steve and Mary, the original pioneers, were key office-holders and Mark and Kathy were still busy helping them. As guardians of the folklore, they used their knowledge of the past as a tool to wield power. After all, they could always appeal to their "heritage."
The ordinary members, especially outsiders and underclass people, had little influence in the church's decisions. Even though the church elected its officers fairly, members had a disquieting suspicion that they were excluded from some inner circle which secretly ran the church. At a business meeting, the hierarchy had once presented a proposal to be rubber-stamped by the members. One of the newer members questioned several very doubtful assumptions that it made, but two of the power-holders responded, trying to manipulate him into feeling that he was rebelling against legitimate church leadership.
A year later, the church was rocked by a disagreement among prominent people in the church. (Actually, it was a big argument.) It overwhelmed the church at the time but, in hindsight, the issue wasn't the important thing; most of it was people's egos and inflexibility. Church politics became messy and consumed any available spiritual energy. Back-room brokers peddled power and influence, the new currency of choice for church leaders. And such a foul smell couldn't be hidden; the church lost whatever credibility it had left in Oak Valley.
Even worse, it left permanent scars. People remembered their hurts. The factions, hidden to a newcomer, become even more deep-seated. Some topics of discussion were anathema, except with trusted friends outside the church environs.
The once-useful constitution of Oak Valley Community Church had become a thorn in the bare feet of church life. With its distinguished past and excellent historical reasons for every last comma, nobody could get enough votes to change it. But nobody could use it to get anything done; it was full of rules and procedures and red tape.
Steve, Mary, Mark and Kathy had vested interests; they didn't want new people coming up the ladder. If a member started to show real ability to minister to others, they had ways of preventing competition. They could simply leave them until they were "more mature", withhold training, and refuse to delegate ministry tasks. An extra dash of fault-finding did wonders in keeping people down.
Of course, they had a good excuse. They thought that their church needed highly-skilled people with professional-level abilities, and they couldn't take a risk on an amateur. (Besides, he never went to our theological school, can't read Greek, isn't ordained, and doesn't like our jargon.) Ironically, Steve, Mary, Mark and Kathy once learnt ministry skills through their mistakes in a small fellowship that took risks with amateurs.
Some of the gifted people decided to tow the party line and stagnate in the pews. Others simply left and found other churches where their abilities were appreciated. In the future, Oak Valley would become desperately short of lay leaders.
Committees met and produced hundreds of pages of minutes each year. Even worse, Oak Valley invited a respected pastor to take their Christian Education portfolio. He brought more unwelcome baggage than almost anyone. Bible study groups became dry academic sessions dedicated to proving that all other theological opinions were misguided and historically incorrect. Swayed by the pastor's apparent learning, members soon sunk to Christian ghetto issues like arguing about the minutiae of Bible translations, about which none of them knew enough to justify an opinion anyway.
Money wasn't a problem, not at first anyway. The building was paid for and the church had more than enough for its real needs. But most of the money was wasted, poured into the bureaucracy or into the comforts of members. With practically none spent on the youth department and the home-groups (where most of the direct personal ministry to outside people had once taken place), these ministries withered into long-term support programs for insiders.
The neighborhood had changed, so that, ironically, the Oak Valley Community Church no longer represented the Oak Valley community. The members no longer knew the people nearby. Large numbers of Koreans and African-Americans had moved in. The larger suburban blocks were subdivided for apartments and high-rise blocks. Commercial establishments took over the area. A few faithful still lived nearby, but many had moved out and had to drive a long way to church. With the distances involved, they found it difficult to spend casual time with other church members. (Eventually they would tire of the long journey and find other churches nearer home.) Besides, even if they were involved in personal evangelism, they couldn't easily invite neighbors to drive so far to come to church activities.
One other thing. Being a prominent church, people out of the neighborhood occasionally dropped in on church activities. But they never stayed, and never said why.
The first signs of age are a prelude to the stagnation syndrome. It's like having had a mid-life crisis and having made the wrong decisions. Now you have to go back and undo the mistakes of the past.
The stagnating church no longer grows by importing members from other churches; there are as many people moving out as there are moving in. A very comfortable state of equilibrium. In fact, if enough people move in from other churches then it might even appear to thrive. But if the mindset of stagnation is there, the decline will come.
But when the syndrome takes hold, it pervades and cripples almost every aspect of church life, and is so blinding that most of its sufferers do not realize they are seriously ill. Being pessimists, of course, they are quite unaware of their problem and can use standard cliches like "eternal blessings" and "glorious salvation" to convince waverers that they really are optimists. The syndrome is incredibly complex and can dominate the church's lifecycle for very long periods; half of the entire lifetime is not unusual. Describing its symptoms is difficult enough (partly because the church has become a distinct sub-culture) let alone expressing them in ways that its sufferers can identify aspects of their own sickness.
Is the depiction of the syndrome in this chapter just an artificial caricature? It depends on the particular church you're talking about. It's a fairly justifiable description of some churches, while other stagnant churches aren't nearly so far along the path. My distinct impression from my observations is that all the aspects of stagnation tend to stick together. Get one, and the rest are on their way. A related question: Can people in stagnant churches be spiritual? Clearly, the answer is "yes". Some of the warmest, most sincere Christians you will ever meet feel at home in stagnant churches. They lead holy lives. But they are trapped in a sub-culture that makes effectiveness impossible.
Not surprisingly, the criteria for leadership have changed from those of earlier stages. Wealth, respectability, and managerial ability are more important than spirituality and vision. Leaders build a well-oiled and efficient hierarchy.
Stagnant churches easily break into factions, called "variations of opinion" in polite society. Too often the front lines are minutiae of doctrine that often don't matter. Then there are radicals and conservatives. The radicals want to liven up the place and change everything, but the conservatives are the majority and ensure that any new ideas don't affect the core activities of the church. At least in one sense the conservatives are very creative; they show unbounded skill in thinking up persuasive justification for their opinion that new programs are failures.
Stagnant churches tend to have different demographics from healthy churches. If the majority of people in your church are over fifty years old, consider yourself at risk. No, this is not bias based on age. Fortunately, healthy churches can have a good proportion of older people and, unfortunately, some young people are not a refreshing influence on church life.
The young people have either been converted in another church and then moved in, or have grown up in the church. Either way, they have been trained up to be church kids that maintain the traditions and mindset of their elders.
Stagnant churches develop all kinds of theological problems.
Their conviction that they have the truth becomes a minefield. With less face-to-face evangelism, they lose sight of essential doctrines and bicker over non-essentials. They become embroiled in traditional debates that are increasingly meaningless to outsiders. These churches are really saying, "We have the Word of God so we must be right, therefore we shouldn't change." They confuse the truth of Christianity with the particular kind of cultural expression that they have given it. And being locked into a particular kind of cultural expression, they become isolated and unimportant in a fast-moving culture.
They find a kind of academic prestige in their doctrine. Having lost their focus on people, they don't expect people to understand what they say or to experience changed lives. People who are completely mystified by a long-winded theological sermon will say they were thoroughly blessed by it. A large dab of Greek works wonders, even though many sermons which use lots of Greek are quite pseudo. (Just to keep perspective, it's also true that many mature Christians are ready for some solid theology and could get help from it.) Some churches even accept pastors who are academically outstanding but who have almost no pastoral skills whatsoever. In this century, prestige in academic theology has led many evangelical churches into a wasteland of irrelevance, where in the past it led them into liberalism.
And even though they deny it completely, pessimism is the order of the day. Every day. There are people who enjoy preachers who do little more than pour guilt upon their listeners. These well-meaning people say, "The Lord is convicting me" but don't experience any change. Stagnant churches might sign all the right doctrinal statements but these Pharisees impose a full quota of back-breaking laws on each other in the worthy name of obedience. All these complicated rules suggest that obeying them is what Christianity is all about. People think about what they must do for God to accept them. They ask what Christians may and may not do. They become worn and tired going to church meetings trying to be faithful, and think that sitting in a church service is their religious duty. For these people, the Gospel is no longer good news. The way they say it has no power to draw people to Christ. If life isn't better as a Christian, then what could they pass on to outsiders?
Christianity becomes defined by being against particular moral and theological deviations, but they aren't for anything very much. They make no mention of experiencing anything that outsiders would see as positive change.
It isn't too hard to see that these churches seldom meet the spiritual needs of their members, many of whom have become secretly disappointed in Christianity even though they have genuinely trusted in Christ and been born again. Sincere pastors try to strengthen their flock with the best of food, but it doesn't work. The flock just gets indigestion; lots of sermons and devotionals don't necessarily help anyone to feel any better about Christianity. So the church tries to solve the problem with more meetings and more sermons, piling more guilt upon people by telling them that their gloom is their own fault.
Stagnant churches naturally look for pastors whose mindset is the same as theirs. They want a senior pastor with prestige in the denomination, which they justify by saying "We need an above-average pastor; our church is large and important and we need solid teaching because we're so mature." He will normally be very well-educated and attract a large salary.
The church loads him down with many unrealistic expectations. He must become SuperPastor to get everything done, resolve everyone's minor tiffs, keep everybody's egos well-stroked, and overcome the inevitable criticism. In this environment, his greatest challenge is simply political survival. Members expect his sermons to bolster their self-righteousness; they want him to say, "This is the truth you already know, you don't have to be changed by it, you were right all along." Is it any surprise that an increasing number of these pastors leave the ministry and find more rewarding jobs in the secular workplace?
Sadly, many of these churches are not going to look for the kind of pastor with the gifts that will lead them to restore their passion and growth.
Although there is no magic formula that can manipulate God into manifesting Himself amongst His people, stagnant churches think they've found it and patented it. Their worship services are quite divorced from real life, as if God never worked outside them. And worship gets locked into a routine. (Charismatic churches are no exception, despite their belief in spiritual newness.)
Speakers give prayers and sermons in polished, dignified language, whether literary or academic. No longer appearing to be sincere and enthusiastic, they lose their directness, simplicity, and spontaneity.
Underneath, members believe that attending church worship is the Christian's main obligation, and church meetings increasingly follow the same style. Worship services do not promote warm friendships with other people; at best people drink lots of coffee together. It's easy to see how a living group deteriorates into a tiresome routine. Of course, the main requirement for membership is to keep attending, so people are fooled into thinking that sitting in a church building and listening to a pastor is real worship. I have even been told that church services should be inconvenient and dreary to sort out who really loves the Lord.
Like everything else, pessimism pervades their future hopes for the church. Keeping the institution going is most important and they don't aspire to real change. They just hope to shepherd the souls they have and keep them at peace with each other. With no thought that outsiders could be effectively evangelized, their greatest vision and highest good is to "stay the same as we are now." Many members still remember the golden era when the church was alive and Christianity was fun, wishing those days would come again. They think that churches nowadays aren't spiritual any more. They wish for the good old days of "revival."
In practice, evangelism is mainly something the church does to its own people. The main purpose of many passionate Gospel sermons is to convince members that the pastor has a heart for evangelism. If anyone comes to faith, well and good, but it's a by-product. Most supposedly new converts are church people and their children; the few things they do outside are impersonal programs that have negligible chance of success.
The building is no longer a facility, it's a fortress, tucked safely out of the reach of a hostile world. At best, evangelism is a quick dash outside the gates to grab a few scalps, followed by quick dash back to safety. The church is no longer a light shining in the world that will draw others to it.
It almost seems like stagnant churches eagerly search out mistakes to make, and then enthusiastically make them on as large a scale as possible. Their ideas are jumble of errors:
Fiction: "People nowadays are resistant to the Gospel. Churches that experience growth are worldly and compromising. Their converts are insincere."
Growing churches are in the world but not necessarily of the world. Their cultural forms are up to date, and they struggle with the kinds of problems that recent converts bring. People nowadays are probably more open to the Gospel, but certainly much less open to the way churches traditionally tried to proclaim it.
Fiction: "We are totally surrounded by paganism and ignorance. Our culture is an abomination."
Fact: The church should look for cultural keys to effective evangelistic communication. Stagnant churches, if they have looked for a key at all, declare the key cannot be found. Their community then seems even more closed to the Gospel.
Fiction: "There are plenty of churches, so the Gospel is readily available to anybody outside."
Fact: Hardly anybody shows up at the front door begging to be told the Gospel. It is not readily available; in fact many churches are impervious to penetration by infidel outsiders.
Fiction: "We encourage evangelism in the community; our church often has sermons that present the Gospel clearly."
Fact: They unwittingly discourage evangelism by hiding the Gospel in church jargon and unfamiliar ideas that don't connect with real people outside. Sermons are not your best line of approach.
Fiction: "The old methods still work; we know because they worked in the good old days. If they don't seem to work so well now, it's because we're not doing them with enough intensity, or because outsiders are resistant to the Gospel."
Fact: Many old methods no longer work, and others need major up-dating. People easily forget the spiritual and interpersonal dynamics that made methods work in the "good old days" when their church was in a younger phase of its life cycle.
Fiction: Members: "Evangelism is the pastor's job." Pastor: "Evangelism is the members' job."
Facts: Nobody is actually doing it. Laypeople with links to their community are the first line of evangelism, but pastors need to show leadership and give training.
Fiction: "Numbers aren't important."
Fact: They probably don't have many numbers.
Fiction: "We disciple new converts from outside and accept them as equals."
Fact: There aren't any new converts from outside. If there were, they would be treated as inferiors until they had passed the twenty-year initiation course into the group culture.
Fiction: "If an outsider is truly born again, he will start leading a holy life."
Fact: First, do they mean "holy life" as the Bible means it, or do they mean conformity to church culture? Second, new Christians still have a lot to learn. Give them time to develop. (Unless you were a church kid, you needed time yourself.)
These churches put newer churches to shame in their faithfulness in prayer and financial support of missionary work. Nevertheless, they tend to prefer supporting historically reputable programs, the effectiveness of which is in decline. As they have no local outreach, they are unwilling to commit resources to evangelism. The logic behind this is amusing in a dark kind of way: "You cannot put money into it because nothing exists; we haven't reached anybody so we can't run a program for them." By being stuck in program maintenance mode, they are reluctant to expend resources so that something will exist.
They also believe that it no longer matters if their evangelism doesn't work. Stagnant churches secretly expect evangelistic efforts to fail. With no useable links to people, they prefer the impersonality of bulk mailings and pre-recorded electronic media. In effect, they select methods that will predictably fail.
These tired churches are socially isolated. They keep to their cliques and have lost their ability to have a discussion with outsiders. They have few friendship links with the community, and what they do have are those through which the Gospel cannot flow. In one local study, ninety-five percent of church members had no significant interaction with non-church people. This makes it difficult to grow quality friendships by investing the time, trust, and care that it takes to bring about changed thinking.
In extreme cases, they just reject outsiders. One youth leader attracted a large group of kids with non-Christian backgrounds. The church ordered him to get rid of them so that the church kids could give more time to serious study.
Their idea of evangelism puts their self-worth at stake. They think that "the Gospel is right and I believe the Gospel, so I must be right." This puts them in a difficult spot. They can't say they might be wrong or don't know because they feel they'd be admitting that Christianity is wrong or doesn't have the answers. But putting self-worth at stake leads to the Four Great Mistakes:
1. I am always right and you are always wrong.
2. What I want to talk about is more important than what you want to talk about.
3. If my theology can't answer your question, then it must be a stupid question.
4. I will judge whether I've satisfactorily answered your question.
There are lots of reasons why they're mistakes. Here are two. Honest theological answers are hard come by anyway. And, like anybody else, outsiders don't accept those attitudes.
Another flaw is the idea that "God wants us to confront the unsaved with the Gospel." Compassion is out; they start with the aspects of Christianity that people find least attractive and then give an ultimatum so that people can clearly reject it. However, it is the Gospel, not we, that should confront people. Non-Christians tend to differentiate very clearly, and justifiably take offence at what they see to be a pushy, rude confrontation. They are not nearly so antagonistic to the Gospel itself.
Blinded by the incorrect assumption that the outside world is resistant to the Gospel, stagnant churches cannot see wide open opportunities in the community around them. My favorite example is the tale of two churches of similar denominations only several hundred yards from each other. At the same time that lack of members forced one to close down, the other was building a two-hundred-seat extension to its auditorium.
Churches become socially and culturally isolated from their surrounding general culture, so they develop their own subcultures. This excess baggage works against the newcomer. Some accept it, but many stay away, not bothering to find out what is Christian and what is purely cultural.
Church services are run differently from outside meetings. Much of the music represents the popular culture of at least a century ago, and the people use special jargon. The people have strange expectations and peculiar values, and expect new people to know them without being told.
But most outsiders don't sing (except alone in the car with the windows up), and don't understand the jargon, which is too often just a respectable guise for muddled or uncreative thinking.
Stagnant churches have their own values that they think are biblical, but they can't always explain them from the Bible. They have clear ideas of respectability and who they will look up to. (Missionaries, senior pastors, and theological professors are very favorable.) To have graduated from Bible college is valued, even though the wider community might think of it as a degree in witchdoctoring. They are very straight-laced about morality, but have little experience helping real people outside their group.
The gap between insiders and outsiders is reinforced by distinct authority structures and the church's internal power struggles.
As a symptom of their cultural dislocation, many of these churches have expected outsiders to already have some kind of knowledge about Christianity, or at least make the same kind of assumptions. They think that society was once more "Christian" so they refuse to update church culture and stay with the old ways. Their methods of evangelism still assume the Christian-ness of society in that they see evangelism as simply getting nominal Christians converted.
And it doesn't work. Most outsiders have lost any Christian heritage that they might have had, and now have no accurate knowledge of Christianity at all. Those that equate Christianity with nineteenth-century moralism are just making Christianity harder to understand. (This has a strange correlation with the healthy church. Many outsiders are actually more open to a positively-presented Gospel than the church has thought. Besides, as new people coming into the church have less knowledge of Christian teaching, part of the evangelist's job nowadays is to teach and disciple, not just spread the Gospel. Cf. Mt. 28:19,20.)
At the beginning of the stagnation stage you hope there's a lifejacket under the seat. You might want the reassurance of reaching down and touching it from time to time. Later on, you might try recalling the instructions on how to use it. Will it even work? Is there hope for the stagnant church?
Yes, but there are no simple buttons to push.
Church renewal is a complex kind of ministry. Making generalizations is difficult because each case is somewhat different. You won't simply be able to copy another church; you will have to find your own unique form. Even many so-called experts won't know what to do; they're just willing to learn and suggest something that suits you.
Start with the realization that it will take a fairly long time to make such deep-seated changes. The conventional wisdom teaches: "It's easier to give birth than to revive the dead." Bringing a dead church to life is a tougher challenge than planting a new church.
It is tempting to think that reviving a tired church is simply a matter of altering the program. The usual quick fix is to move to a small-group structure, but sitting stagnant Christians in a circle doesn't change them. Others try impassioned sermons, new song books, training programs, or prayer meetings. Pastors who depend on program changes for real transformation tend to fail, becoming frustrated and giving up. Programs and methods are relatively superficial and unimportant. The real problem is a mindset, and it's the underlying spiritual principles that will help.
Here are some steps. Some of them overlap quite considerably and their order is flexible. One thing is clear: none of them are magical solutions that always work.
1. Trust that God has a future for you. The phantoms of discouragement and disillusionment have probably haunted you so long that it's hard to believe that there is real hope. Most people who left the church probably didn't leave it for demographic reasons. They left because they were secretly disappointed. When you ran out of honey, you stopped attracting ants.
Look at the ethos of Acts 2-4. Your job is to build an ethos. You don't have to drudgingly solve every problem in the church one by one. You need to create a new mindset. How long is it since going to church was the most exciting thing you did all week? See what God did in the Jerusalem church. The group loved being at church so much they went every day. They loved being with the people, and thought it was so great that they wanted to give their property away.
2. Start simply. A simple way to start is to have a fresh, friendly, sincere, people-centered manner in front of the church, and to use easy-to-understand language. I saw a friend of mine create a different atmosphere almost immediately. In your personal ministry, take time to care for people sincerely, getting around the formal superficiality that characterized the church in the past.
3. Begin discipling people personally. Training a small group of people will give them hope and a role-model to follow. Give them opportunities to meet other positive-minded Christians; modelling oneself on others is one of the main ways to change mindsets. Develop their gifts and give them jobs where they can feel successful. Lavish encouragement on them.
4. Pray. Your task is overwhelmingly difficult. Pray, and get others to pray with you.
5. Check your creativity. Re-read the guide at the end of the previous chapter.
6. Develop positive leadership. Open up your power and influence structures so that ordinary members feel free to express their opinions. For example, people have told me their ideas in private, whereas they would feel easily intimidated in a meeting. Yet I could present their opinions in the meeting without mentioning their names, so that they get a fair hearing.
Nothing will happen unless the leadership is positive. An intransigent leadership will consider laypeople working for renewal to be a rebellion, producing serious disharmony. The laypeople then have to choose either to leave, or to conform to the party line, or to run a home group in continuing opposition to the leadership.
Despite the difficulty of getting people on side, it is far better if pastors, deacons, and other lay leaders are committed to working together for renewal.
7. Read some useful books. For starters, I suggest Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry & Mary: How To Reach Friends and Family Who Avoid God And The Church by Lee Strobel (Zondervan, 1993)
8. Try a church growth survey. Not trendy, but probably very helpful. Expect to turn up important facts that you could otherwise never know. A friend of mine did one and found that in a ten-year period of growth, the denomination in the whole state had not had a net gain in active members, even considering newly-planted churches. For every new believer coming in, someone had gone out the back door.
It will help you understand your church and community at a social level and suggest solutions. It could indicate attitudinal problems that affect your concept of evangelism.
9. Answer some tough questions:
10. Clarify your vision. Discuss your vision for the future and aim for consensus. Take time; sometimes people will agree to a proposal but mean in their heart, "I'll let you do it but don't expect me to be committed to it." You can achieve consensus when you have no internal divisions. If you feel happy to do so, you could also set some concrete goals. The discussion and deliberation might be more important than the exact wording you agree upon, but the church should write its vision in a document and give every member a copy.
Focus your business meetings on growth. In Acts 6:1-6, the apostles didn't want to get bogged down in the practical details of running the church; they wanted to find ways to become more effective. As a result, the church kept growing. Avoid the temptation to focus on institutional maintenance.
Encourage open discussion, especially welcoming contributions from inarticulate people who have been powerless. Release people from any hidden fear that an inner circle is secretly running the church.
How long is it since you were exhilarated by what God did at a church business meeting? You should be able to enjoy many business meetings as much as worship sessions.
11. Make major changes. When you are ready, change your program. You might need to cut out some dead-wood programs, or compromise by reducing the resources you expend on them. Your facilities might need rethinking. A friend of mine, after visiting a church, said it looked like it hadn't been refurbished since the great depression of the 1930s.
12. People, people, people. The apostle John loved people. Look through 1 John and find all the verses where he implores us to love each other.
Pour your life into people, not just the regular church people, but outsiders too. Love people without being self-righteous and cliquish. Give new people time to come around, and respect their opinions even if you don't altogether agree with them. Form networks of friends and you will find a way into the community. Build your ethos.
13. Get started. During the 1970s and 1980s, churches had the unfortunate idea that seminars would solve their training problems. The seminars didn't train their listeners, because nobody was supervised or accountable in putting what they learnt into practice. They just whetted listeners' appetites to attend more seminars. People studied forever, wished forever, discussed forever, but not many actually started doing it. Even when you don't know all the answers, you must abandon the "Discuss and defer" sickness and start now with a "Decide and do" attitude. Get started.
Most pastors would be wise to steer clear of pastorates in stagnant churches. They would be subject to intense political pressure from church factions, everything wrong is their fault, and they have little opportunity to do much positive. They expend most of their effort simply keeping institutions going.
Some churches are death-traps for the careers and personal lives of their pastors. Look at the statistics on pastoral drop-outs. Some exceptions prove the rule; there are pastors who have succeeded against all odds. But as a rule, the future is not bright.
If you are seriously considering taking on such a pastorate, ask yourself:
Nothing killed Oak Valley Community Church; it looked like it was fading out, but it actually committed suicide in secret. The beginning of the decline looked like a normal fluctuation in membership, but before long the church could only keep its essential programs going. One by one the others closed down.
The church's once-healthy finances had also gone from a dip to a crash. Survival was only possible through a generous grant from denominational headquarters. The few remaining members were all retirees with negligible disposable income.
Sitting through their meetings was an endurance test. The remaining members were left plodding along in a gloomy rut, so bound to it that they feared change even more than the rut.
The new pastor had been there for more than a year. He had now thrown in the towel and was waiting for the chance to move to a better church.
In the advanced stages of stagnation, the church might not be able to attract a pastor, or afford one. These piteous churches have a few elderly women and even fewer elderly men. But they generally have no men between thirty and fifty years of age, and the trend is that there are not many women of that age either. The few that remain are often oddballs and social misfits, who only add to the church's social isolation from the wider community. Many members are absent and making their primary allegiances elsewhere, either in other churches or in non-Christian circles.
The stagnation syndrome has taken deadly control of every aspect of church life. It is facing the end.
Churches try not to close down because it would be an admission of defeat. They amalgamate with other churches; many amalgamations are really deaths in disguise, and many are not much more successful. Often, when two amalgamating churches choose to use one existing building and sell the other, the people whose building is sold tend to either stop attending church altogether or move to another separate church.
Churches might be willing to act when every member hears death knocking on the door. But in too many cases, churches prefer to die rather than risk the trauma of renewal or replanting.
Tips
There is hope. The steps to renewal at the end of the previous chapter might help if your church is only dipping into the stage of decline.
It is too late for renewal in many advanced cases. You are basically replanting a church from scratch using the support of the people you have. You need a clear mandate, which might not be easy to get. Even though members agree to change beforehand, they might be hurt or angry if it happens; for them the grief is real and you must not underestimate it. The church might pay its pastor a meager salary and provide facilities, outdated as they probably are.
You need to know how to plant a church. Remember, start small and keep focused.
Of course many churches don't go through the whole cycle. Many start stagnating well before confronting the 200 barrier, sometimes showing signs of age soon after being planted.
Some church people have never seen church at its healthiest, and it probably has a permanent negative affect on their mindset. By skipping several stages and never experiencing a period of rapid growth, I have seen churches go straight from being a small struggling group to being a stagnant church. People who have only ever known stagnant churches go and plant new churches, which are infected from birth. Not surprisingly, they depend on transfer growth.
Of those that experience a period of growth, perhaps the majority respond badly to the 200 barrier, preferring a rut instead. Fortunately some churches get it right; they choose to stay in growth mode, experiencing healthy growth for many years. They pass the 200 barrier, and even go through the next barrier at about 800 members. Maintaining growth without becoming a megachurch is possible by using resources to plant more new churches; they can eventually achieve far more growth than those that continue to build a massive center.
In some cases, churches can even skip the struggling pioneer stage and grow strongly from when they open their doors.
Other factors are also important. Denominational policies can either make a church stagnate and decline earlier than it otherwise would, or promote consistent long-term growth. Cultures vary from place to place. Californians seem quite happy with big churches, but people in other local cultures prefer small to medium-size churches.
Your church can maintain a state of healthy growth almost indefinitely. Reflect on the healthy stage of your church's life and learn as much from it as you can. Be alert to the subtle and threatening signs of age that emerge from the church's internal pressures. You can prevent the effects of aging on your church.
Give yourself a point for each time you gave these answers:
1. DISAGREE
2. AGREE
3. AGREE
4. DISAGREE
5. AGREE
6. DISAGREE
7. AGREE
8. DISAGREE
9. AGREE
10. AGREE
11. AGREE
12. DISAGREE
13. AGREE
14. DISAGREE
Look at your mark out of 14.
11 - 14 Your church is probably in good health.
6 - 10 Your church seems to be doing well, but might need to respond to some concerns.
0 - 5 Your church is a cause for serious concern.
You're probably wondering how this questionnaire works, especially if you scored low. Below is the rationale behind each question:
1. Most of our members have been in our church for more than five years. (Intent: Are new people coming into the church? Of course, it's good if newcomers stay more than five years.)
2. Lots of people with no Christian background come out of the community to our church. (Intent: Does the church have open links with its community?)
3. Most members in our church are between 30 and 50 years old. (Intent: Do the age biases indicate a healthy, growing church?)
4. The majority of people in our church were brought up in Christian homes. (Intent: Has the church reached people from non-Christian backgrounds? But it's also good to see kids who've grown up in responsible Christians homes.)
5. Our church leaders are known and respected in the community for their Christian views. (Intent: Is our church a credible institution in the community?)
6. Most people in my church believe non-Christians are now generally closed to the Gospel. (Intent: Is the church pessimistic or optimistic about prospects for growth?)
7. I think that church is exciting. (Intent: Are people's needs being met? Is God alive and active in their fellowship?)
8. Our church spends almost all its budget on its internal programs and denominational work. (Intent: Have we focussed a considerable proportion of funds for direct evangelism in our own area?)
9. Our church has deliberately tried to find out what outsiders think of us. (Intent: Are we concerned whether or not outsiders understand our message?)
10. In the last three years, our church has deliberately tried to find out whether or not we are effective in evangelizing our community. (Intent: Are we effective, or are we maintaining evangelism styles that don't work with people nowadays?)
11. We review and change our style of worship about every five years, and implement changes. (Intent: How open to change is the church? Does it consider changing cultural styles in trying to meet people's needs?)
12. Some people in our church suspect that the church is run by a secretive inner circle. (Intent: The suspicion of a secretive inner circle would indicate that the church is stagnant; the members are no longer involved in decision-making.)
13. Numbers of men and women attenders are about the same. (Intent: A majority of women indicates a stagnant church.)
14. Most church members do not actively take part in making the church's major decisions. (Intent: Similar to q. 13.)
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