If the church in America was a hospital the government would investigate it for the number of “deaths” (people leaving) and shut it down entirely! Why is this happening? America was begun by people who were looking for a place to worship without persecution concerning their faith or religious practices, so what has happened in the 240+ years that America has been a nation?
In a way, the church is a “care facility” for Christians or rather that is what it is meant to be. We are or at least should be studying the Bible there at least once every week, listening to a sermon about Jesus or God’s plans for our lives and learning from these sermons exactly how to live our Christian lives!
The survey, which is at the link above, tells us that people are leaving the church as hurting people because they have not been getting what they need from the sermons there. They feel empty instead of being filled with hope for the week ahead. Jesus is the Author of LIfe and if you leave a church service feeling more dead than alive, something is wrong!
God didn’t send Jesus here to bring people from life to feeling dead! The hope that we find in Jesus should be life-giving and life-sustaining because we will be with Him into eternity if we have given our hearts to Him and live accordingly.
So…what is going on in the church today? People seem to be disillusioned with the message or the messenger but it is difficult to tell which one is actually the problem. Is it possible to fix this? The only way that I know of is with lots of prayer with the entire church body involved in the prayer. If those in the congregation don’t want to participate or even feel the need to participate, then it is likely that the church will soon close its doors.
I was called into a pastorship a little more than seven years ago but the number in attendence on a regular basis has been dwindling for a few years now. Mostly due to jobs being elsewhere and people moving and the fact that our congregation was small to begin with (less than 30 people). Churches are closing at an alarming rate, not just in the so-called “Bible Belt” of the South but all over America.
Only if we will come back to our core beliefs in God and humble ourselves with prayer about this situation will things get better. Although, we are very close to the time of Jesus’ return for His Bride, at least that part of her that is left. It is during this time when the faith of many will grow cold and after the church is taken up things will only get worse. I pray that we will come back to our faith and trust in the Lord and maybe things will turn around before it is too late.
The Living Message of Christ 