My church is closing, and I don’t know what comes next — for me, or America
How do you get rid of a pulpit? Or a communion table?
Does anyone want 30-year-old choir robes?
What do you do with the baptismal records of a church that dates back to the 1860s?
I never thought I would be asking myself these questions, but here I am, like many other pastors across the country as the number of Americans who belong to a faith community shrinks and churches that once housed vibrant congregations close.
When I first became a pastor, right out of college, there were ominous signs, but I did not foresee how quickly the end would come, hastened by a pandemic.
I first took the pulpit of First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, Illinois, in the fall of 2006. The church was a part of the American Baptist denomination, a mainline tradition that welcomed women into leadership and tended to take a more moderate stance on theological and social issues.
I preached in a sanctuary that could easily accommodate 300 people. That first year or two, I could count about 50 people scattered around the pews. It felt sparse, but not empty — a relief, since I wasn’t the most credentialed pastor in the history of the church.
I tried to light that match every Sunday morning. People didn’t show up.
The church’s membership began to dwindle in the 1970s and 1980s. If you talked to five members of my church about this period of time, you would get five different reasons for the decline: An ill-advised sermon drove off a few key families. Lots of kids who grew up in the church went off to college and didn’t return to rural Illinois because of the lack of employment opportunities. Other churches in town seemed more attractive with their drums, guitars and high-energy worship. Regardless of the cause, the membership of First Baptist dipped below 100 by the late 1990s.
After a couple of years, the discussion about revitalizing the church began to grow quiet. A sense of resignation started to creep in. I came to a disheartening conclusion: I wasn’t going to be able to turn things around. I think at that point most members knew in their hearts that the end was coming for the church. We were just all afraid to speak that truth into existence. It was better to keep our heads down and focus on the next worship service and not worry about what would happen in three or five years.
I’ve heard several people say that organizations die slowly, then all at once. That’s what happened to us.
My church went from 50 people to less than 10 under my watch. If I knew anything about how to grow a church I would have done it by now.
Many pastors are in the same boat that I was in. They are watching the waves lap over the side of their rickety vessel every day. The bucket to bail out the water is too small to do any good. Still, thousands of pastors are trying to keep the boat seaworthy by any means necessary, even as more cracks begin to emerge in the hull.
Last Sunday, I stood behind the pulpit of First Baptist Church for the last time.
Then I told them once more, “Go in peace to love and serve your neighbors.” I know that I may never see some of those people ever again.
I walked out those doors into the blinding heat of a summer day in southern Illinois and stepped into a future where I don’t know where I will go to church next Sunday, or even if I want to go. Frankly, I don’t know if my own faith will survive, and I’m not sure if the church in America will be there for the next generation like it was for me.
And I’m terrified because for the first time in my spiritual life, I don’t know what’s next.
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2024/07/25...the-nones/
How do you get rid of a pulpit? Or a communion table?
Does anyone want 30-year-old choir robes?
What do you do with the baptismal records of a church that dates back to the 1860s?
I never thought I would be asking myself these questions, but here I am, like many other pastors across the country as the number of Americans who belong to a faith community shrinks and churches that once housed vibrant congregations close.
When I first became a pastor, right out of college, there were ominous signs, but I did not foresee how quickly the end would come, hastened by a pandemic.
I first took the pulpit of First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, Illinois, in the fall of 2006. The church was a part of the American Baptist denomination, a mainline tradition that welcomed women into leadership and tended to take a more moderate stance on theological and social issues.
I preached in a sanctuary that could easily accommodate 300 people. That first year or two, I could count about 50 people scattered around the pews. It felt sparse, but not empty — a relief, since I wasn’t the most credentialed pastor in the history of the church.
I tried to light that match every Sunday morning. People didn’t show up.
The church’s membership began to dwindle in the 1970s and 1980s. If you talked to five members of my church about this period of time, you would get five different reasons for the decline: An ill-advised sermon drove off a few key families. Lots of kids who grew up in the church went off to college and didn’t return to rural Illinois because of the lack of employment opportunities. Other churches in town seemed more attractive with their drums, guitars and high-energy worship. Regardless of the cause, the membership of First Baptist dipped below 100 by the late 1990s.
After a couple of years, the discussion about revitalizing the church began to grow quiet. A sense of resignation started to creep in. I came to a disheartening conclusion: I wasn’t going to be able to turn things around. I think at that point most members knew in their hearts that the end was coming for the church. We were just all afraid to speak that truth into existence. It was better to keep our heads down and focus on the next worship service and not worry about what would happen in three or five years.
I’ve heard several people say that organizations die slowly, then all at once. That’s what happened to us.
My church went from 50 people to less than 10 under my watch. If I knew anything about how to grow a church I would have done it by now.
Many pastors are in the same boat that I was in. They are watching the waves lap over the side of their rickety vessel every day. The bucket to bail out the water is too small to do any good. Still, thousands of pastors are trying to keep the boat seaworthy by any means necessary, even as more cracks begin to emerge in the hull.
Last Sunday, I stood behind the pulpit of First Baptist Church for the last time.
Then I told them once more, “Go in peace to love and serve your neighbors.” I know that I may never see some of those people ever again.
I walked out those doors into the blinding heat of a summer day in southern Illinois and stepped into a future where I don’t know where I will go to church next Sunday, or even if I want to go. Frankly, I don’t know if my own faith will survive, and I’m not sure if the church in America will be there for the next generation like it was for me.
And I’m terrified because for the first time in my spiritual life, I don’t know what’s next.
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2024/07/25...the-nones/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
