Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Why Churches Fail

With over 3,500 churches closing down each year....the population rising and the churches not keeping up...question is....Why Are So Many Churches Failing?

Let me give you two reasons I think so:

1) Leaders Don't Know How

2) No Longer Relevant

What can you do to begin to turn-around your church?

1) Admit There's a Problem

2) Do Something About It.

Read and study what some of the growing churches are doing. There are business books, especially entrepreneurial business, that you could read. Never stop learning and growing. Ask questions. Take a risk. Try something new. What more do you have to lose.

5 comments:

INTELBLKMN said...

Jason,
I agree with you totally.
So many leaders have too much pride to admit that things aren't working. They tend to believe that if people aren't following, there must be something wrong with the PEOPLE.
May we always remain flexible enough move with the Spirit and capture the attention of our current generation.

Jason Curlee said...

great point in there David....and so true...if people aren't following there must be something wrong with the people...

There really should be more reflection on that....

Chris said...

Jason,

This is an alarming trend that I've been watching for quite some time now though I am a little slower to pin point the extact problem though I have my guesses, but I ultimately don't really know.
Here's what I have observed however. Many of the mega churches recieve "transfer growth" more than anything. They call it the "Wal-Mart effect." Despite the emergence of "big churches" the numbers indicate that church attendance is low. The members that were at the small church that closed its doors simply moved to the big church in town, but less people are still attending over all.

Chris said...

"...if people aren't following there must be something wrong with the people..." I find this to be mostly true, but I wouldn't push it too far because then we can then accuse Jesus for not being an effective leader in the case of Judas. In other words Judas ultimately stopped follow Jesus because there was something wrong with Jesus.

Jason Curlee said...

Chris...I think...and you will probably agree with this.

There is a trend in "leaders", and this is the point Dave was making, that the "leader" will say "if people aren't following, there must be something wrong with the people."

To the point that a leader is walking in pride and there is not self-reflection as to why people aren't following you.

I don't want to get into the factors as they can go all over the place...spiritual, personality...etc.

Point is that some pastors easily write people off that aren't following them without any reflection as to why. They just lump the blame on the people.

I would actually picture Jesus, even though I don't have any backing, have a little introspection as to why Judas quit following. Even though I have a little different take on that myself.