It was sad to see. The church that my parents attended literally died. Largely, the people who made up this congregation got old and passed on to the next life. When they did, they left no one to pass their church on to. The church attendance had been dwindling for many years. I visited there about a year before the denomination finally pulled the plug. It was like I stepped into a time machine back to my childhood in the early 60s: the order of worship was just as I remembered, the songs we sang were the same, the choir had new robes, but many of the members were the same, the same nice lady still played the organ, and the same people (the ones who were still living) sat in the same pews. This churched thrived in the post WW II era. As the men who fought that war came home and started families they brought them to church, built a beautiful little building, and expected things to go on like that forever. The only place they went on like that was in the church building. The neighborhood changed as the children of those men grew up and moved to other parts of the city. Eventually, most of the old-timers moved out of the neighborhood, too. Because they loved their church, they would drive back to the old neighborhood each Sunday, but their children wouldn’t. Finally, the congregation got old and died off. When there were only a few of them left, the denomination stepped in and gave the debt-free building to another of their local churches to use as a satellite campus. Of course my 90-year-old parents and the other members were invited to continue attending, but everything changed and they couldn’t accept so many sudden changes. It was no longer their church.
A similar thing happened in another denomination in another state. The church grew down to ten attenders. Their congregational polity required that they vote to turn the building over to the denomination. It looked like they would make that decision so that the assets could be used by the denomination to build the Kingdom in the area. However, at the last minute the last 10 members voted to keep the building so that they could use it for a small group Bible study on Sundays. (There was no mention of reaching out to the community.)
From time to time, both of these churches had been challenged to make some changes that would help them stay relevant and reach people for Christ. Both churches went through a lot of pastors, some of them were incompetent, some of them had great ideas, but the congregation was stubborn. They wanted the church the way it was, and that’s the way it stayed. Their concern was pleasing the people they already had, instead of trying to reach those around them who needed the good news. It had not always been that way. At one time these churches worked hard to affect the world for Christ, but that was long ago.
On the other hand, there are churches today that are growing like crazy. Many new church plants struggle with facilities and meet for years in high school gyms, warehouses or abandoned big box stores. I know one new church which has yet to have its first publicly advertised worship service that already has a larger attendance at their Sunday evening sessions than the national average church attendance. They crowd into a small office.
What’s the deal? Why do many churches find themselves with a building and no people, while other churches find themselves with a growing number of people and a desperate need for a building? I have puzzled over this for years. It excites me to see people crowd in to make-shift church buildings because they want to hear the message of love, hope and forgiveness. At the same time, it breaks my heart to see nearly empty churches that seem to care only for self preservation and are not concerned about the deep spiritual needs of those around them.
I think I found the answer as I was reading in Mark. It has to do with wineskins.
“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins" Mark 2:22 (NIV).
Jesus warned the disciples that their new relationship with him would not fit with the old temple religion of the Jews. Maybe it’s the same thing with some of our churches. They are only a little less into tradition and preserving the way things have been than were the Jewish authorities. Many congregations might well be as snobby about who is admitted to the “inner circle” as the Pharisees and Sadducees.
In Jesus’ day in Judah wine was often stored in wineskins. When the juice fermented to become wine, it gave off gases that stretched the skins. Old skins that had lost their elasticity couldn’t stretch to accommodate the process. They would break open and be ruined and the wine would spill out and be lost. I think this is the problem of many declining and plateaued churches. They have become too inflexible to accommodate the changes necessary to reach a new generation, so many are apparently being discarded. The great Bible scholar William Barclay commented on a similar passage in Luke: “No business could exist on outworn methods – and yet the church tries to. Any business that has lost as many customers as the church has would have tried new ways long ago – but the church tends to resent all that is new.” (It’s interesting to note that he wrote those words in 1953.)
The difference between churches and wineskins is that churches have a choice. They can choose to change. They can remain flexible. It all depends on the culture of the church. If the culture of the church is to be committed to the way things were, then no matter what the leadership does, the church gets old, and brittle, and eventually worthless to God’s plan to build the Kingdom. If an old church can maintain a culture that is committed to being a means the Lord uses to love people and bring them into His Kingdom, then it can continue to be a great beacon of His light in the world.
Sadly, even when declining and plateaued churches know they need to become flexible and make changes in a changing environment, they choose not to. Then, the only recourse God has is to make new wineskins (new congregations) that He will fill with his new wine (new believers).
What’s your church like? Is it an old wineskin—inflexible and no place for new believers? Or, is it willing to do whatever it takes to help new people become followers of Christ? How about you? How is your flexibility? How set are you in the way it has always been?
