When Churches Die

"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall never pass away." -- Jesus Christ, Matthew 24:35.

If you subscribe to the teachings of Jesus, you've probably already accepted the fact that no one who dies without being reborn of the Spirit of God, through Christ, is getting off this merry-go-round alive. Even the atheists, agnostics, and New Agers know this to be true, though they may cling to some hope that there is someone, somewhere, in some distant galaxy, who will be alive in a trillion years. Or that, upon death, they will simply reappear in some mystical la-la land, sans a benevolent God.

For a church to die is no great revelation. The ways in which they close their doors for the last time is the subject of this post. Some fall victim to attrition -- members slowly stop attending, the demographics of the neighborhood change, and the church no longer fits in with the backdrop. While this is sad, it at least can be understood.

But a church is more than a mere building: a church is the people that comprise the congregation as well as the particular doctrine espoused therein. Ideally, since Jesus did not preach duplicitously, we should be able to heed His teachings and agree on the fundamentals, pointing to a single Christian church. In many cases, we do.

Pastors who deviate from God's word in order to keep attendance figures up and place the fiscal health of the church ahead of its spiritual health, do a great disservice to the name of Christ.
When clergy fall victim to the shifting sands of societal norms and capitulate to ideologies which clearly and blatantly run contrary to God's teachings (as is occurring in nations such as Canada and parts of Europe where pastors are silenced by vigorous hate crimes laws), an even larger threat looms.

In your wildest dreams, would you ever have regarded the Bible to be a book of hate?

Many will never learn of Jesus's words and will fall into error by way of false religions and false teachers, even perversions of the simplicity of the Gospel. The world is replete with such people. "You will know them by their fruit." -- Matthew 7:20, again the words of Jesus, in which He warns of false teachers.

But what does this have to do with dying churches?

The enemies of Christ take on many forms. In some countries -- most notably but by no means restricted to those under the tyranny of Islam -- Christians are denied employment, shunned, stoned, their homes and places of worship burned to the ground, and in countless cases, believers are routinely martyred -- simply for believing in Jesus. Oddly, in spite of such horrific adversity, Christians take their faith underground, where their churches and faith flourish.

Other forms taken by Christ's enemies are perhaps more subtle: acceptance of homosexuality, murdering of the unborn, political correctness, the hammer and sickle of communism, even look-alike gospels which fly in the face of Scripture. While one might smugly take the position that such issues are best kept out of the pulpit, it is essential that they be included and addressed.

The openly homosexual Reverend V. Gene Robinson should not be teaching God's word to anyone until he repents of his sin and forsakes his lifestyle. Why? Because he cannot teach what the Holy Spirit does not give him, and he will receive nothing from the Holy Spirit as long as he is practicing sin. (Has this man ever truly been saved?)

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who today apologized to Charles Darwin for having doubted the author of the most flagrant anti-Christian doctrine ever propounded, needs to recant such beliefs. How he can reconcile evolution with the book of Genesis is beyond my comprehension. God didn't need evolution, Creation did the job just fine.

Trinity Broadcasting Network of southern California continues to sell air time to charlatans of Scripture who bastardize God's word beyond recognition. Teachers of the "prosperity gospel" twist Scripture to fit their own misguided desires, believing that perfect health and abundant wealth should belong to every true believer in Christ, and that anyone who is lacking is doing so due to some secret sin. (I could go on for days about this lie.)

The Word of God is a beacon to all, and its teachers must be beyond reproach, not living in sin. False teachers dim the beacon, and congregants of these fallacious churches will leave in search of anything that will tickle their ears. More often than not, what tickles their ears will pave a highway straight to hell.

We in the land of plenty should take note. Hate crimes legislation, and all the freedoms it has to offer, might only be months beyond the horizon here in the United States. Further such chipping away at our free speech rights will hasten the death of the church. And when churches die, whole societies quickly follow.