Why Churches Decline, Fail to Grow and Sometimes Close

October 31, 2018

Over the last several years there has been an increasing amount of research studying churches. Consider a few facts:

62% of all churches in America have experienced either no growth or declines in their congregations.
65% of churches have less than 100 congregants including children.
More than 2 million people have left the church every year for the past 7 years.
In just 8 years the percent of Americans calling themselves Christians has decreased from 78% to 70%.

So why do people either leave church, fail to return after a visit or not attend at all? Research demonstrates and our work with churches confirms at least 12 conditions that negatively affect attendance. These include the following:

Churches are not united in prayer…1 Timothy encourages us to make petitions, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving for everyone. Encouraging collective prayer not only brings answers, it also builds unity around common purposes. Churches that don’t preach, teach and practice prayer don’t unify their people around it. Therefore congregants have less of an incentive to stay.
Churches are places of conflict, gossip and judgmental attitudes and actions and refuse to deal with sin…This is the number one reason people leave. Often there are factions, disagreements and dysfunction that get ignored. It festers and grows, resulting in disunity and gossip. In one study, 78% of the people who left church cited this as a problem.

In our church leadership consulting, we once worked with a church that was dealing with an abundance of issues. The elders didn’t trust the pastor and eventually fired him. Meanwhile, the staff didn’t trust the elders, and the elders didn’t trust the staff. Needless to say this all had a negative effect on congregants. In fact, they lost members left and right, and still the political bickering and finger pointing continued. Elders openly gossiped about other church members, and a spirit of humility was definitely lacking.

Not surprisingly, when we conducted a church survey, the ratings were well below average on almost every item we measured. Likewise, the open-ended responses regarding church weaknesses and critical issues were just as bad. The results offered a clear explanation of why people were leaving. They lost confidence in the leadership and they were tired of all of the drama.

3. Churches are not friendly…Some 66% of people who leave churches report that the lack of hospitality and concern caused them to feel as if they didn’t belong. Accordingly, they had very little reason to stay. Churches, above all other organizations, should be places of caring and hospitality.

Leviticus 19 tells us…”When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger…as the native among you…you shall love him as yourself…I am the Lord your God.”

And then there’s this in Hebrews 13…“Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.” Being friendly and hospitable is not a suggestion; it’s a mandate.

4. Churches do not empower their people…a lot of pastors talk about the importance of engagement of members but few actually do that. You can have engagement or control, but you can’t have both. The more control pastors attempt to impose, the less people will be engaged. People want an opportunity to use their gifts to serve others, and if the church doesn’t provide an outlet for that, they leave. In fact, a study of people who left their church revealed that 66% left because they couldn’t fit in.

These are just 4 of the 12 reasons. We’ll look at more next week!

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Why Churches Decline, Fail to Grow and Sometimes Close

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