Church Life-Cycles

A big religion headline last week involved the Crystal Cathedral declaring bankruptcy. This was, at one time, the mother of all mega-churches and was probably more well known, in it’s day, than Lakewood Church, Willow Creek, and Saddleback are today.

The pastor and his church built an empire. If you visit the campus today you don’t have to agree with the doctrine or strategy of the church to admit that everything there is a work of art. Seriously awe-inspiring and beautiful—the grounds, the pipe-organ, even the cemetery…in it’s own way, it reminds me of one of the grand cathedrals of Europe. If that’s the vibe they were going for I think they hit it well.

But the landmark church building that was constructed at a cost of $18m was part of an operation that has been rapidly declining in past years. Without getting into the irony of how possibility/prosperity preaching might open the door to a huge financial blowout (that’s another blog) I’m asking myself some questions:

1. As a congregation grows, is there wisdom in creating scalable structures such as a focus on volunteer ministry instead of adding “professional” staff or adding multiple (3, 4, 5) services and using facilities for multiple uses instead of building more buildings?

2. Should a local church consider paying for everything in cash? I remember serving on staff at a mega-church in the 90’s that only built or bought if they had the money on hand. Some of us thought that was old fashioned, but now, after the church has declined, they do not have a facility debt to radically undercut their ministry needs and opportunities.

3. If not paying cash for everything usa reverse phone lookup (I know that is a little optimistic), should churches at least maintain and model the same healthy Biblical financial standards we would preach to our own people?

I look around growing churches today and see a lot of great things happening, but also, occasionally, a fair amount of pride. Like the guy Jesus talks about in Luke 12 who realizes that he’s seriously blessed, so he builds bigger and bigger barns, but hasn’t considered the far-out future. Some day—much sooner than he thought—he was going to die. He really hadn’t been wise about what would happen to his harvest and his holding tanks.

Some day, maybe much sooner than we think, our ‘flagship’ churches will decline. Pastoral changes happen. A new church opens and transfer growth (for them) occurs. Demographics change. And, most of all, though we don’t like to admit it, all organizations have life-cycles. It is incredibly rare for a huge congregation to maintain its size and influence for more than a generation or two (see the book, The Missional Leader). The large church that is so well known and influential today will almost certainly be a distant memory in 40 or 50 years, and possibly much sooner.

So, how are we planning? Are we thinking about the multiplication of disciples or the maintenance of ministries? Do we think people need to be saved or are we focused on saving our organizations? I’m not suggesting burying our resources in fear of the future. Frankly, I don’t think I have the answers, but the sadness I felt over a ministry trying to wipe out it’s $43m debt sure made me start asking myself some questions.