As our town faces the closure of another church building, someone remarked that it’s ‘a sign of the times’. It would certainly be easy to reach that conclusion. If you can remember all the churches in a particular area thriving, and then over a number of decades you have seen attendances dwindle and churches close, surely it is ‘just another sign of the times’ (to quote the Blood Brothers song). But is that the whole story? Is it the case that churches are closing right across the theological spectrum, regardless of what they believe? Or are certain types of churches more likely to close than others?
While it would be foolish to make assertions about why any one particular congregation might have closed, are there any general trends we can point to? In Canada, a five-year peer-reviewed study looked into exactly that question. Their findings were summarised by the Washington Post headline: ‘Liberal churches are dying as conservative churches thrive’. Or as the Guardian put it: ‘Literal interpretation of Bible “helps increase church attendance”’. In other words, churches that still believe in key doctrines such as creation, the virgin birth, miracles, the bodily resurrection and Jesus as the only way to heaven aren’t dying; quite the opposite – they’re thriving. But on the other hand, churches which have erased those doctrines in order to try and remain relevant to the modern world are the ones closing.
For example, the study found that 93 percent of ministers and 83 percent of worshippers from growing churches agreed with the statement ‘Jesus rose from the dead with a real flesh-and-blood body leaving behind an empty tomb.’ This compared with 67 percent of worshippers and 56 percent of ministers from declining churches.
Furthermore, all ministers of growing churches and 90 percent of worshippers agreed that ‘God performs miracles in answer to prayer’, compared with 80 percent of worshipers and a mere 44 percent of ministers from declining churches. Tellingly, 71 percent of ministers from growing churches read the Bible daily compared with 19 percent from declining churches.
If the study is right, then the big reason churches die isn’t because people no longer have time for their message – but because churches which have changed their message now have nothing to attract people. (With those who worship there only doing so because they always have). If the message you’re hearing from the pulpit is no different to what you’re hearing on TV, why go?
Other studies, both nationally and internationally, have reached the same conclusions. Kevin DeYoung, who spent most of his life in a mainline US denomination before leaving, put it like this: ‘We have no guarantee that faithful churches will thrive. But after almost 60 years of constant mainline decline, we have a pretty good idea of how churches die’.
Dr John Hayward, a mathematician at the University of South Wales, has spent the last thirty years studying the growth and decline of UK denominations, and his work was featured in the Times last month. His summary of the current situation is that ‘All the evangelical [ie Bible-believing] denominations are growing, except for the Brethren. By contrast, all the mixed denominations are declining, with the liberal ones declining the most’. The Church of Scotland, he predicts, will be extinct in twenty years.
If these studies are correct then far from arresting its decline, the national kirk’s decision last month to allow same-sex marriage will only hasten its demise. Or in fact, if we believe Romans 1, it doesn’t actually change anything, but simply shows that the Rubicon was crossed long ago.
The studies are unanimous in their conclusions, but what are the reasons for liberal decline and evangelical growth? Hayward suggest that ‘evangelical beliefs on judgement, salvation and Jesus as the only way [to God] drive their members to seek converts’. Liberal Christians, however, ‘have insufficient theological reasons to want to spread their faith’.
That’s certainly a very practical explanation, but is there a supernatural one? The Bible itself tells us in Revelation 2:5 that the main reason churches close is because the risen Lord Jesus comes and removes their lampstand. That’s not to deny the realities of rural depopulation etc, but if he sets an open door before a congregation, no-one will be able to shut it (Revelation 2:8).
And that is our great hope. The Lord Jesus promised ‘I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it’. Decline is only inevitable if the Bible is sidelined.
Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 9th June 2022
