Yesterday I began a series of posts on the topic of questions small churches must begin asking and answering if they want to move forward. Today's question is "If your church closed its doors tomorrow would anyone in the community know or care?" This is not an academic exercise as approximately 100 churches in the US close their doors every week. None of them ever thought the day would come when they could no longer function as a church, but that day did come. If it happened for your church, would anyone other than the 30 or so people who attend there be impacted?
The fact is, although they might grieve over the closing of the church for a period of time, even the current members would likely find a new place of worship in a month or so and move on with their lives. But, how would anyone else in the community be impacted?
As a judicatory minister one of my responsibilities was to assist the churches in my area find new pastors. Not long after assuming this role I was invited to one of my smaller, rural churches to meet with their pastor search committee. The person who called gave me directions that were not real helpful, but I wrote everything down and thought I could find the church. A sign on the state highway pointed down a country road indicating the church was to be found there. I followed the directions from that point on and soon became hopelessly lost. It was starting to get dark, and I knew if I couldn't find the church in the daylight I would never find it once it grew dark so I did what men don't do: I stopped and asked directions. I stopped at two houses and neither of them knew where the church was. It was now 15 minutes after our meeting was to begin so I decided to turn around at the first available place and try to find my way back home. When I came to a place where I could turn around it was the church's parking lot.
The fascinating thing about all this is that both houses were less than two miles from this church, but neither of them knew where the church was. If that church closed its doors would either of them be affected? I doubt that they would even know it was closed.
Churches exist for many reasons, but one of the most important is to impact the communities in which they are located. We are to advance the Kingdom of God in those communities, but if the people in those communities do not even know we exist we can safely assume we are not doing our job.
A primary reason churches close is because they have no vision for ministry. They are not in the communities representing Jesus Christ and trying to impact them for the Kingdom. They remain enclosed in their sanctuaries (interesting term!) waiting for people to come to them. This is not how I see Christ doing ministry during His time on earth. If we are not in the community then it is safe to say that no one in the community will be impacted if we decide to close our doors.
Let's ask this question another way. Is there anyone in your community who is not a member of your church whose life would be disrupted if your church was no longer there to provide ministry? If the answer is no, what does this say about how well your church is doing the mission it's been given?
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