Sermon Tone Analysis

The Church has had its day…!”

By David Allis.

Nov 2006

 

We’ve been asked to debate the moot ‘The church has had its day”, or maybe in product terms the debate would be that the church is ‘past it’s best by date’.

With a little bit of thought, it’s obvious that at a higher level, this moot can never be true.

The universal church, consisting of all the redeemed from all ages, both alive & dead, certainly can never have ‘had its day’.

The NT describes the church as the body of Christ, with Christ as the head – it would be dangerous to argue that Christ has been unsuccessful with his own body.

The NT also refers to the church as the bride of Christ, and no sane person tells the groom that his bride is ugly or unsuccessful or ‘past her best by date’.

But if we narrow the ‘church’ we are discussing down to the church that we are part of, and are investing our time, energy, prayers, finance & lives into, then I believe we have the basis for some debate.

So, let’s consider ‘our’ church – ‘our’ part of the NZ church – an evangelical, Bible-believing, modern, western, organized, institutional church that is typically visible through aspects that are obviously of importance to it, church buildings, ministers & church services centred around worship & preaching.

Before stepping into any critique of  ’our’ church, I want to affirm the hard working, godly & committed members & ministers in this church.

’Our’ church is maintained & resourced by wonderful, committed men & women of God, who are working hard, sacrificially, & are doing their best to help build God’s church, & to extend His kingdom.

Any critique of our church is not because of lack of dedication, work, commitment & prayer by the committed members & ministers.

Also, I am personally committed to extending God’s kingdom, and helping establish the church as He would have it be in NZ today.

I’m not a critic on the outside throwing rocks at the church – I’m a committed participant inside the church saying “Hey guys, wake up, look around, is our church really working?

Let’s take a good look at it and see what changes need to be made.”

Also, I believe it is important for individual Christians to be part of a ‘Christian community’, which includes having committed & accountable relationships with other Christians, and gathering together regularly for times of mutual encouragement.

Many Christians in NZ, seeing major problems within the ‘organised church’, have left it.

Unfortunately some of these Christians haven’t found or formed alternative faith communities, and are now living in isolation.

For the sake of God’s kingdom, it is important for Christians to be connected with other parts of the ‘body’.

However, we need to look closely at the ‘organised church’.

I am convinced that for our church, as with any enterprise that absorbs huge amounts of time & money, we should honestly review its effectiveness.

Is ‘our’ church working as well as it could be or should be?

And if it isn’t, let’s face it honestly, & consider what we can do about it, rather than continuing to waste our energy.

I want to argue that our church, the modern NZ evangelical, organized, minister-centric, Sunday-service-centric church is past it’s best by date for 3 primary reasons.

Firstly, it isn’t working

Secondly, it isn’t biblical

Thirdly, it is actually harmful

This might seem extreme, & you may not agree with all of it, & it doesn’t necessarily apply to each and every local congregation, but any glimpses of truth in it are worth reflecting on.

*1.

**Our Church is not Working~/Effective*

Overall, Our church in NZ isn’t working – it isn’t growing, it isn’t affecting the local community or society overall, & it isn’t extending the Kingdom of God.

Some local churches are working wonderfully, but most churches aren’t working as we would hope or dream.

*a.

**Our church is not growing (it is static or declining)*

·         A few churches are growing rapidly, at 5% or 10% or 20% per year

o        But most churches are struggling to remain static, and many churches are declining in numbers

·         A few churches have grown and become ‘successful’ mega churches, and are apparently achieving great things

o        But the mega-churches are few & far between.

They are usually dependent on a unique leader, & can’t be duplicated on demand.

o        Most denominations would love to grow mega-churches in major population centres, but they can’t just make them happen ‘on demand’.

Mega-churches are dependent on many important factors, and can’t be easily duplicated.

o        For every successful mega-church, there are hundred’s of unsuccessful, wannabe mega-churches – churches which would love to grow & become a mega-church, but won’t ever get there.

o        And surrounding many mega-churches are lots of declining community churches, whose leaders wonder if the mega church is growing through transfer from their declining congregation.

·         Many of the churches that appear to be growing are doing so because of transfer growth - i.e. they are growing at the ‘expense’ of other churches.

·         New immigrants, particularly from Asia, are also boosting the church population and artificially giving the impression that the church is not declining.

These immigrants are often settling in growing ethnically-based congregations.

·         Overall, an annual 5% growth rate for churches would be great - but it doesn’t normally happen.

o        Based on census data, the church in NZ has declined as a % of the NZ population over the past 50 years.

Below is a graph of that indicates this – it uses census figures for membership of the main denominations, adjusted NZ’s population growth, and adjusted back to a common starting point of 1 in 1956.

/(e.g. a denomination with say 10% of NZers claiming allegiance in 1956, and 12% in 1961 would show as ‘1’ in 1956 & ‘1.2’ in 1961)/.

This shows that the proportion of NZ’s population in these main denominations has decreased steadily over the past 50 years, and they now only have about 45-90% of the proportion of NZ’s population that they had in 1956/.

(Note – based on census data, this is only one indicator of what is happening – membership and attendance can be quite different, and the decline in church membership is partly a sociological factor as many people today consider church membership less important than their counterparts 50 years ago.)/

o        Other smaller denominations in NZ are typically not growing.

For example, the Apostolic Church Movement (which I am part of) experienced good growth in the late 1980’s, and mid 1990’s, but has since declined and now has the same number of members as in 1993.

o        The graph below indicates the relatively static state of the NZ Baptist Denomination These figures, which have been adjusted to allow for NZ’s population growth since 1956, show that overall the Baptists are not quite growing at the rate of NZ’s general population growth.

o        For the Apostolic denomination, in a ‘typical’ year, 1~/3rd of it’s churches grow, and the other 2~/3rds remain static[i] or decline.

This is also true for the Baptist Denomination (in 2005-6, 37% of Baptist churches grew 5% or more.)

o        When growth is considered over a 3 year period, the Apostolic churches normally fit into 4 groups, each consisting of about 25% of the churches - 25% of the churches average at least 5% annual growth, 25% are static, 25% decline more than 5% annually, and 25% are closed or leave the denomination.

o        In contrast, other religions are seeing considerable growth in NZ, as shown on the two graphs below.

The first shows the growth of 3 other religions, adjusted for NZ population growth & back to a factor of 1 in 1971.

The second graph shows actual numbers for these 3 religious groups & NZ Baptists according to the census./

(Note – immigration to NZ is a significant factor in the growth of Buddhism, Islam & Hinduism)./

o        Many denominations have a huge backdoor, and there is no relevant research to see what is happening to these Christians – for example, consider the NZ Apostolic & Baptist denominations /(note these are chosen because their statistics are recorded and available – there are other NZ denominations with much larger ‘back doors’.)/

§         The Apostolic Movement in NZ.

In 1993, it had 10800 members.

Over the period to 2006, it’s churches reported that there were another 12500 people ‘saved & added to the local churches’.

Yet in 2006, there were still only 10800 members in this denomination (ie 10800 + 12500 = 10800).

This implies that there are more ex-Apostolics in NZ (12500 less any that have died or moved overseas) than there are current members of Apostolic churches.

§         NZ Baptists – despite baptizing a good number of adults each year (equivalent to nearly 10% of the number of adult church members), there has been little growth in membership of the NZ Baptist denomination.

·         1970-2005 à 17300 members + 46000 baptised = 22900 members (40400 died, moved or lost).

The overall growth is equivalent to 0.8% per year.

·         1980-2005 à 19400 members + 34600 baptisms = 22900 members (31100 missing) & 0.7% growth pa

·         1990-2005 à 23600 members + 18600 baptisms = 22900 members (19300 missing) & 0.2% loss pa

 

*b.

**Our church isn’t what we hope~/dream it should be (we accept reality because things could be even worse)*

·         Most churches aren’t working as we would hope or dream they would.

There is a big gap between our dreams for Our church, and the reality

o        We dream of churches with lots of people getting ‘saved’, growing & being discipled.

We dream of people queuing at the door on Sundays, of offering bags overflowing because everyone is faithfully & generously giving, of having too many volunteers so there is a waiting list to become a children’s ministry worker.

We dream of releasing huge resource to mission here in NZ & overseas.

o        The reality is that the local church that was 70 adults 10 years ago, is still about 70 adults.

Despite 10 years of hard work, prayer, programs & planning, there has been little overall change.

There are still not enough volunteers and not enough finance.

The majority of our church members haven’t added anyone to the church through friendship & personal evangelism in the past 10 years.

A few people move in, a few leave, a few born, a few die … but not a lot changes.

We run programs to raise the level of prayer or evangelism or bible reading or discipleship or vision & purpose … & we go ‘yahoo’ … but nothing really changes.

In 5 years time, we’ll be teaching the same thing in a different package to the same people ….

o        But it could be much worse, so we accept ‘reality’ as the best we can do.

We’re happy that our church isn’t declining rapidly.

We’re happy it hasn’t closed.

It might not be growing, but at least it isn’t falling apart rapidly.

*c.

**Our church isn’t producing obedient disciples*

·         Overall, Christians are little different from their neighbours.

Taking some examples from Ron Sider’s book “The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience”, he quotes George Barna -

o        Divorce rate – effectively no difference between church attendees & non-attendees.

In fact, in parts of the ‘Bible Belt’, the divorce rates are 50% above the national average.[ii]

o        Sider also quotes US statistics on sexuality, including pre-marital sex & extra-marital sex – where church-attendees are apparently little different than non-attendees.

o        NZ church-goers may be different in some of these areas from the US, but it is questionable whether we are different enough to stand out.

This is apparent in one simple area – the ‘Christian vote’.