The Church Answers Podcast
Lessons from Church Autopsies, Part 3: Refusal to Accept Responsibility
Welcome to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney & Associates. Chaney & Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here's the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. Welcome to the Church Answers podcast. We're talking about all-thing autopsies. What a morbid subject to be doing with autopsies. You know, where on earth did we come up with that? Well, I wrote a book on it. There's a little story to it. It's kind of like my book, "I Am a Church Member." I wrote a short blog on it, and it came viral and we turned it into a book. But what was I doing? What was I saying in that particular book autopsy? What I was saying is that there are churches that have closed. Those churches have closed because of some key reasons. Of course, the little book has most of the reasons in there. Of course, no book is going to be exhaustive about autopsies, but this particular book has a lot in its little few pages that are there. So let's talk about why. Why the church is that? Before we do, let's thank Chaney & Associates, the accounting firm for the church. They are the church, accounting, bookkeeping company. Don't try to do this yourself. There's never such a thing as an expense when you're doing something like this, especially with a quality organization like Chaney. Go to Chaney & Associates. You can go to chaneyassocist.com or you can just click on the link or you can just Google it. Chaney & Associates. They're in the cloud, they're serving over 1,100 churches, they're the place you need to be. Okay, let's go back now to this whole thing about autopsies. Let me get something, excuse me for bending down. You don't have to edit that and I'll just go on and let you see a very natural sequence taking place in the church answers, I guess. Part three, why the church is closed, refusal to accept responsibility. Now this is not just reasons that churches close, these are reasons that churches decline as well, even if they don't close. So if you're in a church and you're seeing decline, you need to ask yourself, are these some of the things I need to deal with? Maybe not. Okay, I'm just saying that these are issues of church decline as well as church death. So refusal to accept responsibility between 8,000 and 12,000 churches will close annually. And with that many churches closing, we need to find out the why behind it. You know, is it a natural process for a church to die? You know, it is, it is natural, but churches were meant to be supernatural. And so it's something that we should in God's power resist the closure of a church. So let me give you four common excuses for leaders and members that we have heard where the church has died. Now, again, let me remind you, these autopsies came from interviews with church members and church leaders who were once a part of a church that is now closed. And they admitted several excuses. And so I'm sharing with you some of the excuses that are in the category refusal to accept responsibility. The first one's not common, but I've heard it enough where I have a cringe factor with it. It's when someone says we don't need to go out in the community, the community knows where we are. It's basically as if the church is not a great commission organism or organization. It's more like the church is a country club and you come and pay your dues and you get your preferences met. Y'all know where we are, if you need. I've heard that enough times. And again, it is not redundantly so where I'm hearing it everywhere every time I see an unhealthy church, but I've heard it enough. And it's really fascinating to talk to those who are in churches that died, where the members now are leaders will even admit that. Well, they know where we are. If you put up a church sign or have a church building of some kind, that you just expect the people to walk in. There maybe was a day culturally when you would get some degree of walk-in traffic, but guess what? For the most part, these days, it's all about the great commission. One of the reasons why we introduced the Hope Initiative was to get churches to be ready to go into the community with a jumpstart. Hope Initiative is a 30-day jumpstart. If you haven't gotten it, you need to get it. Thousands of churches are now currently using the Hope Initiative and we're hearing so many great testimonies of what God is doing. Well, the second thing we heard is, it's the other church's fault. Well, that's usually a larger church. It's usually a church that younger members will go to with kids. That's not all of them, but younger because they have the programs and the ministries for those kids. Now, here's the reality. There has been a migration from smaller to larger churches. That is undeniable. Here's what we're finding out now that migration is slowing down significantly. More people are leaving churches and not going anywhere, including the larger churches. And here's what we're finding out too. Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren't as concerned about the big programs, about all of the extras that the larger churches have. They're more concerned about, "Can you help me?" I'm hurting, I'm going to be doing a three-part series on a book called The Anxious Generation and the Week that follows this series. You need to come and listen to it because you're going to really find out what the hearts of Gen X, I'm sorry, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are. So it's no longer the other church's fault. If you lost members to the other church, you usually transfer a girl. Usually when you reach someone in your church who is not a believer in Christ and they become a follower of Christ, in the context of the ministry of your church, they'll stick. But if you're just trying to compete with not only a bigger church, but all the cultural entrapments that you cannot compete with, it is not going to work. If you're going to be a genuine church, you don't have to be large. You don't have to have the latest, greatest programs when a church dad is not the other church's fault. If you're refusal to accept responsibility, excuse, we won't budge from the truth. This can take a lot of different categories. And usually it's in the very broad area of we won't culturally compromise. In other words, when we go to some of these places, we can't do it. We can't be in that neighborhood. We can't be in that near that facility. It's not good for us to do that. And that's an excuse for not going. And so they don't go into the culture with the excuse that it compromises their beliefs. It compromises their truth. First church I was in, first person I had the opportunity to share the Gospel with was Steve. He became a follower of Christ almost as soon as I could get the Gospel message to him in about 30 minutes. He wanted immediately to take me to some places to meet his friends. And his friends were in bars. And at the time I was a Baptist pastor, at the time I was a Baptist pastor where you don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't cuss, you don't have fun, which were the four tenants of Baptist life. And the idea of me going into a bar was it was really taboo in the denomination I was a part of. And so going into there would be budging from the truth because we don't believe in that kind of stuff. Now I know, I know, I know, I know, you've got to, you've got to have a good testimony. You don't need the appearance of the evil, I get that. But I just have to see where Jesus went and Jesus went among sinners. And I don't think Jesus compromised truth because he is truth. And so when you start talking about, I won't budge from truth, quite frankly it's an excuse. You don't need to budge from truth, but you need to get your budget out. You need to get yourself out into the world. I tried to slur over that one real quick, you need to get yourself out into the world. Don't worry about what people think, worry about what God knows. The last excuse is, it's the denominations fault. Boy, I hear that a lot in denominations, especially those who have been a part of larger denominations that have provided all kinds of resources. And when they don't get the same level of resources, or they feel like the resources are being moved from one place to another, they're crying out, I can't grow my church without these resources, I can't do this. You know what, churches have existed without denominational support for a long time, and they will continue to. If your church is dying, it's not because the denomination is or is not doing something for you is because your church is not involved in the great commission. Okay, three part series, the whole idea is the autopsy of a deceased church, lessened from those autopsies. We gave three broad categories in three podcasts this week. Listen to all three of them, maybe share them with your leadership, share them with people in your church, and tell me what you think. Love to get a comment from you. Always thank you for the rating and review on your podcast app. Thank you for subscribing to our channel at YouTube and for giving us a thumbs up there as well. This has been the Church Answers Podcast. We're always gratefully supported by Chaney and Associates, the accounting firm for the church. We'll see you next week as we begin to talk about another book not even by Christian called The Anxious Generation. See you then. You have been listening to the Church Answers Podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. You need to focus on ministry. Chaney will focus on finances. Also, please subscribe and give a review to the Church Answers Podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)