We see it everywhere across the Western hemisphere - in the cities, the older suburbs, towns large and small, and dotted across the rural landscape - churches that are stuck, stagnant and declining. All of these churches began as church plants 20, 50, 100, 200 years ago, but now they are just shells of their former selves - no longer an active vital part of the community, they are relegated to the status of irrelevant observer as the world passes them by.
According to Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson in Comeback Churches, 70-80% of American churches are stagnant or in decline. According to their research, up to 4,000 churches close their doors in America every year (and probably another couple thousand should). How is that so? What happens in the story of these churches that causes them to lose their way? Many would argue that it is the loss or lack of vision and purpose that causes a church to become stuck or stagnant and eventually decline. That is partially true, but in my experience, many of these churches have a purpose and vision. They are just misguided and misaligned. Which brings me to what I think, in my humble opinion, is the root of the problem: institutionalism.
Institutionalism doesn’t have anything to do with the size of the organization or its length of existence. Rather, it is an ethos - a mindset that guides the thoughts and actions of the people in the organization. In an institutionalized church the mission and vision of the organization and its people is no longer to lead people to Christ and grow them as his disciples. Rather, the mission and vision becomes the institution itself. Every thought and action (or inaction) is made in the interest of self-preservation - keeping the institution going, regardless of its productivity, relevancy or vitality.
My question is not how to bring an established church out of the institutional quagmire (been there, done that), but how as church plants do we keep from becoming institutionalized like our forebears? Now I’m not George Barna or Ed Stetzer. I haven’t done any research about this, but my gut tells me that the answer is church planting - to keep reproducing leaders to send them out to multiply churches. As church planters, we must never become content with just planting our own churches. We must never cease to be church planters. We must constantly and continuously be reproducing and multiplying leaders and new churches… or our mission and vision will soon become self-preservation - keeping the institutional machine churning even though we may have ceased to accomplish what we set out to do a long time ago.
Reproducing leaders and churches keeps the organization from becoming institutionalized for several reasons:
- It keeps us open-handed. We develop a culture of generosity that is contrary to the close-fisted culture of institutionalism.
- It keeps us fresh. By constantly sending people out, we allow for new people to take their “seats” and new leaders to emerge which defeats one of the inherent causes of institutionalism: inbreeding.
- It keeps us focused. By repeatedly participating in the birthing process of new churches, we are constantly reminded of our own mission and vision and why we got into the game in the first place. Institutionalism becomes focused on self-preservation.
- It keeps us dependent. It’s hard to let good leaders go. It’s hard to let money go out the door. But birthing new churches helps us to trust God as our constant Provider. Conversely, institutionalism is built on a foundation of self-sufficiency.
Churches don’t become institutions because they’ve grown to a certain size or have existed for a certain number of years. They become institutionalized because of repeatedly failing to look outside their own walls. Today, there are churches that are 20-30 years old that are as generous, fresh, focused and dependent as they were when they started solely because of their commitment to continuously reproduce churches. Someday they may be 100 years old and have thousands of members, but as long as they keep giving birth to new and fresh works of God, they will never become institutionalized.
Don’t be content to just plant a church. Resist institutional inertia by becoming a church planting movement. It is a gift you can give to yourself, your people, community and to God.
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The trouble we now see will soon be over. 