Ghost Churches...

America is full of ghost churches. How often do we see or hear of churches that start off strong and fast, only to vanish within few decades? One has but to visit many congregations in the South particularly to find churches where the youth is missing and the inevitable fate of "ghost church" awaits them. How does this happen?

That's a rather complex question and I'm only dealing with one aspect. Basically it comes down to this: What is church's goals and how do they plan to accomplish said goals? Secondly, I want to talk about "being outdated".

Okay, so what should the goal of church be (and this should be determined at the outset). Now, I'm tempted to repeat a lot of what I said in a previous post, but I'll try not to. The Church, as the body of Christ and the people of God, exist to proclaim His Majesty and provide light to the world around us. Our job is to spread that light (with God's help) until it engulfs the entire globe. This should be the goal of any church- to be a light.  Secondly, the Church is too be rebuilding the broken world that Adam's sin gave us (again, with God's help but we are the instruments whereby He will accomplish these things). In short, the goal of any church should be to work toward the expansion of Christ's Kingdom.  (Matthew 6:33)

Sadly, many churches build their foundations on some movement. Now, give me some grace here because I'm about to use the Reformation as an example (please hear me out!). In all honesty, the Protestant churches started to refute the Roman Catholics. Of course, they did so intending to further the Kingdom of Christ and they did so but not every movement can boast such good results. John Wesley and the Methodist Church are an example. They started because they felt the Anglican Church to be dead. Whether their assertion was right or not, the Methodist Church started not to further the Kingdom but to combat the Anglicans (In fairness to John Wesley, he never intended to start a new church). So many churches do this today. "We feel Church X is not spiritual alive enough because they don't have my kind of music, so me and some of my buddies are starting a new church...".

It is not enough to simply know your goal- you need to decide how to strive for that goal. Hudson Taylor once said "God's work, done God's way will never lack God's supply." The building of Christ's Kingdom is God's work. We must do it God's way- not ours. Holding a Super Bowl party and sneaking in a sales pitch for the faith my result in temporary yield but in the end it is man's way, not God's. It will fail.
What is God's way? God's way is to let our light shine before men, to preach His word boldly and leave the results to Him. God's way is to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.

Which brings us to the issue of "being outdated" when it comes to worship. Interestingly, the High Church liturgical services are gaining fans among the Christian youth. It is unconcerned with being "cool". The liturgical service has been around for nearly two thousand years, but like cheese and wine it gets better with age. But not everything from the past can make such a claim. Many Baptistic churches in particular seem stuck in the 1940/50/60's. Rather than coming across as time honored, the liturgy of the mid 20th century America seems nostalgic on the part of these churches. And thus the number diminish.

But until more churches make the Kingdom of Christ their primary concern (and do it in God's way), we will continue to see ghost churches...