7 Characteristics of a Failing Church: Part 1

Announcer:

Welcome to Revitalize and Replant with Mark Clifton and Mark Hallock, where we equip pastors to take their churches from declining to thriving by pointing them to a new future and a new hope. Join us weekly for encouragement and practical advice in your pastoring journey.

Dan Hurst:

Here we are once again in the hallowed halls of Revitalize and Replant. This would be north. We have the North Studio.

Mark Clifton:

Well, this is the Knobtown studio.

Dan Hurst:

Knobtown.

Mark Clifton:

Yeah. If you know anything about Kansas City, Lee Summit, we’re in what’s called Knobtown.

Dan Hurst:

Yeah, just north of Knobtown. So there’s Mark Clifton, there’s Mark Hallock, I’m Dan Hurst. There’s Kyle. Well, playing the part of Kyle Bueermann today is Matt McNaughton.

Mark Clifton:

Hey, Matt.

Mark Hallock:

Matt, we’re glad you’re here.

Mark Clifton:

We’re glad you’re here.

Dan Hurst:

Kyle apparently got on the wrong plane or something. I’m not quite sure what. All right, so we’re actually in Kansas City, in the Kansas City area, in Lee Summit, in the hallowed halls in the Dan Den podcast studio. And last night, Matt, Hallock, and I went up to First Baptist Church of Independence, where I’m serving right now, and showed them around.

Mark Hallock:

Which was awesome, by the way.

Dan Hurst:

Showed them the old auditorium.

Mark Hallock:

Oh, man.

Dan Hurst:

It was just sitting there. The church that was built in 1865, something like that. So, it’s a fabulous place. So, this church is almost 200 years old, and it is in decline. I’ve been there now for three months at the time of this podcast.

Mark Clifton:

And now it’s really in decline.

Dan Hurst:

The fussing and fighting, you would not believe.

Mark Clifton:

I mean, it was in decline before you came.

Dan Hurst:

It was.

Mark Clifton:

Man, it has gone off the rail.

Mark Hallock:

Putting gas on that fire!

Mark Clifton:

I’m just kidding.

Dan Hurst:

They referred to me as the hitman.

Mark Clifton:

I’m just kidding.

Dan Hurst:

We thought today we’d kind of talk about in the process that we’re going through and every, not every church, but declining churches go through these. It’s not so much steps as much as their characteristics of things that they go through.

Mark Hallock:

Sure.

Dan Hurst:

And so let’s talk a little bit today about what are those characteristics that now everybody knows if you’re in a declining church now, you’ve got an idea, but let’s compare your characteristics with the general view of what those characteristics are.

Mark Clifton:

Yeah, I think that’s a good word. And again, those of you that haven’t been listening, where have you been? But nonetheless, a couple of weeks ago, we went some detail about your church there at First Baptist Independence and at height, it was 900 people or more and now about 70 in a downtown church. Very common. We’re grateful that Dan is there and we can pray for you. It’s a huge task and huge responsibility.

Mark Hallock:

Dan is actually doing a great-

Dan Hurst:

Yeah, it’s going well.

Mark Hallock:

I mean, it’s going awesome.

Mark Clifton:

They love him.

Mark Hallock:

Absolutely.

Mark Clifton:

Okay. So here’s some of the characteristics. You ready? All right. Not in any particular order by any means, but they’re important. A failure to teach people to apply the Word. Now, you got a lot of pastors who teach the Word, and they’ll say, “I don’t know why our church is declining. I teach the Word every week. We’re all about the Word. We believe every word in the Bible. We believe in the fidelity of Scripture. I preach even expository sermons,” those kinds of things.

But I love the fact, Dan, that you said it’s a failure to teach the people how to apply.

Mark Hallock:

I agree.

Mark Clifton:

To live it out.

Mark Hallock:

Totally.

Mark Clifton:

How to make it work. So, what do you think of that, Hallock?

Mark Hallock:

Yeah. Why is that so important, Dan? I mean, I’m so with you. I mean, immediately what comes to mind is don’t simply be a hearer of the Word, but be a doer of the Word. Why is application so important?

Dan Hurst:

Well, what I’ve noticed, I noticed that the first Sunday I was there, it happened right around Easter when I started there. And so we took the principle of the birth of the church and compared it to the rebirth of this church. And what those people were going through, the early Christians, they had no idea what a church was. They had no idea what it meant to be filled with the Holy Spirit. None of that made any sense to them. I said, “That’s kind of where we are, isn’t it?”

When I started talking about some of the application of that stuff, it was like I was preaching to… I mean, people were literally sitting there with their mouths open.

Mark Hallock:

Wow.

Dan Hurst:

That was so new to them. And this Sunday, we start with spiritual gifts. When I’ve explained that to them, the application of spiritual gifts that you have a gift or at least a primary gift that God has given you that He wants to use, not only has He given you the gift, but He has a ministry where He wants to use it and a location where He wants to use it if you follow Corinthians. This is all new to them. And some of these Christians have been Christians for over 60 years.

Mark Clifton:

Well, let’s think for a minute and a lot of the folks at First Baptist, a lot of folks in your church, wherever you’re serving, a lot of them, especially in a declining church, let’s be honest, declining church is usually not filled with brand new Christians.

Dan Hurst:

It’s true.

Mark Clifton:

That’s just true. So, normally in a declining church, it’s filled with people who’ve been believers for years. So, you’ve got some people who’ve been a Christian and a member of a Baptist church for 20, 30, 40 years. Many of them go every Sunday, so that’s 52 Sundays a year. Many of them go to Sunday school, so that’s 52 Sundays. Well, they may miss a few, but 48 Sundays of Sunday school, 48 Sundays of worship. Many of them go to Wednesday night. Many of them go to Sunday night if you have that. Many of them go to Bible studies. You want to start counting how many biblical lessons, how many biblical messages they’ve heard over the years, even in one year. How many in one year? Hundreds and hundreds. And then you go, “Why don’t we see more?” When we come along, we say, “Hey, we need to do some things to reach the community. We need to do some things to reach the next generation. We need to let Jesus be the leader of this church.”

And there’s resistance to that. How do people who have all of that biblical knowledge not understand how to use it in their life? We’ve really confused the idea of giving information with helping them understand how to use that information.

Dan Hurst:

That’s exactly right.

Mark Hallock:

Again, it goes back to my favorite quote from Barnabas Piper. He said growing up in the childhood of John Piper’s household and church, he said, “I had a whole pantry full of biblical knowledge, but I couldn’t make a meal if my life depended on it.”

And we’ve got members who have all this pantry of biblical knowledge, but they can’t put it together in any real way. And we miss that. And basically, the bottom line of that, isn’t it part of that discipleship?

Dan Hurst:

Absolutely.

Mark Hallock:

Because that’s where you learn how to take what you’ve done. Remember when Jesus, when He gave the Great Commission, He said to teach them to observe everything I’ve taught you. That doesn’t just mean to know it; it means to do it.

Dan Hurst:

To do it, that’s right.

Mark Hallock:

To do these things that I’ve taught you to do.

Dan Hurst:

That’s good. That’s good.

Mark Clifton:

All right.

Mark Hallock:

Here’s number two. You ready?

Mark Clifton:

I’m ready.

Mark Hallock:

Number two is culture replaces mission.

Mark Clifton:

Wow. That’s-

Mark Hallock:

Culture replaces mission.

Dan Hurst:

I made it up.

Mark Clifton:

You’re pretty smart.

Dan Hurst:

I don’t know what it means, but I… So, maybe you guys can help me out.

Mark Clifton:

I can tell you what it means. It means that’s where I’ve lived for most of my ministry.

Mark Hallock:

That’s right.

Mark Clifton:

Where the church culture becomes more important than the mission of the church.

Mark Hallock:

Oh, boy. Yeah.

Mark Clifton:

Now, part of that goes back to what we’ve talked about many times on this podcast, is that our culture that we live in now, in our secular world, is so unfamiliar and unfriendly, and we’re not used to that. If you’re older, if you’re a boomer or older, not many people left who are older than boomers anymore, but if you’re in the 60s or 70s, the culture that you grew up with in the 1950s and 60s was friendly toward you and towards your worldview. Very affirming of you and your worldview. The nuclear family, all that stuff, patriotism, all that.

Mark Hallock:

That was normative.

Mark Clifton:

That was normative. Now, we live in a culture where that’s not normal. And so we want to have a culture that we feel comfortable with, so we move into the church, and the church culture as we know it becomes what we’re comfortable with, and we don’t want that changing.

And so we value the insulatory attitude of this is our little world, and we’re going to protect it, and we’re going to have things the way we like it. I don’t understand how the world out there works, but I certainly know how our church works. I may not be important in the world out there anymore. I may not have a job, and my kids may not pay any attention to me. My health may be bad, but I’m still important in this church. My voice still matters.

And so the culture of the church becomes dominant, not the mission of the church.

Mark Hallock:

And what’s so sad is, this just speaks to the power of culture, is in a Southern Baptist church, we believe in the Great Commission. We actually believe Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, that apart from faith in Him, we’re headed to hell. Think about that. That’s the most intense, weighty truth there is. And yet culture is so powerful that we will compromise that commission for the sake of comfort in the culture of my church.

Mark Clifton:

Well, and what we want to have is those two things being the same. You want the mission of the church to be the culture.

Dan Hurst:

That’s the fear. That’s the fear; that it’ll change the culture.

Mark Clifton:

It’ll change the culture.

Mark Hallock:

That’s right. I want both.

Mark Clifton:

Yeah, I don’t want that to happen.

Dan Hurst:

I mean, one of the very first statements that I heard, the first meeting I had with the church committee there when they decided to bring me on, one of the people on the committee said… When I asked them, “Where do you see this church three years from now, five years from now,” that sort of thing. And one of the ladies said, “Well, we want to grow, but we don’t want to grow that much.”

Mark Clifton:

Well, at least she was honest.

Mark Hallock:

Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.

Dan Hurst:

And they all kind of, “Oh, yeah.”

Mark Clifton:

We don’t want to grow that much.

Mark Hallock:

Just a little bit.

Mark Clifton:

And here’s another thing that’s really important, guys. When you get to be in your 70s and 80s, and you may be a widow or a widower, your kids and your grandkids, they may live in town, but that doesn’t mean they’re close to you.

It doesn’t mean they come over and spend a lot of time with you. You feel alone. And so it’s real important for many of them to not lose this culture I have at this church, my little group. As I get older, I need this. And we got to be sensitive to that, obviously, but that can’t become their idol.

Mark Hallock:

Totally. Yep.

Mark Clifton:

I think there’s some real tension there. I don’t think young people fully understand the fear and anxiety of growing older.

I want to hang on to that. When she says we don’t want to grow too big, what she’s saying is, “I need this small group in my life right now.”

Mark Hallock:

I don’t want to lose this.

Mark Clifton:

I don’t want to lose this. I’ve lost so much else. I can’t lose this friend, good friendships. I can’t lose this identity. I think we got to be sensitive to that, but we got to help them understand their real joy is found in Christ and His mission, not in trying to hang on to something artificial.

Mark Hallock:

That’s well said. Okay. Seven characteristics of a failing church. Number one, a failure to teach people to apply the Word. Number two, culture replaces mission. Number three, family control.

Oh, boy.

Dan Hurst:

There are unique families in every church, and it seems like the longer the family has been there, the more control they have over those choices. That’s perfectly natural. It’s just normal. It happens. It doesn’t mean it’s right, but that’s the way it happens. And so you have families that, well, my grandpa was a deacon. I’m a deacon. My daddy was a deacon. My uncle was a deacon. It’s just a family.

Mark Hallock:

They’ve been invested. Yeah, that’s right.

Dan Hurst:

They have that control. We know of a church right now where two of the family members are actually on staff at the church. One of the family members is a trustee. One of the family members is a chairman of the finance committee, and the family is in control.

Mark Clifton:

And it usually starts out… It could have been even decades earlier, it could have been a very natural, normal thing, but it has become very much a controlling thing. Especially in a declining church, because what happens is that’s the one group that’s not going anywhere.

Mark Hallock:

Exactly. Totally, man.

Mark Clifton:

Other people may go to another church. They may wander off. But if your family is tight there, that becomes your… And it becomes, guys, are you ready for this? It becomes a family chapel.

And when you have a family chapel, they’re not looking for a Pastor Hurst. They’re looking for a chaplain, someone who will bury them, marry them, lead their services, give them communion, and do what they want, but they run the place. It’s theirs. And they’ll let you know that at times. And if you press against one of them, you pressed against all of them. I tell you what, there are so many guys listening, especially in a rural community, maybe as much… Now, you’re in a city, so you have it here, too, but in rural communities, a lot of times they don’t move around as much as they do in cities. It’s not as transient. So, you’ll have families that have been there for decades. I do think one of the key issues is family control, for sure.

We’ve all seen it. And that can mean sometimes there can be a matriarch in that church that has no assigned position, but she still runs it.

Dan Hurst:

Yeah.

Mark Hallock:

Well, dude, the line you said just a second ago, you push against one, you push against all. But I’ll also tell you the flip side, in our church, when I came, 90% of the congregation was connected to one family.

Mark Clifton:

Really?

Dan Hurst:

Wow! Really?

Mark Hallock:

90%. Yep. But here’s the plus side. If you can win the hearts of one or two, you can win the hearts of them all, too. That’s the flip side. That’s the leadership thing oftentimes. So, just because there’s a big family there-

Oh, yeah. And they were all connected.

Dan Hurst:

But I mean, did you say, “I’ve got to reach in this family.”

Mark Hallock:

Oh yeah, totally. Oh, I knew. I knew if I don’t win the hearts of this family, I won’t last. Oh, yeah. I knew I had to do it. Part of that is because they had been faithful for years and years. They’d been through jokers of pastors.

Mark Clifton:

But we don’t have time in this brief podcast, even though it is… We probably do more in this 20 minutes than anybody does in a podcast. It is truly phenomenal what we accomplish in 20 minutes. We don’t really have time to deal with this, but a really important issue, Mark, we might look at later is how do you win them over without letting them win you over?

Mark Hallock:

Yeah, right.

Mark Clifton:

In other words, it’d be easy to say I want them over by doing what they want me to do.

Mark Hallock:

Good point. That’s true.

Mark Clifton:

I mean, that’s not hard to do.

Mark Hallock:

No.

Mark Clifton:

I’ll be their chaplain.

Mark Hallock:

That’s right.

Mark Clifton:

And they’d love to have you do that as long as they get-

Mark Hallock:

And that church will still die.

Mark Clifton:

So yeah, the key is how do you win them over-

Mark Hallock:

And lead them.

Mark Clifton:

… and lead them where they need to go.

Mark Hallock:

Exactly. That’s a good quote, man.

Mark Clifton:

And that’s all shepherding.

Mark Hallock:

Yeah, it’s all shepherding.

Mark Clifton:

And it’s all leaning to the Holy Spirit, trusting Him, loving them.

Mark Hallock:

Knowing when to push and how hard to push.

Mark Clifton:

Tactical patience.

Mark Hallock:

All that, man.

Mark Clifton:

All that stuff.

Mark Hallock:

It’s true.

Mark Clifton:

Yeah.

Mark Hallock:

That’s good. All right.

Dan Hurst:

You don’t come in and have a sudden relationship with them.

Mark Clifton:

No.

Dan Hurst:

You’ve got to build that relationship and sometimes depending on the clickiness of-

Mark Hallock:

And some of them, I promise you, are going to look you… It’s going to take some time.

Dan Hurst:

It’s going to take some time. Yeah.

Mark Clifton:

Yeah.

Dan Hurst:

Because they’ve been through three, four pastors already.

Mark Hallock:

Oh yeah, totally. You’re just the next guy.

Dan Hurst:

You ain’t no different.

Mark Hallock:

Oh, yeah.

Mark Clifton:

That’s true.

Mark Hallock:

That’s a whole episode.

Mark Clifton:

All right. Number four. Oh, this is great. One of the characteristics of a declining church. Matt, how you doing over there? Matt is running the board for us today.

Mark Hallock:

Great.

Dan Hurst:

Yeah, but he’s still—

Mark Hallock:

Great.

Mark Clifton:

We always look at Matt and Kyle, and if they’re not interested, then we know you aren’t interested out there listening. All right. No strategy for new members to become old members.

We talk about sometimes the idea that the front porch of your house, that’s where you greet guests. Well, the front porch of the church is sort of the worship service. That’s where you greet people. And then what you want to do is you want to get them into the dining room, sit down and have a meal. In other words, how do you move people from the worship service, your front porch, whatever that is, into a more intimate relationship with other people and more fellowship?

Then, ultimately, you want to move into the kitchen where they help cook. And so what’s your strategy? Do you have a strategy? It could be very simple in a small church of 50 people. It doesn’t have to be complicated.

Mark Hallock:

Yeah, that’s right.

Mark Clifton:

But if you’ve got a visitor that comes, what’s your strategy?

Mark Hallock:

Yeah, what are you doing?

Mark Clifton:

How do you get new members to become older?

Mark Hallock:

Yeah, that’s good.

Mark Clifton:

How do you get them from the living room, to the dining room, to the kitchen?

Mark Hallock:

Listen, guys, listen, just do what Clifton just said. Literally, think about three environments and figure out how am I taking them from environment one to two to three and keep track of people. Keep track of are they in one environment? How do we get them to two environments? Are they in two environments? Let’s try to get them to three environments. You’ve got a strategy. You got to have a plan.

Mark Clifton:

When I was at Warner and we started getting some new people, basically it was just Jill and myself would invite people over to our house, and I’d try to get them from the living room to the dining room by just bringing them to our house, feeding them, and getting to know them. And then maybe I try to get them in the kitchen by trying to say, “Hey, would you guys want to help me with the kids at high school doing this? Or would you want to help us do something over here?”

But if you know about Legos, Legos have all my grandkids, usually. I do a lot of Legos. I don’t put them together. I buy them already put together. There’s this wonderful store. I found this incredible store.

Dan Hurst:

Oh, no.

Mark Clifton:

No, I found this incredible store. It’s called Block KC, or something like that. I wandered into it. People bring their already put together Lego kits and they sell them, and then you can buy them. So, you don’t have to put them together.

Dan Hurst:

Are we going to start seeing Lego pictures on your Facebook now?

Mark Clifton:

I bought the huge Saturn rocket. It’s like five feet tall.

Mark Hallock:

Already put together.

Mark Clifton:

Already put together! So, I bought it and I stuck it in my den. My grandkids go, “Granddad, did you put that together?” And I said, “No, I bought it.” They were like, “Why would you buy what we put together?”

Mark Hallock:

You miss the whole point, grandfather.

Mark Clifton:

Whole point. Where was I going with that? Oh, Legos. So, it’s true. It’s cool. In Legos, you’ve got these different connector points. Some have four connectors, some have six connectors, right? But they don’t have an infinite number of connectors. So, what happened was Jill and I, our Lego connectors got filled up pretty quick. There is just a limited number of people we could really have a close relationship with. And so I became very intentional at Warner Road. I would see some new people who had… They had a strong relationship with one of our more active members, but not much beyond that.

So, when we would find some new people that were starting to come and get involved, Jill and I would intentionally be strategic about inviting these two couples, this one couple who still had some openings in their Legos, right?

Mark Hallock:

Yep.

Mark Clifton:

And we would try to connect them.

Mark Hallock:

Connect them. I love that.

Mark Clifton:

And yet in a small church, you can do that.

Mark Hallock:

That’s right.

Mark Clifton:

You can say, “Hey, the Carters here, they do know the McCrays, and the McCrays know a lot of people, but the Carters, they probably got a few extra spots, so let’s get this new family and bring them in. Let’s have dinner with the Carters and McCrays at our house and try to connect to them.” It didn’t always work, but it worked more often than you could.

Mark Hallock:

That’s great, man. I love that.

Mark Clifton:

Does that make sense?

Mark Hallock:

Oh, yeah, I love it. That makes sense.

Dan Hurst:

I would say, though, that your older members have to have an understanding of that strategy. I sat at a restaurant with a brand new Christian and an older Christian from our church. The guy is a deacon in our church, the older guy. And we’re talking and everything, and I asked the older deacon, and I called the young Christian by name. I said, “Where do you see him five years from now?”

“No clue. No clue.”

So, there has to be a vision for where do we want this young Christian to be three years from now, five years, so that there is an intentional approach.

It’s not just if it happens, it happens, but we’ve got to focus on moving them along. And if your older Christians don’t have that vision, you’ve got a problem.

Mark Hallock:

That’s right.

Mark Clifton:

We’re going to have to make this a two-parter because we’re already at 21 minutes.

Mark Hallock:

Yeah, That’s great. We got three good ones. It’s for next time.

Mark Clifton:

Those were four not very good ones, but we got three good ones coming up. And we do. So you want to come back for the second half of this. Part two-

Mark Hallock:

Of seven characteristics of a failing church.

Mark Clifton:

And we will look at that, for sure.

Dan Hurst:

We call that front selling in radio.

Mark Clifton:

Do you really?

Dan Hurst:

Yeah. We got something coming up you don’t want to miss! We don’t know.

Mark Clifton:

We just didn’t plan it out very well here. We spent too much time talking about Legos.

Dan Hurst:

Yeah. All right. So, we’ll continue this in the next program. Thanks to the North American Mission Board for making it possible.

Mark Clifton:

Oh, one thing. This is important, by the way. We need to put in the… Excuse me for interrupting.

Dan Hurst:

Sure. No, no problem.

Mark Clifton:

I do it all the time. We do need to put in the show notes Simple Church, because the whole book, Simple Church from 20, 25 years ago with Rainer, and-

Mark Hallock:

Lays out… Yeah.

Mark Clifton:

It lays out how you… You got to have a plan.

Mark Hallock:

Geiger. Yeah, Geiger.

Mark Clifton:

Geiger and Rainer. The more simple your plan to move people from visiting to attending to being engaged, the more successful your church is going to be. So, if you have read Simple Church, one of those books, go back and read it again. So, I don’t want you leaving here thinking, “Well, I got no tools.” Take a look at Simple Church. All right? I’m sorry.

Dan Hurst:

All right. To be continued, see you.

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Thanks for joining us today on Revitalize and Replant with Mark Clifton and Mark Hallock. This podcast is brought to you by the North American Mission Board, where we help dying or struggling churches regain health for the glory of God and the good of their communities.

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