Thousands of Churches close in North America every year…many more are struggling to keep themselves afloat.

Many Church boards can see the writing on the wall and tremble for their future. Desperate to dodge the statistics they become willing to do anything that they think will will them survive. Some try offer better experiences as bribes to keep people interested. Some try going more traditional…some will abandon traditions all together in an effort to become attractive to the world. Some will have meetings about ways to have more dynamic worship…or more relevant preaching. Many will try keep out anything that might challenge people, or make them uncomfortable.

Liberal leaning Churches will ignore the teachings of Jesus that seem a little fundamentalist for this modern age we live in. Conservative leaning Churches will soft- peddle the teachings that seem a little more like social justice or liberalism.

All this in an effort to keep the people in.

However, if your only goal is to try and keep what you already have, you usually end up losing even that.

We can see that in the Church. Despite an abundance of rhetoric and meetings, Churches continue to close. Even more telling is that less and less people care that they are gone…in fact, a fair amount of people even celebrate their passing.

Perhaps the fruit of emphasizing knowledge over action is simply people who know a lot of theology but they never let it change their life.

Perhaps the fruit of eliminating challenge is a bumper crop of weak character, people who have a head full of knowledge but don’t have the courage to do anything about it.

Perhaps the fruit of emphasizing amazing experiences is the creation of a group of people who decide what to do based on whether it is fun or not.

When the key factor in making decisions becomes whether something is fun or not, soon, only fun things are done, and the necessary work is left undone.

Necessary things like making an effort to resolve conflict. Conflict can actually make a relationship stronger, if the effort is made to work through it.

Necessary things like pruning programs that just don’t work. Pruning is rarely fun but growth happens afterword.

Necessary things like wrestling with the truth. Hard truths like the fact that both the liberal parties and conservative parties are recorded as coming together in an effort to get Jesus crucified.

If a Church is really preaching the message of Jesus, wouldn’t the same thing happen today?

Perhaps the narrow focus on simply keeping themselves afloat is the very thing that makes these Churches irrelevant to the world around them.

Perhaps the great commission of Jesus was not to keep the people in the Church…but for his followers to go out of the Church building and do the work of Jesus in the world. Perhaps a vision beyond themselves would help Church communities to see the world of pain, the wounded community around them that needs healing. Perhaps reintroducing the challenge factor would help create people of stronger character…people who can be trusted to do what they say they will do…people who value the painful truth over bigger and better experiences that turn out to be empty in the end…people who are bold enough to leave their comfort zone if that’s what it takes to accomplish the bigger mission.

Maybe the mission of Jesus was about redeeming people, not about building beautiful buildings and elaborate organizations.

Maybe serving the lonely and downtrodden would actually be seen as useful and relevant those who see little value in many of the self-serving things that the organization of the Church often does.

Maybe in working to provide healing to the world around them, the North American Church itself will find healing. Of course, this is hard. But just because the road going down-hill is easy, doesn’t mean we should take it. Does it?