Earlier this month, a New York Times article told the story of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines, not far from O’Hare airport. Well, it actually told the story of its building because Good Shepherd no longer exists. It closed a number of years ago and its building, situated in a pastoral lakeside setting, was converted into an upscale restaurant. The article highlights one couple who came to the restaurant to celebrate their wedding anniversary. They had been married in that same building 34 years earlier.

The story goes on to tell of a number of church buildings around the country repurposed in a variety of ways.

Around the world, houses of worship have been converted to restaurants, breweries, hotels, art centers, theaters and even sports complexes. Some abandoned churches have been transformed into mixed-use developments, blending retail and residential space, and affordable housing.

A church in New York City became a disco and one in St. Louis a skate park. Years ago, I stayed in a Chicago church that had become a B&B and I’ve seen a number of church buildings converted to single family homes.

The possibilities are presumably endless—as are the opportunities. Churches are closing by the thousands every year. A sociologist of church trends is quoted as saying that 100,000 Protestant churches in the US could close this decade, which would be close to 20% of such congregations. This after thousands closed in prior years. The story for Roman Catholic parishes is much the same.

Having spent most of my professional life in churches, I can say with some confidence that this situation will only get worse before it gets better, whatever “better” might mean. For most of the people remaining in churches, better means stopping their church’s membership shrinkage and then start growing again. Na’ gonna’ happen. But it’s almost impossible to convince churchgoers of that. I know. I’ve tried.

The people remaining in congregations like going to church. Most have done it all their lives and want to keep doing it as long as they can. Talk of changing, renewing, remaking, transforming the church gets a blank look from them. “We like it the way it is. We just wish there were more of us.” But in fact, their numbers are getting steadily older and fewer. Last one out, turn off the lights.

Now one might think church leaders, who are primarily clergy, would be steering churches in a new direction but they don’t get it either. For most of them, also, the primary goal is to preserve the institution. Which isn’t surprising since clergy are essentially trained to be institutional leaders. But that’s unfortunate since it is the institutional nature of Christianity that is the problem.

In a blog post last fall, Marshall Davis, a retired Baptist minister and now teacher of nondual Christianity, sees the church’s day of reckoning fast approaching.

The church does not have a problem; the church is the problem. The church thinks the problem is in the culture outside the church, but the real problem is in the church culture. The church does not see that, and therefore it has no motivation to change. Instead it doubles down on the culture wars. Because of the church’s spiritual blindness, the only solution left to God is so drastic that no one wants to think about it.

The church needs to die, so it can be resurrected as an entirely new creation. For that reason I am not dismayed when I read ever-worsening statistics about the decline of the church. I see God’s hand in it. Like a gardener or farmer, God is turning over the soil, in order to prepare for a new season.

Most people today just aren’t interested in belonging to a church, or to any other religious organization for that matter. That’s very hard for Christians, lay or clergy, to comprehend. For them being a Christian means belonging to a church. They enjoy the worship services (mostly), the “coffee and” after worship, Bible studies, service opportunities, etc.

Primarily, though, people enjoy the friendships they have with other church members who they encounter at such events. But newcomers or people outside a congregation’s “inner circle” often find these activities are “not all that.” Add to that the scandals, political divisions, and internal squabbles that rack many congregations and folks looking in from the outside will say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

More than the church’s organizational flaws, however, is the fact that it is simply not offering what people are looking for. In clinging to its traditions, the church has been blinded to a cultural sea change occurring all around it. The result, as Davis says in a later post, is that people are looking elsewhere to meet their spiritual needs.

I see God at work in the hearts and minds of people who are leaving the church. People are looking more closely at what they believe … and don’t believe. They are deconstructing the faith they were raised in (if they were raised in a religious tradition). Upon careful examination, many are deciding that their religious tradition is not true. 

So church decline has little to do with liberal or conservative. It has everything to do with people looking for meaning and purpose, beauty and truth, community and meaningful relationships in life. People are not finding those in churches, so they are looking elsewhere. They are looking to other religious traditions and humanistic philosophies. They are exploring other spiritual practices and beliefs.  

Throughout my ministry career, I have watched my denomination, and others like it, struggle to stem their decline. The proposals and renewal programs have been endless, and millions of dollars spent on them. Nothing has changed. But to use a commercial metaphor, all of these efforts have dealt with the packaging. No one, it seems, whether in the pews or the pulpit, dares to question whether it might actually be the product itself that is the problem.

Specifically, but only briefly, the church needs to finally acknowledge that its ancient sin/salvation shtick is over. Not only are people outside not interested in it but many in the pews—and pulpits!—don’t buy it anymore, either. The carrot-and-stick of heaven and hell are way past their sell by date. Many churches today, of course, barely pay lip service to this tradition. Yet it is still at the core of these churches’ creeds, liturgies, calendars, prayers, hymns, and education materials.

“But that’s what Jesus is all about, isn’t it?” That’s certainly the direction the early church pulled him and it’s the direction the church has gone ever since. But there is good evidence now that many early Christians were not onboard with that viewpoint and instead understood Jesus very differently (see the gospel of Thomas, for instance, where the crucifixion and resurrection are never mentioned). And throughout its history, there has always been a minority in the church who viewed Jesus as something other than a “savior from sin”, the mystics being the most notable.

More importantly, thanks to modern New Testament scholarship, and when we remove our “savior-colored glasses”, it has become easy to see that Jesus himself showed little interest in salvation religion, his “attack” on the temple being perhaps Exhibit A. Rather, his primary concern was with the suffering of people in their daily lives, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. In Mark, the gospel’s “good news” is that God’s kingdom is here, now, at our finger tips. And in Luke Jesus declares,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

While the church certainly affirms these texts, what isn’t acknowledged is that they have nothing to do with the ancient sin/salvation mantra the church has recited for nearly two millennia. It is so ingrained that, as I said above, the church’s predicament will have to get worse before it gets better. People within the church today won’t be able to undo the doctrines, imagery, and language that have sustained the church for so long. It’s what they’re there for.

Nonetheless, I share Marshall Davis’ view that from this dying will come a new rising. The Spirit is indeed “turning over the soil.” It may not look like much now but in the spring, however long that is in coming, new growth will appear. Then, repurposing church buildings will give way to repurposing the church itself.

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