How Doing The Right Things Caused A Church's Attendance To Go Down.

Recently, our family attended a wedding in another state, and we attended the morning worship service of the church. We had a chance to visit briefly with one of the two main preaching-pastors, who shared a little bit about the recent history of the congregation. I learned some fascinating facts:

1. This church began life as a Charismatic congregation. In fact, we heard a bit about the original founding pastor's on-going connections to a Charismatic mega-church in Asia.  But the church, a few years ago, transitioned to the Biblical belief in the sufficiency of Scripture, and the Christ-centered doctrines of God's sovereign grace. What happened as a result of pivoting to a Scriptural focus? They lost quite a number of people.

2. They used to use the "low-light concert" vibe, in which many people sat in the dark and listened to the band (and the congregation often didn't sing at all). The leaders decided to turn up the lights, because they wanted it to be a congregational worship service. They wanted the people to sing to the Lord together. Some complained that they couldn't "worship anymore", even though they could not find fault with the music, lyrics, or this community focus of the service. Because they turned up the lights and changed from a concert to a worship service, they lost people.

3. The preaching pastors in the past used to deliver "motivational speeches", that he said had very little to do with the Scripture. He said those messages gave people "goose bumps" (his phrase). But he and his co-pastor chose to switch over to preaching through the Bible in a clear, orderly way. That's what he did the morning we were there -- he preached from the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark. It was quite good. So what happened when they changed over to clear, orderly Bible teaching? They lost people.

In other words, the more right things they did, the more people they lost. But at the same time they were becoming a more Biblically-guided church.

That's the final measuring-stick, isn't it? High numbers never prove that what is happening pleases God. That idea never was true, and it never will be, even though ministries claim it all the time. The Bible only is the final yardstick for judging whether a doctrine or a practice is really approved by the Lord.

Of course, sometimes church attendance numbers do plummet because of the toleration of sin in leadership, or because of unwise choices. But sometimes attendance numbers go down because the leadership is doing something right.