A hole in the fuel tank?

Several months ago I was on a train which came to an abrupt and terminal stop. We waited for half an hour before the announcement: ‘Ladies and gentlemen please disembark as there is a large hole in the fuel tank’.

This became obvious from the overpowering smell of diesel that hit us as soon as we were outside. I liked being on the train. It was comfortable and they served refreshments. But it wasn’t going anywhere and from inside it was impossible to see why.

Sometimes churches stall and it isn’t always easy to tell from the inside what is wrong. But you don’t necessarily have to know what is wrong to know that something is wrong. When a stall occurs one common option is to look at superficial things like style of services or meeting times. It is rare to find a church daring enough to ask if there might be a more foundational hole in the fuel tank. Here are ten common spiritual reasons why churches stall.

1. The church forgets who we are and what we are for. 1 Peter says that we are a royal priesthood (who we are) for declaring God’s greatnesses to the world (what we are for). Put simply, the purpose of the church is to go into all the world, making disciples of Jesus, baptising them and teaching them to obey everything he commanded. When we forget that we are the community of disciples for declaring God’s greatness and making disciples, mission quickly becomes just one among many activities rather than the defining vision of who we are as a community.

2. The majority of believers are no longer thrilled with the Lord and what he is doing in their lives. When questions like ‘What is God doing with you at the moment?’ cease to be common currency, it is a sure sign of creeping spiritual mediocrity. When a large percentage of believers are spiritually stalled, the church stalls too. This commonly happens when people attach themselves to a fellowship because they like the activities and the warm company, but never commit themselves to gospel vision, either because it isn’t explained to them or they have no commitment to it.

Woe betide the church that lets people join and take significant responsibility for decisions without being sure that they are wholeheartedly committed to the church’s vision!

3. The people get happy with not going anywhere because of the comfort and refreshments on offer. Worse still when people get happy with activities, events, service and even good teaching and preaching but are resistant to challenges to radical living and sacrifice for the gospel. In my view, the single biggest cause of stalled churches in the UK is the belief that material comfort can be normative for Christians. It is the opposite of radical commitment to Christ.

4. When filler-Christians who have no real commitment to gospel vision outnumber the core of committed believers who do. A filler-Christian adds up everything else they need and want to do for the rest of the week, sees how many hours are left and allocates a certain number of them to church things. They see church as one among many leisure activities, usually low down the priority list. They are unlikely to see the Christian community as God’s great hope for the world and unlikely to put commitment above self-interest.

5. When a large percentage of the church are used to being passive receivers of ministry from other people rather than being active self-feeders on the Word of God. It is easy to persuade ourselves that we have done the spiritual bit for the week because we have listened to a sermon but with no thought about acting on it. Where people take no personal responsibility for their own spiritual growth a stalled church becomes more likely.

6. No life application from the Bible. When preaching, teaching and Bible study become ends in themselves rather than means to an end, something is badly wrong. The aim of no passage of Scripture is that we should simply know what it says without the knowledge translating into discipleship and worship. Just as the aim of no Bible passage is that we simply know it (the Devil does that!), but that we follow, obey, submit and worship, so Bible studies and preaching must never exist entirely for their own sake, but to see faith, worship and discipleship among the believers.

7. A church becomes afraid to ask radical questions. Perhaps a pastor knows that things are foundationally wrong but knows he will be severely resisted (or sacked) if he raises the issue. Perhaps certain activities have passed their sell-by date but have become too dear to those who participate in them to ever deliberately stop them. Churches accrete new activities much more easily than we stop redundant ones and gradually stall under the weight of them. The danger is that people start to equate serving the church with living out the gospel. Few churches regularly evaluate every aspect of church life against their core vision.

8. Confusing Christian activities with discipleship. The myriad of opportunities within and without the local church to spend time doing churchy things makes it very easy to believe that doing those activities automatically means we are growing as disciples. This reason for stalling churches is subtle and hard to spot because it may outwardly seem that people are doing good things: attending Christian conferences, going on Christian holidays, sitting on church committees, even ministering or leading in church. All of these can be valuable. The danger arises when we assume that these things are the same thing as living out the gospel. They aren’t.

9. Not understanding how to release and encourage everyone in the church to use their spiritual gifts for the building up of the church. This stall can take several different forms: the church (or the leader) that expects the leader to do everything and everyone else to do nothing; the church that thinks that participation is not a matter of identifying and utilising gifts but of exercising a vote at a church meeting; the church that doesn’t want to be challenged out of a cultural comfort zone and that insists that its leaders act as their chaplains for meeting exclusively internal spiritual needs. There are two types of DNA in churches. One type of church says ‘we exist to have our personal spiritual needs met’, the other ‘we exist to impact our locality and the world with the gospel of the grace of God in Christ’. The first type is a stalled church.

10. Moving into maintenance mode. At some point all churches take decisions that tend towards stalling. No church was stalled at the point that it was founded. At the beginning all churches were adventures in faith and daring risk for God. No one actively decided for comfort over risk, but at some point the mindset shifted from uncomfortable faith and daring passion for the Lord to comfortable mediocrity. From an externals to internals, from a frontier missions mindset to a homely maintenance mindset. One point this can happen for larger churches is when the initial vision is met. If the founding vision was to see 200 people saved and a full building of converts, it is very easy when this is achieved to move into keeping everyone happy and simply building up those who have come in. But that is to betray the founding vision. When it is reached it is time to ask what the next step of faith should be. However, this is always uncomfortable, especially if you have a full building with lots of activities that people enjoy and find unthreatening. The mantra of the maintenance mindset is ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’. But just like buying shoes for growing children, if structures don’t take account of future growth then fellowships end up stunted and deformed. We need to plan for structures, buildings, teams and leaders to grow at the point where the building is full. Any other decision is by definition a decision to stall sooner or later.

One component of leadership is discernment, the ability to bring clarity, vision and sense to situations. The final straw that will lead any church into a stall is when leaders are unable to do so. This might be because they lack skill, opportunity, they face implacable opposition or because they are wounded and isolated.

One of the tragedies for sole leaders is when a congregation knows that it only has to dig its heels in enough and it will wear down the ability, capacity and energy necessary to bring vision and change. Stalled congregations are often comfortable being stalled and fiercely resist any attempt to move them out of the rut. The leader ends up drained, permanently discouraged and pulled this way and that by every demand of the congregation.

It is critical for a stalled (or stalling) congregation to ask, ‘How did we get here? Where is the hole in the fuel tank?’ But even more crucial is the question, ‘Will we look for and follow leaders who can discern, identify, and fix the problem?’ The answer to this question will finally determine whether the stall is fixable or fatal.

Marcus Honeysett leads the training organisation Living Leadership, running conferences and workshops for those involved in leadership at various levels. If you wish to follow up any issues raised in this article, please contact Marcus at marcus@livingleadership.org

Marcus Honeysett looks at ten reasons why churches stall

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