This episode is going to be a little different then many of my other podcast episodes. This episode is going to focus on the church, God’s children here on earth.

From this Episode:

I have been in prayer about the church in general, what I mean is I am concerned with God’s children, the family of God here on earth.

I have been saved for almost 30 years and I have gone to church faithfully almost this entire time and I have been faithfully serving the Lord almost this entire time as well AND to be honest with you, things are different now.

I think the church is different, us Christians are different, the world is different, kids are different. I know that you are thinking, “Well, change is inevitable”. I know this is a fact but that doesn’t make it okay, or atleast it doesn’t make ALL change ok.

What I want to focus on today is “What is God’s church like today” and I don’t want to be negative, there’s enough of that in the world… my goal today is to encourage you to rise up and be who God wants you to be! To rise up and serve the Lord with more passion and do more for God! I hope to be an encouragement to you today!

Well, A few months ago, I was praying about the church growing, the family of God growing and how we can do more with more people. This led me to take an inventory of my current church to see its growth and its ability to reach the lost and serve God.

I wanted to see more than just my own church though, so I made a blog post called “What State is the Church in?” and in this post I had a Survey to ask my brothers and sisters in Christ what the current condition of their home church is. Feel free to visit the link above to be able to take this survey.

I gathered a bunch of information in this study and I am going to bore you for the next few minutes with the result of this survey so we can get a broader picture of the state of the church. Once we do this we can then see and address any areas we can rise up and use the potential that God has given us.

The Results

The respondents have stated that they have been in their current church between 1-20+ years, their current church has existed for 3-100+ years and an average Sunday morning attendance of 26-1,000 people. I say this to show you that these results are from a wide range of people and a variety of churches they represent, from new and long time existing and big and small churches and everywhere in between.

Attendance over the last 5 years

85% of the respondents stated that their church has stayed the same or decreased in the last 5 years.

Attendance over the last 10 years

54% said that their church increased from 10 years ago.

Decisions for Christ

Over half of the respondents said their church only had 1-5 people give their life to Christ in the last year

Baptisms in the last year

38% said that their church had 5 baptisms or less with 15% having ZERO.

Miscellaneous Information

62% said their church is spending more energy to remain stable than to grow.

85% of their churches focus more on internal functions than external.

Concerning the energy level of the members, 69% of respondents said the majority of members are conserving energy or are low energy compared to just 31% that are high energy. AND lastly, Only 15% said their church is in the process of building a bigger building or expanding.

First conclusion

The thing that stood out to me the most of this study is the questions about the attendance of the last 5 years compared to 10 years ago. With the 10 years ago question giving us a result of an increase in the majority of churches and then the last 5 years giving us a majority of churches decreasing.

This is the most important bit of information on this survey. I think this gives us insight into the biggest problem of the state of the church today and that is Lack of growth and lack of commitment of the members.

I remember the church very well 10 years ago, it was a church full of members that were absolutely committed to God and this included making to every worship service possible. Now I also remember the world 10 years ago and it seemed way less busy. I don’t think that Christians are saying “God I don’t want to come meet with you today” I think they are saying “I have a thousand things to do this week and 60 hours of work, I just can’t make it”.

I am not saying that this is ok, it’s not actually but I do realize the world is demanding so much from us, that it is sucking up our time and sometimes without us even realizing it.

I think we need to make sure we are paying close attention to our time; we need to examine our schedules and weeks and days and purposely schedule God into it first so we don’t get to the end and realize there was not enough time for God.

Second Conclusion

The church’s focus is not in the right place.

With the majority of churches spending more energy to remain stable than grow, the majority of churches focused on internal functions, only 15% of churches in the building process, and the majority of members being low energy… I think this all points to the church having the focus in the wrong place.

The church should focus most of its energy on outreach and not conserving energy. I feel like most churches are so worried about “burning out” the people that they stopped asking the attenders to serve the Lord. Or maybe just ask less often than 10 years ago.

This brings me to my…

Third conclusion

This lack of outreach and lack of energy does not lay solely on the church and its leaders. It is the responsibility of the people as well.

I remember the days when too many people would want to help with everything, its like “Too many cooks in the kitchen” kind of thing. Now you can never have too much help serving the Lord but I do remember before when people would get excited to serve and that would cause more people to get excited and to want to serve.

I remember having multiple outreach or visitation opportunities each week and there would be a bunch of people at all of them. Today we don’t want to ask people to even come out once a week and if we do no one shows up.

The energy level of Christians is way lower than it was in the past. We need to amp up our energy! We should be the most excited when we are at church! We should be so excited about serving God that we find a way to do everything possible.

Now I understand we are tired, we work too much just to get by, we have kids and families and events and we are not as young as we used to be… I get it, but… it is not in us to get the strength or energy needed to serve the Lord.

It is God who gives us the strength and energy and power.

Isa 40:29  He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. 

If we feel faint, or tired or weak then it is God who gives us strength.

David says in 2 Sam 22:33  God is my strength and power:

God is the only strength we need, if we can’t do it, it doesn’t matter because God can.

My final Conclusion

The goal today is not to say how bad we have done over the last 5 years but to encourage us to look forward and do the best we can for God moving forward.

We have the power to make the right choices and we need to start choosing to accepts God’s power and God’s strength to be able to do whatever it is that God wants us to do!

So, to answer the question… What is the state of the church? The current situation of the church is transitional. We can cause the church and the work of the Lord to shrink or we can cause it to grow.

It is up to us. We can make the difference. Let’s put God first this week and every week. Let’s serve the Lord more and rely on His strength and His power!

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