Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. I'm Jeremy, I'm Matt. If you've never thought about your church as having a life cycle, or if you think the whole idea is unbiblical, I hope that today's episode challenges you to revisit this topic. We have already mentioned the church life cycle and three phases of incline, recline and decline, and today I'm going to ask Matt to unpack this concept for us a little bit more. If, as you're listening, you begin to wonder if your church is in decline and what can be done about it, we want to help you find answers. And there's good news Just because your church is in recline or decline does not mean it's time to blow out the candles and turn your pews into firewood.

Speaker 1: 0:42

We are going to be discussing today the topic of diagnosing your position. We talked two episodes ago about the church life cycle. We described incline, recline and decline. We're going to get into a little bit deeper here and something from a more theoretical, theological point of view. So, matt, question number one Since Jesus has established the church invisible, the church eternal, the church militant, how is it not being unfaithful to Scripture to talk about a church life cycle?

Speaker 2: 1:15

Yeah, so we, although Jesus has established all that, you know, there's an invisible church.

Speaker 2: 1:20

There's also visible church, and it's to visible churches that most of the New Testament was written. Interestingly, to the saints that are in, okay, that's fair, right, so, and it's to those visible churches. Really, I like to put it this way that most of the New Testament, actually almost all of the New Testament, after the book of Acts, is sent to churches in order to help them evaluate where they are, because Jesus has an evaluation of every single church, and when a church gets a letter from an apostle, or an apostle is sent to them, or an apostle sends somebody to them Timothy and Titus, or even Hebrews the book to the Hebrews right and even into Revelation 2 and 3. All of that, peter, all of that is Jesus has an evaluation of your church, every church, and he loves churches enough to tell them what his evaluation is, sometimes by sending him a letter from an apostle, and so that's what we're trying to do overall. Is that Jesus has got an evaluation. Can you discover what it is? That's what we're trying to do in church health assessment.

Speaker 1: 2:34

Okay, I've read the epistles.

Speaker 2: 2:36

Right.

Speaker 1: 2:38

I've never read church life cycle in Paul's epistles.

Speaker 2: 2:41

Yes. So what we're trying to do is obviously it's a new phrase, but it's a phrase that we're trying to use to describe what's it look like when you have a vital church or a church that's lost its first love, that's in danger, right. So you get that language in Revelation right. You've lost your first love, you're lukewarm, and so that would never be said of a church that was, you know, at least in terms of church life cycle, language was on incline Because their love for Jesus is obvious. They're not lukewarm, they're white hot for him, right, and that's obvious. Where a church that's in recline has started to suffer from that lukewarmness, from having that loss that first love and that's where we're trying to help a church self-identify is where they are in the life cycle so that they can actually really grapple with it. What is it that they're struggling with? That's put them where they are. Which of those descriptors match them?

Speaker 2: 3:39

You go through letter by letter and the different kinds of issues that Jesus wants to deal with in churches, and it's quite the collection. You take everything from the epistles and Revelation 2 and 3, it's quite the collection of issues, of things that can go wrong. Mark Debra did a book years ago on like 12 issues churches face, and this is essentially what he does is he goes through 12 different things that churches can run into that are problems, and so that's what Church Life Cycle is trying to do is trying to identify what are those kinds of things that churches fall into and they have for 2,000 years. Sometimes you have people come. They're just like, oh, we just want to be a New Testament church, and I'm like, oh great, which of the messed up churches would you like to be?

Speaker 1: 4:21

Because all of them were messed up. I'd like to be the one where we come to communion drunk and sleep with our mother-in-law.

Speaker 2: 4:28

Ah, corinth, yes, that's a winner. And yet Paul could say to the saints that are in Corinth, a visible church, that was very messed up. This is why we come alongside churches and we're enthusiastic about what we do in transitional pastoring this church goes alongside churches and we're enthusiastic about what we do in transitional pastoring. This church goes oh, we're so messed up, we're just like great. Which New Testament church do you like? That was messed up Because obviously Jesus hadn't stopped having regard for them, because he sent them letters and apostles.

Speaker 1: 4:56

And we want to evidence that kind of love and say if you'll humble yourselves and you'll turn back to the Lord and to his ways, the Spirit may well work again in you, that he might work through you, and that's the hope for any church I'm struck by just how beautifully and seriously this makes you take what Paul said in Ephesians about how much Christ loves the church, how he ministers to her and washes her through the washing of the water of the word in order to present her to himself pure and without blemish.

Speaker 2: 5:32

To a super divided church. Interestingly, that was the message to the super divided church Knock it off, you knuckleheads. He did talk about that. It was very clear that there was a division between the Jews and the Gentiles, and it seemed like the Gentiles were actually rejecting the Jews. Right, it was an odd, very divided circumstance, feels like 2020 in America, but the message that Paul said they needed to hear is you haven't understood the love of God yet. Right, which is fascinating. There's one Father, there's one head there's one, yeah, absolutely one faith.

Speaker 1: 6:03

One baptism. He's broken down the wall of separation. He's put to death the curse of your sins, nailing it to the cross, making it a spectacle, Right it's incredible.

Speaker 2: 6:13

It was the book that. Anyways, if I had been a preaching pastor that year, I probably would have had the courage to say we need to go through Ephesians this year, because I think that is what the church most needed. And the division between Jew and Gentile was the strongest kind of division that has ever happened in the history of all of the world, much stronger than between Republicans and Democrats and independents, or between different ethnicities or race classes or anything. It was the strongest of divisions that was possible between peoples, and Paul said even that strongest division that's ever been. You know what? Christ tears it down because of the love that he has for us. And if you'll be united by your common need for Christ where Ephesians starts, chapter 2, and by the common provision of Christ, then you can live united as the people of God.

Speaker 1: 7:03

That, by the way, is Seattle math. The book of Ephesians starts with chapter 2.

Speaker 2: 7:09

I've lived in Seattle for 13 years, right.

Speaker 1: 7:13

Alright, so let's take, let's say just for the sake of argument, I accept this whole life cycle thing. Statistically, if you have these numbers, is there a range of years that a church should expect a life cycle? A general life cycle would last.

Speaker 2: 7:32

Yeah, and actually this is pretty well understood and it's in the range of about 40, and here's why that makes sense for people. Most young church plants start off with young people. And they're young, they've just gotten married, they're starting to have kids and their kids are growing up through those inclined years of the church, right, and then maybe year 10 or 15, their kids are starting to get into high school. They're getting busier themselves, they're starting to think about I know no pastor that's listened to this has ever heard this before but you know where's the ministry for my kids? Boy, I wish we really had a youth group and the parents begin to have a bit of a pivot to where. What's the church giving to me?

Speaker 2: 8:15

And remember, you end up in recline as soon as you begin to be more concerned about things inwardly than outwardly, right, when you've lost that dynamic equivalence, that equal ultimacy between the forces inward and the push outward in outreach and evangelism. And so you end up going through this phase where now the church is in recline. It's much more about us. We made it so, focus on us. And then eventually, after you've lived a period of years of that, you can't sustain that because you haven't refilled.

Speaker 2: 8:46

And I was with a church last night and their sad story was a highly transient area, so they've always had people come and go. Well, the path of late, the last 10 or 15 years, has been they've had more people leave than come and so they slowly diminished. Over time. Their flow of people dried up. There may be a whole reason, most of the reasons why that is, but it is the case.

Speaker 2: 9:08

And now they've been in recline for a period of years and they're over that 40-year or so life cycle. Most of the reason why that 40 years shows up is that towards the end of recline, what you have is you have the people that started off as young people. They're now retiring from jobs, their kids have scattered around the country, they begin to enter into more leisurely years and they're not as involved in the church and actually many times they actually end up leaving the church and relocating to somewhere else and the church either ages out or, because they've not been gaining new young people into it, too many people move away, like this church I was with last night. Too many people move away and you don't have a church anymore, or it certainly feels like it could be that way soon.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Not a question I planned on asking, but I'll ask it. For those people who are moving away because of retirement, whatever, and they relocate to another church, are they typically going to another church? That's in either recline or decline, or do they? Is there a tendency to move back towards a church that's in either recline or decline, or do they? Is there a tendency to move back towards a church that's an incline? And I'm asking because I know a number of people in this stage of life themselves and one of the things I'm hearing a lot, at least when it comes to the dissatisfaction, is that what they're looking for is a church that is not that they use these terms, but in incline yeah, they're looking for something vital, interesting, that's doing good ministry.

Speaker 2: 10:32

They want to be a part of something that was like when they were young people again, particularly if they're young, retired, and they've still got a lot of energy and they want to be devoted to the Lord and they have a lot of time. It just happens to be time that's located in a different geography than it used to be. I see younger retireds that are some of the most vital people in churches, but they may well have been frustrated by the church that they left because that church didn't embrace change over time, and so they end up going to a new place that's already embraced change and they're like great, this is what it was like when we were young marrieds and our church was really vital and interesting and exciting and reaching new people. And, yeah, we want to jump in with two feet. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:12

It happens so. So then, this is the obvious follow-up question when a church finds themselves in recline or, worse, in decline, can they be? Can they be rescued, can they be turned back to incline? Can they reverse that trajectory? A hundred percent?

Speaker 2: 11:30

A hundred percent. I think it's. The whole reason that Flourish exists is because we want to help churches actually accomplish that right. We exist one of the taglines for Flourish. We have a couple of them, but one of the taglines is the only sufficient reason today dawned is that Jesus is yet gathering a people and using us to do it. Is that Jesus is yet gathering our people and using us to do it, and a church that embraces that reality, even if it's in a moment of reflection. We're down to 40 people, we've been in steep decline. We may bite the dust here, but if they own that reality and they say Holy Spirit, we repent in dust and ashes. This has not been our heartbeat as individuals and as a church, but we want this to be our heartbeat Change us, use us. I think the Holy Spirit loves to work in those moments of distinct humbling. That's the design of the letters in Revelation was to humble those churches, that they would repent, that they could return to fruitfulness. I think that's what Jesus wants to do, right.

Speaker 1: 12:26

Well, that leads me into my final question for today's episode is what comfort and or warning would Jesus give to a church that finds itself in decline?

Speaker 2: 12:35

Yeah, so I think that or maybe.

Speaker 1: 12:37

What warnings and comfort has he given?

Speaker 2: 12:39

Yeah, well, he already has given, but I do think that it's so one of the things that we ask in church health assessment interviews. We ask interviewees in congregations, you know, think about Revelation 2 and 3. What do you think congregant Jesus would say to your church if he was here and it is. I've done this hundreds and hundreds of times. I've asked this question to people and it is always striking to see people kind of push back a little bit and take a breath and evaluate and to think, wow, I've never even thought of that question. And if you can get a whole congregation to think about that question, you've got something. And Jesus has got their attention. And that's really good, because that's what Jesus wants to do.

Speaker 2: 13:22

He doesn't want to squash any local congregation. He didn't come for judgment, right? That's what we're told in John. That's not what he. He didn't come for judgment, right, that's what we're told in John. That's not what he was. And he came because he wants to see people love him and churches serve him, and so there's great hope for churches. But Jesus is also dead serious. He's dead serious. That's what those letters of Revelation tell you. If you won't repent, I'm gone and I'm taking the light with me. That's a serious thing for a church to realize. Are we humbled? Are we moldable in Jesus' hands? Would we follow him if Jesus said go, be like this for my glory, would we be willing? And that's a question that well, charon High's individuals, we need to wrestle with right, and the churches that we lead they need to wrestle with that too.

Speaker 1: 14:13

Are there resources that you could throw at me?

Speaker 2: 14:15

Yeah, so we can certainly link to the church life cycle stuff that we've mentioned before the article by Ken Pretty. Also an influence that's newer in my life but older in Jeremy's life is a guy named Ken Quick and he's actually got a book called the Eighth Letter. There's seven letters in the book of Revelation, which is a fascinating and wonderful read. This is brand new to us at Flourish. We've just used it for the first time with the church as an exercise and tried to get them to draft what would the eighth letter be for your church? And if a church is willing to do that, I think there's good hope that the Spirit can work in them, that he might work through them.

Speaker 1: 14:53

Thank you, matt. You're welcome, really appreciate your time, really appreciate the opportunity to dig further into this with you. Dear listener, I hope you're enjoying our conversation. I hope that it's prompting questions that you may have. I hope that there's someone that you're thinking of possibly your elder board that you could recommend the podcast to. We are doing this in order to be a help to you. That's my heart. I know that's Matt's heart, so please share. If you do like this, you can like or subscribe or any of those things, wherever that can happen. We sure appreciate it. We'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1: 15:31

Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them. We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that this day dawned, jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it. When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy. If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you.

Speaker 1: 15:57

You can find us at flourishcoachingorg and you can reach us by email at info at flourishcoachingorg. You can also connect with us on Facebook, twitter and YouTube, and we would love it if you would like subscribe rate. You can also connect with us on Facebook, twitter and YouTube and we would love it if you would like subscribe, rate or review the podcast wherever you're listening. Please share this podcast with anyone you think it'll help and if we get a client because of a recommendation you make, we'll send you a small gift. Just to say thanks, and a special thanks to Bay Ridge Christian Church in Annapolis, maryland, for the use of their building to record today's episode. All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists. The Church Renewal Podcast was produced by me, jeremy Seferati, in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you.