Thom S. Rainer is the president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources. He writes on his website, thomrainer.com, “There are certain metrics and issues physicians check when we go to the doctor. They want to check our blood pressure and temperature. They do blood tests to see if there are any warning signs. They are looking for symptoms that might indicate real problems exist.
After working with churches for thirty years, I too look for symptoms that might point to greater concerns. The symptoms are not necessarily the problem; they simply provide warnings or cautions of potential issues.
While there are many potential symptoms of a sick church, I have found ten to be consistently common. These ten are not listed in any particular order:
Declining worship attendance. Surprisingly, the majority of church leaders do not monitor worship attendance. I advise leaders to compare each month’s average worship attendance to the same month of previous years.
Decline in frequency of attendance of church members. This symptom is the number one explanation for attendance decline in most churches. Members are not as committed as they once were. Their waning love for their church is reflected in their declining frequency in worship attendance.
Lack of joy and vibrancy in the worship service. Obviously, this symptom is subjective. It is still, however, very important. Most people can sense when a worship service is vibrant, lukewarm, or dead.
Little evangelistic fruit. As a general rule, a healthy church will reach at least one non-Christian for every 20 in worship attendance. A church with a worship attendance of 200, for example, should see at least ten new Christians a year.
Low community impact. In my consultations, I attempt to find clear indicators that a church is making a difference in its respective community. I ask both church leaders and community members for clear examples and indicators.
More meetings than ministry. A sick church will meet about what they should do rather than do it. Some churches have more committees than conversions.
Acrimonious business meetings. Christians can and do disagree. Sick churches have meetings where the disagreements reflect obvious bitterness and anger.
Very few guests in worship services. A vibrant church will attract guests. A sick church will not.
Worship wars. Yes, they still exist in many churches. Those wars are indicators of an inward focus by the members.
Unrealistic expectations of pastoral care. Sick churches view pastors and other staff as hired hands to do all of the work of ministry. Healthy churches view pastors as equippers for the members to do most of the ministry.
In his book, From Embers to a Flame: How God Can Revitalize Your Church by Harry L. Reeder shares some similar symptoms of a sick church:
* A focus on programs – Churches that are dying tend to be focused on programs and pin their hopes for success on the latest ministry church growth fad or prepackaged church success plan.
* Nostalgia and tradition – Dying churches often live in the past. Everything that is happening now is judged by what had happened back in the “glory days”.
* Personality dependence – Dying churches tend to rely on certain personality types whether or not they have these kinds of people in the church. If they have a strong leader, they may look to him to do all the work or make all the decisions.
* A maintenance mentality – Many dying churches try just to “hold on”. They are on a life-support system, rather than being on a life-saving mission. Someone has said that “they are merely polishing a monument, rather than building a movement of God’s grace”.
* A “victim” and “excuse” mind-set – Members of dying churches already have a well-rehearsed list of reasons why a new ministry idea will not be effective.
* A bad reputation in the community – A symptom of a dying church is its perception by others in the community around it. The longer a church follows a pattern of decline, the worse its public image and reputation become.
* Distraction from the Gospel - This final symptom of sickness in a church is the worst one of all. Churches that are dying have lost sight of the centrality of God’s grace. Something else has become more important than living according to the Word of God and sharing it with people who need to be saved.
The remedy for a dying church is not to give up and close their doors. Over the next few weeks we will be looking at what the Bible says about what a church can do to reverse its path to the grave.
The healing of sick believers and sick churches is biblical
Jesus went after the one sheep (church) and so preventing the death of just one sheep, even one congregation is important to Him (Matthew 18:12-14).
In the book of Acts, the apostles went out as missionaries and started churches and then retraced their steps in order to see how they were doing (Acts 13; 15:36) In Acts 15:41 the Bible says that Paul “went through Syria and Cilicia strengthening the churches.”
Paul commissioned Titus to revitalize a church in Crete (Titus 1:5);
Timothy was sent to Ephesus to revitalize that church
Paul’s concern for the church at Ephesus to be revitalized: Ephesians 5:1-14
4 of the 7 churches in Revelation were dying and Jesus wrote to them because He wanted them to come back alive
The Bible never focuses on church growth; it focuses on church health
Some churches, including our own, have focused more on “church growth” and looked at what other churches have done to get “big”. Someone’s written a book on their success and so the pastor and the leaders of the church try to incorporate the “strategies” in the book.
Here’s the problem, focusing on “church growth” rather than “church health” is like putting the church on steroids to “buff it up” and sooner or later the steroid use will lead to death.
* Church models based on Wall Street try to grow the church by applying successful business principles and practices.
* Church models based on Hollywood use the entertainment factor so that people will have a good time at church.
* Church models based on Psychology try to grow the church using “self-help” therapies to provide support and solutions for the deepest emotional and psychological needs of people rather than the transforming power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We need to focus on church health rather than church growth because a healthy church will grow. We need to focus on the health of our church and let God take care of the growth.
If we do it the other way around, we may end up with an unhealthy church that has a lot of people—one that may look successful statistically, but is not really pleasing to God or delivering transformed disciples serving Christ.
Over the next several weeks, Lord willing, we are going to examine several biblical truths to implement in order to bring about the health of our church. These truths are based on Jesus’ words in Revelation 2:5 where He speaks to the church at Ephesus, once a thriving and powerful church for spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Rev 2:1 "To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: 'The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.
Rev 2:2 "'I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false.
Rev 2:3 I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary.
Rev 2:4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
Rev 2:5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
Jesus tells this church to “remember”, “repent” and “recover”, that is, “do the works you did at first.” Today we are going to “remember”; we are going to connect with our past.
We are going to learn from our past without living in the past. Here are five characteristics of our early church that we need to consider.
An excitement about being at church to worship God and to be with each other
Our church in her earlier days just loved to hang out with each other. We had times of worship that were very powerful. There were times when people would cry or get happy about having a relationship with the living Lord Jesus.
We would have testimony time where people would really stand and testify about what the Lord had done and was doing in their lives. This joy would overflow into their lives and people would come to our church because of what they heard or saw going on in their lives of our membership.
Our fellowship was real and it wasn’t limited to the church. This was before our small group ministry, and though we did have times of fellowship at the church, we also connected with each other and hung out with each other outside of the church.
We invited each other to our homes for dinner; we went to the movies together and to the mall and bowling together and invited each other to birthday parties and other family gatherings. Members of our church had lunch together. It wasn’t scripted or coerced or promoted by the pastor, it just happened because we loved each other.
An enthusiasm for ministering the Gospel to our community
We knocked on doors, handed out flyers and leaflets, mailed letters, had youth events, teen events, VBS, spirit fairs, harvest festivals, backyard video nights, skating parties, we helped people with financial difficulties, we had special programs like Christmas cantatas and Easter plays, Seven Last Word services, video game tournaments, Easter egg hunts, church picnics, agape meals, prayer vigils, youth car washes, men’s retreats, women’s retreats, youth camping trips, teen all-nighters, football games, open mic nights, joint church fellowships, swap meets, etc.
An enduring spirit when it came to challenges and conflicts with other believers
The devil, the accuser of the brethren, is always going to try to “sift us like wheat” (Luke 22:31). And, yes, we had people to leave our church. But for the most part, in those earlier days, people were more forgiving and we clung to the Lord and to each other like glue.
In our earlier church, we encouraged adherence to the principles of church maintenance where according to Jesus’ words in Matthew 18, we took each other aside privately when we had issues or offenses with each other. We were encouraged not to gossip because “A perverse man spreads strife, and a slanderer separates intimate friends.” (Proverbs 16:28).
Many conflicts and disagreements were stopped in their place because the two people who had the conflict dealt with it and kept it between themselves rather than run to the pastor or another church leader or worse still, another church member.
Facebook wasn’t around in those early days, so it wasn’t available to be used as a tool of the devil to get even with a brother or sister who spurned you.
An enormous heart for giving financially and giving of our time
I will always remember the time when I got laid off from my job of 22 years. I think part of their decision was that I wasn’t doing my job because we had just bought our church property and I was the general contractor over the renovation and did all of the running back and forth from Towson and meeting with contractors and neglected to put all my energies into my job.
When I got laid off our church decided to support me full time. Our weekly offering totals at the time did not support this decision. But once the decision was made, our church’s monthly income increased by 50%...the exact amount that was needed to support me and my family!
Not only did our church family in those early days give of their finances, they gave of their time and their talents. We had a ministry leaders roster that was a mile long. We had people serving the Lord sacrificially and in those days, rarely did a person’s personal life and job have precedence over the ministry. We had some people who were willing to use their vacation days or postpone their annual vacation so they would be available to serve during our week-long Vacation Bible School.
An earnest devotion to the Bible and application of it in our lives.
I believe this was the key to any of the successes we experienced as a church. When we had Mid-Week Bible Study and Sunday School, people showed up. There was an earnest application of what we were learning to our lives.
This doesn’t mean that we were without problems. We had lots of problems! However, as a pastor, I wasn’t as concerned about the perfection of our lives…I was concerned about the direction of our lives. Christ takes care of our perfection as His word is applied in our lives—that’s why Paul writes in Colossians 1:27b-28, “Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ.”
Back in Revelation 2:5 Jesus tells the church at Ephesus to “Remember therefore from where you have fallen.” And so let’s make it personal. Do you remember when you used to have:
* An excitement about being at church to worship God and to be with other believers?
* An enthusiasm for ministering the Gospel to our community?
* An enduring spirit when it came to challenges and conflicts with other believers?
* An enormous heart for giving financially and giving of your time?
* An earnest application of the Bible in your life.
The reason Jesus told the Ephesian church to remember is because of something He observed about this church.
I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. (Rev 2:3-4)
This just doesn’t happen with a church it also happens with a marriage. People just don’t up and decide to divorce. This decision normally brews and simmers on the back burner for a while before someone turns the heat on and the pot boils over.
* Those words, that commitment you expressed to one another at the altar lose their meaning over time.
* That devotion you had in those early days begins to deteriorate.
* You used to spend so much time with each other, going places, on dates, talking on the phone; sending those romantic text messages with the hearts and the kisses.
* The love you had when you first got married begins to languish.
* Someone eventually leaves the other.
Jesus tells the church at Ephesus that they worked hard and they patiently endured suffering and they were faithful to sound doctrine but in spite of all the good things Jesus had to say to this church, He had one thing against them—they had abandoned their first love.
What is Jesus saying? He is saying that the quality of their love had weakened. The Greek word translated “left” (aphiemi) means “to depart, leave alone, forsake, and neglect.”
One commentator says, “When you lose your car keys, where are they? When you lose your sunglasses, where are they? If you think real hard about it, when you lose your car keys or your sunglasses, they’re right where you left them! And that’s the way it is with your first love for God. If you’ve lost it, guess where it is. It’s wherever you left it. Jesus says, go back and find it. Wherever it is, it’s still there because God hasn’t moved! He’s waiting for you to come back.”
And so Jesus is saying the Ephesian church abandoned their first love for Him. But that is not all. He is also saying that they abandoned their first love for each other.
You may remember the encounter Jesus had with a teacher of the law and this teaching desiring to put Jesus to the test asked Him a question, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answers saying, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus responds, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” (Luke 10:25-28)
Here this: the characteristics displayed in the life of a person who has been granted eternal life have not changed. Those who have eternal life, “love the Lord their God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their strength and with all their mind, and their neighbor as themselves”.
This kind of “love” manifests itself in the believer’s lifestyle and choices, for Jesus says in John 14:15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” and verse 23, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
This is not a new principle; it is as old as the Old Testament where in Exodus God tells the children of Israel, “You shall have no other god before me” (Exodus 20:3). It is as old as creation in the book of Genesis God tells Adam and Eve, “Do what I say and you will not die” (Genesis 2:17).
The Christian needs to know that any “if”, “ands”, or “buts” when it comes to keeping the commands of God, is nothing more than disobedience and idolatry.
In Genesis 3:6 we find a full-blast rebellion to the Word of God when Eve thought, “IF the fruit is good for food I should eat it.” She thought, “AND, it looks so delicious…” She was thinking, “We know what God commanded, BUT when we eat the fruit from this tree we will be wise!”
Like Adam and Eve, when we apply our “if”, “ands”, or “buts” to the command of the Lord, we leave our first love to satisfy our own desire. Proof that Adam and Eve left their first love was that when the LORD God came to walk in the garden as He usually did, Adam and Eve had fled the scene and hid themselves. They left their love back with Jesus while they were covering themselves with fig leaves.
“Leaving our first love” doesn’t mean that we no longer have any love for Jesus at all. It is to say that the quality of our love for Him has weakened. It means that the love we have for ourselves has become more of a priority than the love we have for Him.
Not only was Jesus saying to the Ephesian church, “You left your first love (for Me)” He was saying, “You have left your love for each other.” Whatever your love was when you were first planted as a church, you left it back there.
Again, the coldness that was in the Ephesian church for the Lord and each other didn’t happen overnight. In fact, we find hints that this church was in trouble long before Jesus confronted them about it in the book of Revelation.
When Paul praised the Ephesian church for its love, he was referring to the love they had for one another. In 1:15-16 Paul writes, “For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you, and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers”.
In chapter four, Paul encourages these believers to love one another: “But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love”. (vs. 15-16)
In 5:12 he writes, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma”.
So when Jesus says in Revelation 2:4 that the Ephesian believers had “lost their first love” He could have been referring to a loss of love for Him, or a loss of love for each other, or both. Whoever was being spurned…Jesus or fellow believers, we know as we examine Scripture that this loss of love happened, gradually, over time.
In Acts 20 we find the Apostle Paul pleading with the elders on Miletus before he would leave for Jerusalem. Paul says that he did not cease to warn them night and day with tears for a period of three whole years (vs 31) and warned them that there would be perverse men (fierce wolves) among them who would rise up and lead them astray and there would be others coming from the outside who would destroy them (vs. 29-30).
1Timothy begins chapter one with Paul reminding Timothy of his commission to stay at Ephesus and to charge certain people not to teach a different doctrine. At the end of this chapter Paul even names two of the men that were disciplined (handed over to Satan) for causing the faith of some to be shipwrecked.
False teachers were still a problem among the Ephesian believers so Paul has to write a second letter to deal with the fallout. This obviously was causing issues for Timothy, a young pastor assigned to this church, so Paul has to encourage him not to let these guys intimidate him, writing, “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” (1 Tim 4:12)
Perhaps Timothy was getting ulcers or some other stomach ailment from the stress so Paul encourages him to not just drink water but use a little wine for the sake of his stomach and his frequent ailments (the medicinal effect of alcohol) (1 Tim. 5:23)
Paul warns and exhorts the Ephesian church…Timothy warns and exhorts the Ephesian church. Paul even sends Tychicus to Ephesus and even returns to Ephesus himself and mentions it when writing to the church at Corinth: "If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus," and "I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost, for a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries" (1 Cor. 15:32; 1 Cor. 16:8, 9).
The situation at the church in Ephesus doesn’t get any better so Jesus Himself has to step in. This takes us back to our text in Revelation 2 where Jesus warns the church at Ephesus to do three things:
Remember,
Repent and
Do the first works
Jesus tells this church that if they didn’t repent, He would remove their lampstand (their influence, effectiveness). (vs. 2:5). In the book of Revelation, the seven golden lampstands are the seven churches and the church at Ephesus was one of them.
Their lampstand was supposed to be glowing with light. They were to be a light to their city and now Jesus was promising them that if they didn’t “repent”, He would “remove their lampstand from its place.”
Their warnings should have been heeded because that's exactly what happened with the church of Ephesus. The city of Ephesus is located in Turkey. Turkey was once the heartland of Paul's ministry to Asia Minor but is now 99% Muslim and devoid of Bible-based Christianity today.
Any Christian activity around Ephesus today is not worship or evangelism, it is mostly idolatry that centered in a small house that is supposedly the place from which the Virgin Mary was taken to heaven. People come from all over the world to pray at a prayer wall near this shrine called Mary’s house. That is all is left of the church at Ephesus.
Very sobering account of the church at Ephesus but it doesn’t have to happen to GraceWay Church.
Over the next several weeks, Lord willing, we are going to examine several biblical truths that if implemented will bring about the health of our church.
Jesus tells the Ephesian church to “remember”, “repent” and “recover or do the works you did at first.”
Today we “remembered” and briefly connected with our past. We remembered the church we used to be and the characteristics we used to have.
I hope that we can learn from our past without living in the past. Please get a copy of this sermon and review it. Seek the Lord on how you can be a part of the revival and the renewal that He wants to bring to our church.
God didn’t bring us this far just to drop us. Remember the words of Scripture found in Romans chapter eight:
Rom 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Rom 8:36 Even as it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Rom 8:37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
Rom 8:38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
Rom 8:39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Are you in Christ? Have you been saved? Have you turned from your sins and received the pardon offered you through the death, burial and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus Christ?
