The Church has Left the Building

A speaker at this year’s Purpose Driven Presbyterians meeting said some words that shook my world—and view of the church. He asked us how we define “success” in a church. He is the pastor of a rapidly growing church and has changed his view of success. For him, a church is “successful” when it gets to the point that if the church closed its doors the community would be worse off. This caused me to think about Evergreen and our denomination.

Evergreen could close its doors tomorrow and it would have no impact on our community—I am sad to say. The people who are a part of our ministries would experience a loss but the community wouldn’t even recognize that our church was gone.

My guess is that the same could be said for most of our Presbyterian churches. But, I am almost positive that most church members would disagree with me—at first. I talked for almost two hours with one of my church’s elders before she began to see my point. Individuals are making a difference in the lives of other individuals—yet, it is not generally recognized that it is a part of Evergreen and its ministries. I believe that every pastor and session should carefully and prayerfully think about the impact closing the church would have on their community.

On a larger scale, the PCUSA could close its doors tomorrow and there would be no impact on the USA or the world. We have GA committees and task forces that write position reports that have ZERO impact on the church, the country and the world. As a denomination we are irrelevant. We are paper and hot air—not much on action. We talk a good fight—but do jack ____!

At Evergreen we are determined to change—beginning now. Check back Monday as we look at the church leaving the building.