The Inevitable Death of Your Church: Avoiding the Slow Fade into Obscurity

Someday your church will die. Yes, you read that right. While it might sound like a grim start, this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, hosted by Todd Rhoades, is all about avoiding that fate. Drawing inspiration from Jeff Bezos' "day two phenomenon," Todd dives into the subtle yet dangerous decline that can sneak up on any church if left unchecked. With insights from Warren Bird's research on the vanishing act of once-prominent Sunday schools, Todd paints a vivid picture of how churches can move from vibrant and thriving to stagnant and irrelevant.

But don’t lose hope! This episode is packed with practical advice on keeping your church in the "day one" phase of energy, innovation, and engagement. Todd shares actionable tips adapted from Bezos’ philosophy: from genuinely listening to your congregation's needs to continuously adapting your ministries to better serve your community. Tune in to learn how to stave off stagnation and keep your church buzzing with life and purpose.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

someday your church will die. How's that for an encouragement word on this day? Hi, I'm todd rhodes, I'm the co-founder over at ministerstaffingcom and I'm your host right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. All right now. I know that's a grim-sounding thing to start with, but stick with me. Today we're going to talk about the inevitable death of your church. All right. So now, before you start drafting your resignation letter, let me clarify a little bit. I'm not talking about a sudden catastrophic demise although we have seen a few of those just in the past, actually the last couple months where fairly large churches just very quickly and catastrophically cease operations because of different things. But that's a different podcast for a different day. That's not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is this kind of the slow fade, the gradual decline that can creep into any church if you're not careful, and the concept isn't new, in fact.

Speaker 1: 1:15

Jeff Bezos you may know him as the founder of Amazon. He's been warning about what he calls the day two phenomenon for years and he believes that companies, like organisms, have a natural life cycle. Day one is full of energy and innovation and customer obsession, but day two is marked by stasis and complacency and ultimately over time if it's not fixed irrelevance. Now you might be thinking, todd, we're not a corporation, we're a church for crying out loud, and you're right. But the principles behind this day two phenomenon can apply to any organization, including churches. I wish I had it in front of me, but my friend Warren Bird, a great researcher in the church, did a study a while back where he compiled I'm going to sorry, my apologies to Warren, I'm going to botch this up but he looked at back a few decades ago. Sunday school was huge. Churches did Sunday school. As a matter of fact, they looked at Sunday school attendance more than they did worship service attendance because they placed that much value on that. And he looked at the top the largest Sunday schools in America, I think maybe in 1950 or 1960, and just looked to see how many of those were around still today. And out of the top it was either the top 10 or 20, there were only one or two churches, not just Sunday schools, not just the. Did the Sunday schools exist? Did the churches that had these vibrant Sunday school programs? Are they even still in existence? And it was just a fragment of those churches that were even still in existence. So they all experienced this day two phenomenon. You know.

Speaker 1: 3:04

Here's how it happens. How many churches have you seen, how many churches have you witnessed that were just? You can probably count them on your fingers or think of them in your head. How many churches have you seen that were once just absolutely vibrant and thriving and growing, and now they seem stuck in a rut? Maybe attendance is dwindling, maybe giving is down, maybe it's just the energy and excitement have fizzled out. Maybe there was a moral failure, maybe something else happened, but what was once vibrant and thriving is just not anymore. So this is day two.

Speaker 1: 3:40

This is what I'm describing, and I guess my good friend Jeff Bezos would describe as day two. Right, it's subtle, it's drifting, it's insidious and it often goes unnoticed until it's too late. But here's the good news it's not inevitable and we can fight back against the stagnation and keep our churches in day one, at least for a little bit longer, before we go into day two. And how do we do that? Okay, here are a few tips I've come up with that kind of are inspired by Jeff Bezos and his day one and day two philosophy Okay, number one. And these might be great for you. And they take the meat off the bone, if there's any meat on the bone here for you.

Speaker 1: 4:26

So number one obsess over your customers. In the church world we don't have customers right. We have those people, our attenders, our congregation, our community. Are we really listening to their needs and the desires and feedback? Are we adapting our ministries to meet where they are? I'm not advocating for changing our message or changing the gospel, but I'm saying are we? We just did a podcast this week on changing culture. Are we looking at what we need to adapt to be able to meet our people where they need, where they are and what they need? Number two resist proxies. Don't let processes and procedures become more important than people. If your systems are there, systems that are serving your mission, or have they become more bureaucratic roadblocks? If you have a lot of bureaucratic roadblocks in your church, it is not going to work well for you long-term. What worked 30 years ago is not going to work in 2024.

Speaker 1: 5:25

Number three embrace external trends, Like we said in our podcast earlier. If you didn't listen to that earlier I think it was Tuesday of this week we did a podcast on culture and changes. The world is rapidly changing. Are you keeping up with cultural shifts and technological advancements, new ways of reaching people without changing your message. Embrace those external trends. Make high quality decisions quickly. Don't get bogged down in kind of endless meetings and analysis paralysis. Be decisive, take calculated risks and learn from your mistakes. And then the last thing I think that would be helpful is just never stop learning. Engage a culture that has continuous learning and improvement. Invest in your staff's development. Try new approaches. Throw some spaghetti up against the wall. See what sticks. Be open to feedback, because here's the bottom line the inevitable death of your church is maybe not a foregone conclusion. And by embracing a day one mentality, obsessing over your church, resisting those proxies, embracing external trends, making those high quality decisions never stop learning you can help keep your church vibrant and relevant and impactful for years to come. There's still going to be ups and downs, but if you mind what God has for you, you can really prolong that.

Speaker 1: 6:50

As always, if you need some help navigating some of the challenges of church leadership, want to explore strategies for revitalizing your staff or your ministry, need to hire, need to let people go dealing with compensation, anything staff-related man, I'm your guy. I'd love to talk with you. I've been there, done that and would love to be able to have a conversation with you and see if there's any way I can help. Reach out to me anytime. Podcastchemistrystaffingcom. I'm here to help you, however I can. This is Friday if you're listening on the day that it's released, and if you're not, I hope you have a great day. If it's Friday, I hope you will seize the day, enjoy your day and have an absolutely great weekend. We will be back here, as always on Monday, for a brand new edition every Monday through Friday here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Have a great day.