Reflections on the closing of a church …
Endings are hard ...
Perhaps you have worked through the ending of a relationship, or a job, a friendship, or even a life. It inevitably brings grief and sadness. Often we ask ourselves, what went wrong? What could we have done differently? What happens to us all, now?
Establish Church held its final gathering on the 4th of December, 2022. It was an ending that was more difficult in many ways than could have been anticipated. That being said, it was also a time of thanksgiving and praise: thanksgiving for what God has done, for the people he has drawn to life from death through the church, for the people who have grown in their love and commitment to Jesus, for those who have been trained and equipped for service in his church.
Still, the reality of failure hung heavy as we closed our doors. It was, in many ways, what made the gathering (and the days and weeks that followed) so difficult. As the hopes and dreams died, as pictures of what could have been faded away, it is hard not to think some dark thoughts. Lee, Cathra, Hope, myself and others had planned for Establish to be around for the next fifty years (or more). Our vision was that it would also provide the basis for planting and replanting other churches within our network - to provide new life, new energy and renewal to FCC churches in southern Sydney. Obviously, those things wont happen now. Or at least, they won’t happen through Establish Church. This was a death for those involved in our church, but also for our network as a whole.
"Our vision was that Establish Church would provide the basis for planting and revitalising other churches within our network - to provide new life, new energy and renewal to other FCC churches in southern Sydney. Obviously, those things wont happen now."
The close has provoked some interesting conversations within our network. I remember a conversation with an individual in the last few months that went something like this: the FCC has put X amount of dollars into Establish Church. We paid for a church but there will be nothing there. It was all a waste.
I would like to (gently) push against this thinking. Firstly, the numbers tell us that church planting is hard. Very hard. Of all church plants that launch, approximately 70% close down in the first five years. If you live past five years, you have moved past the ‘red zone.’ The stats show that it is not as simple as money + opportunity = a healthy church.
We also need to be honest about where we are as a network. 80% of our churches are below thirty people. Respectfully, these communities are also populated by people on the wrong side of eighty. Most (but not all) of those FCC churches that are larger have plateaued or are in decline. The numbers aren't great. If our network is not planting new churches, I would humbly ask, then what are we doing?
I have also heard it said that the Fellowship shouldn’t be planting churches, but revitalising existing churches. I wholeheartedly agree that we should be revitalising our existing churches, but I’d also suggest that the conversation is more complicated than this. There are only a small handful of churches whose numbers would class them as a ‘revitalising’ prospect. Most of our churches, because of their size and the average age of their members, would be classed as ‘re-pots’ or plants. In other words, the old needs to be completely replaced by something new.
In the past two months, I have been reflecting on how the language of failure is difficult in ministry. Every ministry, whether small or large, has the capacity to fail. If we were so afraid that our new youth ministry, or camp, or worship team, or mercy ministry, or whatever, might not get off the ground because it might fail, then nothing would ever happen. I would say that the FCC should be planting/repotting/revitalising a dozen new churches, not just two. Of those dozen, a number may well fail. Actually, as the numbers suggest, they will probably fail.
But that is ministry.
That is not to say that there wasn’t any mistakes at Establish Church or things that we couldn't have done better. I have a whole swag of thoughts on improvements we could have made and things we could have/should have done differently. If you want to know what they are, message me for a coffee and I'll be happy to share my thoughts! That being said, we always sought to be faithful, to preach the gospel as well as we we could every week, to be missional and reach out in our context. We thought deeply and prayed fervently about how to make Jesus known in the Shire. We sacrificed a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of sweat to make it work. That it didn’t is, quite literally, heartbreaking.
In the lead up to the close, I had a conversation with another pastor who launched a church plant around the same time that Establish Church launched. His church is in Sydney's inner-west and has now grown to around two hundred people. I’ve met him (Matt) through my wife, who actually used to work on his staff team. We were chatting about Establish and the close and I confessed I was wrestling a little with the nature of failure.
Now Matt is what many would term ‘successful.’ His church is relatively large, he is the state representative of an international church planting network, he gets asked to speak at big conferences and international events. But when I said the things I was thinking, Matt corrected me. He told me Establish wasn't a failure at all. He said that just before he planted, he had to give over the possibility of success or failure wholly to God. He told me that if he planted and failed (as he deeply feared) than this was still what God was calling him to, that even in failure he was to be a 'glorious failure.’
Perhaps this is a helpful reminder for us as a network, particularly as we think on our own 'failed' plant. Perhaps God is not calling us to neither success or failure, but instead to faithfulness. I would argue that faithfulness involves risk, that it involves exploration, that it involves backing things financially and relationally and logistically that may not work out. We see this in Jesus’ ministry, in the ministry of the early church in the book of Acts and in Paul’s own work. Much of what they did could be classed as ‘glorious failures.’
It seems to me that one of the biggest tragedies for our fellowship would not just be the closure of a church, but for us as a network to stop trying new things, simply because we fear it not working out.
This would be the biggest failure of all.
Tim