How to Kill A Church, Part 1 of 3

By Davis W. Huckabee

New Testament churches do not naturally die; they are so constituted that they cannot die a natural death. They may, however, be killed, but even in this, they can hardly be killed by outsiders except by the annihilation of the entire membership. Churches are most often killed form the inside; their own members kill them. A church is not just an organization; it is also an organism; a living thing, and as such, it has the potential of either growing and thriving, or of languishing and dying. The Lord promised that His church, considered as an institution, would not die, Matt. 16:18, but this only means that there will be a continuity of churches like the Jerusalem church until his return; it does not guarantee the continued existence of any individual church. How then may a church be killed?

I. BY STAYING AWAY FROM IT

The Scriptures liken church members to the members of a physical body, I Cor. 12:12ff, and just as certain organs of the human body cannot be removed without death coming to the body, so it is with the church, the body of Christ. When the members of the church start staying away from it, this soon leads to its death.

This is generally a gradual thing, starting first with the neglect of the business meetings because "it doesn't matter whether I am there or not. The others are going to run things to please themselves. "

The night services are really the acid test of a church member's love for the Lord, for many people come to church for the morning services simply because there is nothing else to do except stay home. Of Course, there are many professed Christians who will even forsake the House of God Sunday morning in order to sleep in; these are the very most unfaithful kind. But of those who attend the Sunday morning services regularly, many could not be gotten out for evening services for anything. But the same excuses that are thought valid for staying away from church services, will not do when one is invited to a party, or when money is to be made by being in a certain place, etc. But the Lord will one day settle up the accounts. "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits, " Prov. 16:2.

Some church members permanently forsake the church, never more to return; but if we consider the connections between the two verses in Heb. 10:25-26, we find that this is an indication that the individual was only a false Christian. The same is true in I Jn. 2:19, "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. "

II. BY STARVING IT

A church lives and grows only by conversions and the additions of those converts to its number, and therefore if it is not nourished by conversions as a result of preaching and praying, it will soon die off from lack of additions. Souls being saved are a blood transfusion to any church. "And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved" Acts 2:47. God does the adding to the church, yet He does it through the prayers and the preaching and the witnessing of His people.

A church may be killed by starving it of spirituality; we must remember that the degenerate Church of Rome was once a New Testament church until it lost its spirituality. Heresy in doctrine is first preceded by heresy in practice; i.e., by a carnal life. How may this be prevented? By its members living a sanctified (dedicated) life from day to day (not week by week, nor month by month). But dedication requires self-denial, and all too many professed Christians are unwilling to do this.

Then it is possible to starve a church to death by not supporting it with one's prayers and fiances. A church is a business - the grandest, most worthwhile business in the world, and therefore it must have money to operate. Because it is a heavenly business, it needs, in addition to money, the prayers of the Lord's people. Some professed believers are much more diligent in running down the church, the pastor, and those who are faithfully working in the church, than they are in praying for these and helping them. The same thing is true of Christians as it is of mules: They can't pull while they are kicking, and they can't kick while they are pulling. As to the failure of God's people to support the church financially, Mal. 3:8-10 is still in the Bible, and it calls the withholder of the tithes and offerings just what he is - a thief Nor will it do to say "But that's in the Old Testament. " The division of the Bible into the Old and the New Testament is strictly a man-made division; the Scriptures themselves know nothing of this. But in any case, I Cor. 9:1-14 obligates believers to support the church in precisely the same way that the Tabernacle was supported - by tithes and offerings. See especially v. 14. http://independent-baptists.org/