Churches Closing – A Sign of the Times?

As our town faces the closure of another church building, someone remarked that it’s ‘a sign of the times’. It would certainly be easy to reach that conclusion. If you can remember all the churches in a particular area thriving, and then over a number of decades you have seen attendances dwindle and churches close, surely it is ‘just another sign of the times’ (to quote the Blood Brothers song). But is that the whole story? Is it the case that churches are closing right across the theological spectrum, regardless of what they believe? Or are certain types of churches more likely to close than others?

While it would be foolish to make assertions about why any one particular congregation might have closed, are there any general trends we can point to? In Canada, a five-year peer-reviewed study looked into exactly that question. Their findings were summarised by the Washington Post headline: ‘Liberal churches are dying as conservative churches thrive’. Or as the Guardian put it: ‘Literal interpretation of Bible “helps increase church attendance”’. In other words, churches that still believe in key doctrines such as creation, the virgin birth, miracles, the bodily resurrection and Jesus as the only way to heaven aren’t dying; quite the opposite – they’re thriving. But on the other hand, churches which have erased those doctrines in order to try and remain relevant to the modern world are the ones closing. Read the rest of this article written by Rev. Stephen Steele for the Stranraer local paper by clicking here.