{"id":34421,"date":"2022-09-10T21:27:53","date_gmt":"2022-09-11T02:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/why-churches-decline\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T21:27:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T02:27:53","slug":"why-churches-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/why-churches-decline\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Churches Decline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Morgan&#8212;author, church strategist, and pastor of ministries at West Ridge Church in Atlanta&#8212;recently remembered a conversation he had with a denominational leader about the attributes of a declining church. Morgan remarked, &#8220;When I work with churches for the first time, sometimes they&#8217;re frustrated with me because I&#8217;m not willing to help them fix something specific&#8230;Churches can become convinced they know why their church isn&#8217;t growing.&#8221; Morgan said these five foundational aspects need to be addressed first: <\/p>\n<p>&#8226;&nbsp;Lack of mission and vision clarity<br \/>&#8226;&nbsp;Failure to define a concise strategy to help newcomers become fully devoted followers of Christ<br \/>&#8226;&nbsp;A complex structure<br \/>&#8226;&nbsp;Inward-focus with little connection to the community<br \/>&#8226;&nbsp;Weak leadership, especially in the senior pastor role<\/p>\n<p>Morgan also said he was surprised by the number of churches that &#8220;would rather close their doors than make the necessary changes&#8221; to avoid decline. He concluded by saying churches unwilling to address these elements will not shift their decline, no matter how hard they try. (TonyMorganLive.com 7\/15\/10, via Church Leaders Intelligence Report)<\/p>\n<div style='clear:both'><\/div>\n<div class='the_champ_sharing_container the_champ_horizontal_sharing' data-super-socializer-href=\"https:\/\/www.preaching.com\/articles\/why-churches-decline\/\">\n<div class='the_champ_sharing_title' style=\"font-weight:bold\">Share This On:<\/div>\n<div class=\"the_champ_sharing_ul\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style='clear:both'><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Morgan&#8212;author, church strategist, and pastor of ministries at West Ridge Church in Atlanta&#8212;recently remembered a conversation he had with a denominational leader about the attributes of a declining church. Morgan remarked, &#8220;When I work with churches for the first time, sometimes they&#8217;re frustrated with me because I&#8217;m not willing to help them fix something &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/why-churches-decline\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Why Churches Decline&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}