Imploding Churches

To my knowledge, the churches in Antioch, Jerusalem, Ephesus and the others mentioned in the New Testament, are long since gone. I wonder what led to their demise. Whatever the cause, they eventually ceased to exist.


I know of a recent church (not in our area) that blew up over how to handle an unruly child that was disruptive during the worship services. The Pastor of eight years is gone, the congregation split and the ministry has deteriorated. Like any living organism, it doesn't take much to suck the life out of a church and kill it in an instant.


In recent years, two friends of mine who Pastored churches, saw the O-rings of their ministry erode to result in a cataclismic explosion. Fortunately, they and their families have weathered the collateral damage and God's plugging them into new avenues and channels of His global work. But their experiences have made me very aware of the reality of church ministry.


Without the grace of God, the unity of the local church is susceptable to fraction and in the cases I've seen, it's often a simple little rubber O-ring that's the root cause of the major explosion, not a large issue. Thus every issue must matter and be handled with enormous amounts of prayer. And any time the unity of the church is threatened, a proportional response is necessitated.


Here's the latest illustration in my growing file on the topic.


O-ring references... see the NASA Challenger disaster


Have a great weekend!