In most church planting strategies. Failing churches are expected to fail, leading to the needless waste of untold amounts of resources. Not to mention alienating potential customers through negative shopping experiences. This pessimistic approach to failing churches is apparently borne of the desire to avoid the hard conversations that might otherwise save some businesses from failing (A corollary can be drawn here with how the Great Commission Resurgence task force refused to tackle the serious issue of duplication of services and duties between internal organizations such as the North American Mission Board and the International Mission Board.). Then again, since the SBC consists of loosely affiliated churches (Decentralized, voluntary collaboration is the hallmark of the SBC. At least it was until recently. Now the trend is to more centralized power and a much more ridged hierarchy. In the past the SBC used to operate from the bottom up, and while that is still how the convention works on paper, in practice the SBC has increasingly become more and more centralized. A hallmark of this trend is the emphasis placed on key positions of leadership and the marked weakening of local associations and churches.) I suppose the tactic is wholly in line with the overall church polity. After all, not many individual businesses concern themselves with assisting other businesses in a purely altruistic fashion (Contrast this with the account in Acts of Paul collecting money from a diverse group of congregations to bring a gift of money to the persecuted church in Jerusalem.).
Proverbs tells us that everything has a season. And church planting is no different. However, rather than seeing this as a season for planting (which carries with it the idea of a net gain) I would argue that this is the perfect season for tending to fields which have become weak, sickly, and unproductive. Rather than planting new businesses or crops while allowing others to fail, we should be making the wiser investment decision (Even secular businesses understand that it is far cheaper to keep an existing customer from leaving than it is to gain a new customer.) to patch up failing churches. That may mean that we need to revisit SBC polity and seriously ask ourselves whether it is time to change the governmental structure of the SBC or, as a less invasive option, produce material designed to help failing churches adapt to current market conditions.
Regardless of how we go about attempting to salvage failing churches, the tactic of writing them off and allowing the resources they contain (which includes people, our brothers in Christ) is needlessly wasteful. And it is actually a variation of the broken window fallacy to assume that more churches is the same as church growth.
In my next post I will explore the problem of excess supply.