HAVE YOU PLATEAUED?
7/20/2020 by Larry Barker
Church surveys and polls by Lifeway, Barna, and others reveal that 85% of all churches in North America are dying, declining, or have plateaued. Of the 15% that are showing growth only 1% of those are growing because of conversion growth and baptism. The other 14% is growing because of transfer growth or as Adrian Rogers called it, “shuffling the Christian deck.” While striving not to make this an overemphasis on numbers, there is a stark reality that the North American church has flat-lined and needs to see revival and restoration.
Are you personally, and is your church corporately, spiritually healthy? Are we willing to humbly and honestly evaluate our present spiritual condition with the boldness of Old Testament prophets? C.S. Lewis wrote, “Pride is the last sin to die.” Pride is foundational to every other sin and unless you are willing to swallow your pride you will never be able to see yourself or your church’s reality in the proper light and perspective. The temptation is great to think that everything is ok and that you are doing fine compared to some. How about compared to the scriptures?
Romans 12:3 points to the importance self-awareness, “For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.” Pride is very sneaky and crafty by creeping in uninvited and many times unnoticed. The contrast or opposite of pride is humility and if you truly desire revival and restoration then one of God’s requirements to spiritual health is, “If my people will humble themselves.”
The devil is excellent at exploiting and you begin believing that you have figured it out and/or that you know what you doing. You become defensive and unwilling to allow anyone to speak into the weaknesses and spiritual blight in your life or in your church. Pride builds a wall of self-worship (the way you do church), self- protection (you are not telling me anything), and self-deception (we are rich and need nothing – Revelation 3:17). Pride can easily cause us to plateau spiritually unless the metric for our success is the Bible and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
What does it mean to plateau? It is when you or your church settles into a pattern of doing what once worked with very little effort to expand. There is not longer a great expectation of a preferred and better future. There is no vision of next steps and for God to be glorified even greater through our lives and His ministry. There are no great attempts to once again be thriving and flourishing in our lives, in our homes, or in our churches. Our focus has become surviving, keeping the doors open, not rocking the boat, and expecting less than God expects.
Breaking free of the status quo and desiring to see our church spiritually healthy and thriving again will require Holy Spirit directed risk because without faith it is impossible to please God. One of our BMA mission values is Holy Spirit-led Risk because everything you do must be defined by Scripture and shaped by culture.
Sometimes to plant more churches and make more disciples, you have to be courageous, obedient, and take Spirit-led risks. One Syrian refugee lady said, “We lost everything in order to gain the most important thing!”
In the book Church Planting Landmines, Tom Nebel tells the story of church planter Steve Johnson who stepped out in faith and watched God do a tremendous work. But he stopped giving this testimony over time. Why? He said, “I don’t want to be known as one who took his greatest risk for God while he was in his twenties.” He went on to say, “Some off the greatest churches will never be planted…because those who are best equipped to do it will never take the risk again to do what they’re uniquely qualified to do.” Are you willing to take some Holy Spirit led risk?
Several years ago my wife, Shelby, and I did a prayer retreat together with the goal of asking the Holy Spirit to give us seven core values to live by in order to finish strong for the Lord. He led us to state value #4 as, “Taking risks and living by faith is a nonnegotiable!” We believe through the scriptures and the Holy Spirit that He led us toabsolutely refuse to become satisfied and remain in our comfort zone. Our desire was to become and to be faithful to being catalytic leaders willing to push forward to claim new territory and explore new horizons.
We committed to being risk-takers and not caretakers in the area of biblical multiplication of disciples, leaders, and churches. It has been said that when you stop being a risk taker before long you become a caretaker, which leads to you eventually becoming an undertaker! This requires living by Biblical metrics and God’s definition of success not man’s. It is the Lord’s approval that must move you and motivate you in all things, especially being dissatisfied with spiritual plateaus and lack of spiritual vitality.
In the book Relaunch, Mark Rutland says this about taking a Holy Spirit led risk, “After a lifetime of refusing to play it safe the thought of playing it safe now felt a little like dying before I was dead.” Hebrews 11:1, 6 says, “Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen…Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.” God has promised his presence and His power to you as you make disciples and be encouraged to step out boldly in faith!