In a recent year, 4500 Protestant churches closed, while only 3,000 opened, making it the first year that the number of churches being added to the country had declined. Some saw this coming.\u00a0 I remember a Chapel sermon in the 1980s, delivered by a Senior Professor entitled, \u201cDead Churches and Delayed Funerals.\u201d In addition, at least part of the blame can be placed on Covid, when active church members learned how to stay at home and worship via media, turning it off when a song or a sermon was not to their liking.\u00a0 I know very few churches who have regained their numbers flowing Covid.\u00a0 Some are even now on their way to joining the ranks of the \u201cclosed churches.\u201d In contrast, the last few Sundays, I have been preaching at the New Hope Baptist Church, a church that has been serving the community of Mansfield, Texas for a century and a half.\u00a0 It is one of the oldest Baptist churches in Texas, dating all the way back to the 1880’s. While there were better days with bigger crowds, this church refuses to be a part of the number of closed churches. When I was a college student, I would make frequent trips to my home in Nacogdoches, Texas, and occasionally preach at the Old North Baptist Church, located four miles north. It was the first Baptist church established in Texas, founded in 1832. Like New Hope Baptist Church, it refuses to be counted with the deceased. During my Seminary Professor years, I taught a course on Contemporary Evangelism and one of my lectures was entitled, \u201cWhy and How Churches Die.\u201d\u00a0 Students who were amused by that lecture later became pastors and staff members of dying churches. I have suggestions that might keep churches alive and growing, but first and foremost is the often, forgotten ministry of prayer.\u00a0 Read the Book of Acts, the history of the early church. Every reference to believers praying is followed by a passage on the growth of the early church.\u00a0 Yet, one of the first gatherings that ceases to exist in a modern-day, declining church is the prayer meeting.\u00a0 So, I invite you to join me this week in interceding for churches that have stopped praying and started dying.<\/p>\n
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In a recent year, 4500 Protestant churches closed, while only 3,000 opened, making it the first year that the number of churches being added to the country had declined. Some saw this coming.\u00a0 I remember a Chapel sermon in the 1980s, delivered by a Senior Professor entitled, \u201cDead Churches and Delayed Funerals.\u201d In addition, at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3621,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620\/revisions\/3621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}