118 Year Old Presbyterian Church Shuts Down

My Texas correspondent sent me an article about a 118-year old Presbyterian church in Dallas that will close down on Sunday:

Trinity has struggled for years as an aging, predominantly Anglo church in a neighborhood turned largely Hispanic. Average Sunday attendance has dwindled from 100 to 40 in the last decade. These days, most members are older people with long ties to the church but less and less energy to give to it. Indeed, about a third of Trinity's faithful now live at Grace Presbyterian Village, a seniors community in east Oak Cliff.

"We joke that if you're not collecting Social Security, you're in the youth department," said Julie Adkins, Trinity's pastor since 1997.

Many churches that close do so only after they're down to a handful of members and in financial straits. Often the church building has been neglected.

Trinity has enough attendance and money in the bank to go a few more years, and its building is in fine shape, thanks to maintenance by longtime member Virgil Sewell.

But given the trends, including expenses outpacing offerings, the consensus was that Trinity should wrap up while it could still pass along money to its regional body, Grace Presbytery, for spending on members' favored religious and charitable causes.

"We could sit there and wind it down to zero, or we could make plans to use those resources for something more beneficial," said longtime member Chuck Newby, 79.

My Texas correspondent adds some information to the story that you won't find in the article:

A century-old church is closing.... The people who attend there say that their inability to attract new members is to blame. But read closely and I think there's another reason. Maybe it's their woman pastor or maybe their efforts to attract openly gay people - or maybe at the end of the day, it's their abandonment of biblical truth that makes them completely irrelevant to a community in need of the Gospel. Water it down and you have no message - just a pathetic country club made up of people who like their ears tickled. (Which is incidentally also a party game their Gay Newly Married Sunday School class plays with new members.)

When I was in the church insurance business I worked with dying churches like this all the time. I remember going to a Southern Baptist church in San Diego one time to give them a quote. They had an 800 seat auditorium and a large 2-story educational unit. I sat down in what was supposed to be the pastor's office with the chairman of the board. They didn't have a pastor and when I asked about the church's membership he told me they were down to about 15 members with an average age of 75. The only reason they were still in business was that they had rented the facility to a Christian school and the proceeds from that rent paid the bills.

The holy huddle that remained wasn't interested in changing a thing. They didn't want to make their worship more relevant to the community or do anything that would bring outsiders in. The term "whited sepulchre" came to mind. Nice on the outside, but dead on the inside.

There was another church nearby that was thriving but didn't own any property. I (only half in jest) suggested to the pastor that he take his people and join the dead Southern Baptist church, and once they were officially members, vote out the holy huddle and take the place over for themselves. He didn't do it, and that's too bad because he could have made good use of the facility.

Unfortunately, there are lots and lots of churches around Southern California that are all buildings and no people. Many of the mainline denomination churches are fading away.