In Part 1 of this thread, I talked about reasons people should NOT change churches. In Part 2, I talked about why people should change churches, and how to discover your fit with a specific church. Here, I will talk about my reason for writing about this in the first place and the challenges that are out there.

Pretty much every city in the U.S., and around the world, needs more churches (if you believe that’s a good thing). But, part of the problem isn’t the number of the churches, because some places have tons. Part of the problem is they need more healthy, growing, relevant churches that are making a difference. You hear all the time how the median church size is around 75 people (half are smaller, half are larger). Plus, you hear that 90% of churches stay the same or are shrinking in terms of size from year to year. Something has to change. In my town of Baltimore (count & city), about 18.8% of people attend church regularly, so over a million people do not.

I think there are tons of passionate, amazing Christ-followers who are sitting in churches that are stagnant or dying and they are not there because they fit with the church’s mission, vision, and strategy. They are there because they grew up there, or because it was their first church or because it was the first church they plugged into when they moved into town. Those people are loyal, and have stuck with their church in spite of numerous frustrations with the church’s leadership and effectiveness. They are making a difference there, but I believe they could really make a difference in a church that was a better fit.

I know this is crazy, but could you imagine what could happen if all those people became involved with churches, or helped start new churches, where they fit well and would be used to their greatest potential? Their effectiveness and impact could be ten-fold larger and the churches they get involved with would be more effective as well.

Yes, the church they leave would miss them, but, they wouldn’t die simply because they left. Some churches need to die in order to provide new life to other churches, but that wouldn’t be the case for most people in the situation I have described. Their churches would probably survive for a long time after they left.