dissolved

I learned today that a church I nearly served at about 4 years ago has dissolved. Shut the doors, closed shop, moved on to something else.

Are churches like people? [They're definitely made up of people.] Do all churches have to die? Are there normal stages of life in a church? Are they like stars that explode into existence, then collapse at the end?

Sometimes I think we view churches too much like individual trees, and not enough like branches of a huge tree. One church dying is not much different than one branch or leave being snapped off. Maybe it was diseased or holding the tree back from growing. Maybe it was ravaged by pests. A church dying is not like a whole tree dying, but like a small part of a tree being removed.

A huge tree.

I like Tony Morgan's post about doing ministry without strategy. I feel for the people involved, but I'm glad God led me elsewhere to plant myself. Otherwise, I'd be out of a job right now. But I wonder if things would be different for that church if I would have been hired and served there. I'm not saying that I'm the solution to every church's problem! But I wonder if it would have made a difference.