Reasons Churches Stall-Part 2

Here are the remaining five reasons Marcus Honeysett gives for churches stalling.

1. No life application from the Bible. When preaching, teaching and Bible study become ends in themselves rather than means to an end, something is badly wrong. The aim of Scripture is not that we should simply know what it says without the knowledge translating into discipleship and worship.
2. A church becomes afraid to ask radical questions. Churches begin new activities much more easily than we stop redundant ones and gradually stall under the weight of them. Few churches regularly evaluate every aspect of church life against their core vision.
3. Confusing Christian activities with disicpleship. The myriad of opportunities within and without the local church to spend time doing "churchy" things makes it very easy to believe that doing those activities automatically means we are growing as disciples. All these things can be valuable, but the danger arises when we assume that these things are the same thing as living out the gospel.
4. Not understanding how to release and encourage everyone in the church to use their spiritual gifts for the building up of the church. There are two types of DNA in churches. One type of church says "we exist to have our personal spiritual needs met", the other "we exist to impact our locality and the world with the gospel of the grace of God in Christ". The first type is a stalled church.
5. Moving into maintenance mode. At some point all churches take decisions that tend towards stalling. No church was stalled at the point that it was founded. At the beginning all churches were adventurous in faith and daring to risk for God. No one actively decided for comfort over risk, but at some point the mindset shifted from uncomfortable faith and daring passion for the Lord to comfortable mediocrity. We need to plan for structures, buildings, teams and leaders to grow at the point where the building is full. Any other decision is by definition a decision to stall sooner or later.