Logo

 

Banner Image:   Baptist-Times-banner-2000x370-
Template Mode:   Baptist Times
Icon
    Post     Tweet

The time has come: closing a church well

Sometimes it is right that a ministry ends: approached with a Kingdom-based perspective this is not a sign of failure, more a recognition of the seasons (and that maybe God is doing a new thing)

Kingswood700

When Kingswood Baptist Church, Watford stepped out in faith and called Jane Robson to be its minister, few envisaged her role would be to help the church close five years later. Jane was the church’s first minister in four years, and as a minister-in-training this was her first pastorate.
 
“My arrival was going to be THE moment!” she said. “Things went well initially, but then plateaued.”
 
The church was in something of a straightjacket, “the well recognised combination of trying to support a part-time minister and fund the upkeep of the building, while also having the resources for meaningful mission to the community.” Whatever it had tried in the previous two decades had kept coming back to “a declining, aged congregation with limited finances, little energy, and meagre skills for mission.”
 
Weeks and months of prayer, preaching, formal and informal discussions culminated in a discernment of the Spirit at a special meeting in early 2015: a decision to close was made. Jane understood her call was to help the church close well.
 
It’s a process about which she has done much reflection, both before and after (she has written a paper called The Time has Come: Closing a Church Well in the Baptist Denomination.)
 
A number of factors helped to shape the church’s perspective. They understood that everything is for a season (Ecclesiastes 3 1-11). “At a funeral we’re quick to acknowledge that no-one lives forever (on earth),” Jane wrote in a piece for the Central Baptist Association newsletter, “so what gave us the right to expect that our church should go on forever?”
 
They were not operating autonomously, but were part of a wider movement: the act of closing could release both people and resources, locally and nationally. “We trusted that the willingness to die would allow God to use seeds which would never have otherwise been produced,” said Jane. 
 
Above all, it’s not about failure, but God doing a new thing with His unchanging message. The church is not the building, but the people of God, a people called to be on the move.
 
“This work of bringing in the kingdom was and is God’s work; it is his mission and while the message of the gospel does not change, the way in which it is presented will,” she said.
 
“It will be painful.  It will be hard.  It will be sad.  It will provoke comments of “What a shame” from the community who’ve frustratingly failed to be supportive in the past.  But obedience to God, whose own son was obedient “…to death – even death on a cross…” is sometimes painful and hard and sad. 
 
“And God? God will do a new thing with our endings. Look what he did with the ‘ending’ that was the death of Jesus Christ!” 
 

Picture | The closing service of Kingswood Baptist Church

 

Together Magazine Summer 2017

Jane’s essay The Time Has Come: Closing a Church Well in the Baptist Denomination is available here

 

This article appears in the Summer 2017 edition of Baptists Together magazine.

Its theme is Beacons of Hope.




 
Baptist Times, 21/04/2017
    Post     Tweet
CBA Home Mission stories
Examples of how Home Mission funds are being used in the Central Baptist Association
SubArticleD2019
'I hope my songs resonate with others'
Baptist minister Simon Cragg returned to songwriting this summer – and is now releasing tracks which are engaging with different people, including a local line dance group and a professional football club
Dagnall Street Baptist Church bids fond farewell to retiring minister
There was a heartfelt farewell service as the Revd Simon Carver concluded a significant 17 year tenure at the St Albans church
Marshalswick Baptists welcome new minister 
The Revd Darren Street has become only the sixth minister in the 55-year history of Marshalswick Baptist Free Church (MBFC)
We took our church through the 12 steps of recovery, and here’s what happened… 
With several people joining Life Church in Cuffley from local recovery groups, pastor William Wade wondered if it might be helpful to go through the 12 steps of recovery programme as a discipleship series on Sunday mornings
'You can’t save the world but you can do small things'
Trip of a lifetime awaits as the Vlok family from Milton Keynes prepare to visit their sponsored child in Cambodia
'We’re excited to be partnering with so many people of goodwill'
A series of partnerships have formed to 'bring some good to everyone' in Milton Keynes, thanks to Christian charity Redeeming Our Communities (ROC). Nathan Marlam, minister at Loughton Baptist Church, explains more
     Regional News 
    Posted: 30/04/2021
    Posted: 21/08/2020
    Posted: 20/12/2019
    Posted: 23/08/2018
    Posted: 22/06/2017
    Posted: 07/02/2016
    Posted: 27/04/2015
    Posted: 16/03/2015