There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die... (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)

What time is it at the church you call home?

Where are you in the life-cycle of the church?

Are you in the heady, youthful days of the church's life when everything is green and growing? Are you a church in your prime, strong and mature and productive? Have you started the long slide down toward your twilight years? Are you about to close the doors?

Is there more life behind you than ahead? Are the "good old days" somewhere in your past or are your best days ahead as a congregation?

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die... (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)

Are you like the Jerusalem church in the first third of Acts: excitement, miracles, and members bent to the business of the kingdom, no matter how difficult or discomforting the challenges?

Or are you like the Jerusalem church in the middle third of Acts: struggling with a changing world and the transitions it demands... fond of comfortable customs and resistant to a mission that requires "becoming all things to all people in order to win some"?

Or perhaps you are like the Jerusalem church in the last third of Acts: isolated, marginalized, and increasingly irrelevant to God's continuing mission in the world?

Churches that misplace their mission — churches that choose tradition over effectiveness and value themselves above the lost — are (from a kingdom perspective) churches in decline. Doesn't matter what their membership numbers may be or how strong their budgets. Doesn't matter the size of their buildings or the depth of their staffs. The handwriting is on the wall for such churches. It's only a matter of time. For churches thrive on passion, not programs and promotion. And the only passion capable of fueling a church to vigor and vitality is a passion for Jesus and his purposes in this world.

The good news, however, is that a recovery of that passion — a recommitment to the mission of God and a renewed determination to accomplish kingdom business — can turn a church around and herald a new season of new life in the church. Doesn't matter how feeble a church has grown. Doesn't matter how estranged from God's life-changing, world-changing work a church might be. Let that church inhale the heady aroma of God's purposes once again, and the church can experience rebirth and revival and resurrection.

Slow decline and death is not inevitable for God's church... at least, decline and death can be delayed. Every church reaches a pinnacle of strength and effectiveness. But not every church has to experience the inescapable gravity of decay. Churches can grow again. Churches can learn to be kingdom-effective again. Churches can discover fresh seasons of vitality by reconnecting with the mission for which they were created.

Do you know what time it is in your church?
Want to do something good for your church? Challenge your church to identify what time it is in the life of the congregation. Then re-challenge it to get serious once again about the business of a God who is beyond time and who loves to give his people eternal life.

Who are we? What is God's calling on our lives and church? What kingdom business has God commissioned us to accomplish? What are we willing to do, to sacrifice, to change in order to accomplish that business? The challenge for us is not to keep things the same, but to respond in godly ways to God's transitions. Faithfulness is not a matter of protecting our routines. Faithfulness is about responding to the rhythms of the kingdom in faithful ways!

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die... (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)

True of each of us... true of churches.

All churches have a beginning... and an ending... and a life in between. All churches have a life-span, go through a life-cycle. They are birthed and they are buried. They grow and they decline. They hit their peak and then lose their way. It happened to the Jerusalem church (as we will see). Your church has a life-cycle as well. You are either growing or maintaining or declining.

Do you know where you are as a church?

Do you know what time it is in your church?

For other articles in this series, see "Change in the Life of the Church" on the Interim Ministry Partners website.