The Ken Johnson Group / July 24, 2006 Featured Article

Clear Cutting Our Churches

by Ken Johnson

I was in the mountains last week and saw many thousands of trees that were rusty red because of beetle kill and it reminded me of the church. That is exactly what we look like as a church, the only difference is that for the most part it is gray hair that is infesting our churches. After visiting 99 different churches I have found that this infestation is happening mostly in the mainline denominations.

I don’t know if you have ever seen a forest ravaged by beetle kill, but for me it was disheartening. The problem with beetle kill pine trees is that you need to get them out of the forest as quickly as possible and with the folks who file lawsuits over cutting trees in the forest these trees just stay there and continually infect the other trees. These people, I’m sure, think that they are saving the forest but in reality what they are doing is killing it. By the time the trees are finally cut and cleared most of the forest has been ravaged.

The church works the same way. It gets filled with people who are infested with “That’s not the way we do it around here.” or “When I die then you can do whatever you want, but until then we are going to do it my way.” and it just spreads throughout the church and kills everything in sight. I’m sure that these people aren’t dong this to intentionally kill the church, but they have developed blinders and can’t get rid of them. I believe that they think that how they have done it in the past is the best way, but it’s not, and they won’t let go. Generally they hold the purse strings for the church and have so much control that the church is doomed.

I worked in a church for ten years that was filled with these people and the pastor and I struggled to make the needed changes. We had a group who were so angry with what we were trying to do that they said that they would do whatever it took to get rid of the pastor and I up to and including a lawsuit. Regretfully they filed a frivolous lawsuit and in the midst of the lawsuit the pastor died and that was all they wanted so they dropped the lawsuit. They were so callous about it that we did a video taped deposition three weeks before the pastor died and two of the three ladies who filed the suit sat in on the deposition. The pastor had just had some cancer removed from his face and he was in a wheelchair, but they seemed to totally enjoy what they were doing.

I left the church about a year and a half later and have been gone for six years, and currently the church is just a skeleton of its former self and probably should be closed. Too bad, how sad.

I’m sure that they think they are saving the church but what they are doing is killing it. By the time the problem people are removed from the church most of the church has been ravaged.

It’s amazing to me that people are so blind that they can’t see what they are doing. I’m glad that there are new non-denominational churches popping up around the world or we could just kiss the church goodbye. We need to remove the “beetle kill trees” that are infecting our churches and begin planting some new redwood trees that will grow and mature into a new forest of Christians. Let’s multiply by subtraction. LET’S START TODAY

In His Steps

Ken Johnson