4 Signs Your Church Is A Makeshift Church

House churches. Storefront churches. Meet-wherever-they’ll-let-you churches. They seem to be all the rage these days. Well, not exactly. They are definitely in the minority, yet we see so many of these. Why? I ask myself this question all the time. There is a church on almost every corner in the South. There are even lots of great churches in California, contrary to what some southerners would think. I’ve visited a couple myself. It’s not like we live in a country where freedom of religion is forbidden and so we must meet secretly in order to worship. So why are there so many little churches comprised of people who have chosen to forsake all the established churches in order to join a small group of people who weekly meet in a house, an old storefront, or a borrowed school building? From what I’ve gathered, these people seem to think that these other churches have it wrong in some way, and that their poor, piddly group has miraculously discovered the real truth. Or maybe they used to belong to another denomination, but a woman spoke in church or something, and they just couldn’t handle that. Whatever the case, here I present signs that your little church just needs to die out, you need to swallow your pride, open your heart and mind, and join a real church.

1. The church numbers are dwindling like the number of Pokemon Go users.

The church planter had good intentions, I’m sure. It was a rough start getting the word out, but eventually you had a good steady flow of about 20-25 people per Sunday. Now, you’re lucky if 11 show up. Meanwhile, the four established churches across the street are flourishing.

2. The church planter’s friends drive from two cities over to attend.

Clearly these are loyal close friends, but not close enough to tell you that maybe your little church should just merge with a bigger one. These nice people drive 2 hours a week just to make you feel good about your new church. But let’s be honest – they could just go to one of the churches located 5 minutes down the street from where they live.

3. The church planter leaves to go to a more well-known, prestigious church.

Bruce Chambers / Orange County Register

Wait, why did they start a small church if they really wanted to just go to a big church all along? Doesn’t make sense to me, but it seems like maybe the church planter realized this wasn’t going anywhere and wanted out.

4. Your church location just keeps getting worse.

So a local church let you rent their sanctuary for your little services. That’s pretty nice! It looks like a church, smells like a church, and maybe even sounds like a church, depending on what kind of musicians you were able to snag/afford. But with your maximum 11 members, funds have been decreasing exponentially, and you now have to move to a new location. What’s that location you ask? A funeral home. Funeral. Home. Where dead people reside until they are buried. Yes. Not somewhere I want to go every week. Or very often at all for that matter. Let’s leave the funeral homes for actual funerals.

To sum it up...

There are so many churches already in the United States that there is nary a need for makeshift churches. And there are certain dangers that come with rigged up new churches. In particular, many of these churches are not held accountable by a larger organization, and thus evil can more easily be hidden and abuse swept under the rug. Along the same lines, cultish behaviors may sneak up on you due to the isolated and detached nature of these church groups.

Now...

I don’t have anything against socializing in smaller groups, although the introvert in me certainly shies away from that. There is definitely a place for small groups within a church. But in this day and age, there is no need for extraneous, makeshift churches. When Jesus told Peter, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,” he didn’t mean, “You are Peter, but in a couple thousand years, I’ll need a few other people to be inspired to start little offshoots of what I meant to start.” The church was started by Jesus himself, it’s never disappeared for a moment since then, and there’s no more novel truth to be discovered by anyone. So, instead of going out of your way to that person’s house, abandoned storefront, or rented mortuary chapel, why not check out one of those lovely non-cultish, accountable, established churches down the street? I think you’ll find that you’ll get a lot more out of it.