Can a Church Lose Its Identity as a True Church?

Question 09087

Whether a congregation can stop being a true church is not a theoretical question in Britain, where a good many buildings still open on Sunday for gatherings in which the gospel has not been preached for two generations. The question is uncomfortable because it requires a judgement about other Christians, and we are rightly nervous of that.

But Scripture itself raises it. Jesus warns a congregation that He will come and remove its lampstand from its place unless it repents (Revelation 2:5), and tells another that it has a reputation for being alive while it is dead (Revelation 3:1). If the Lord speaks that way to churches, we cannot treat the possibility as unthinkable.

What Makes a True Church in the First Place

You cannot answer the question about losing an identity without knowing what constitutes it. The historic evangelical answer names the gospel preached truly, the ordinances administered rightly, and discipline exercised faithfully. To those I would add the authority of Scripture over the congregation’s life, since the first three depend on it.

Notice that these are functions rather than possessions. A true church is not defined by owning a building, holding a denominational affiliation, or having existed since 1662. It is defined by what it does with the gospel, the ordinances, its members and the Bible. Functions can cease while institutions continue, which is precisely how the problem arises.

This also means the question is not about imperfection. Every congregation in the New Testament had faults, several of them severe, and Paul still addressed them as churches of God. Corinth was a mess and it was a true church. The line lies elsewhere.

The Decisive Line: the Gospel

The one loss that is fatal is the loss of the gospel. Paul’s language in Galatians 1:8-9 is absolute. A different gospel is no gospel, and those who preach it are under a curse. Where a congregation has come to deny the deity of Jesus, His bodily resurrection, or salvation by grace through faith in His finished work, it has lost the thing that made it a church.

That judgement is about doctrine rather than temperature. A congregation can be cold, disorganised, badly led and dwindling, and still be a true church because the gospel is preached in it. A congregation can be warm, busy and growing, and not be one, because the message is something else entirely.

I state that plainly and I do not enjoy stating it. It has implications for institutions I would rather not name and for people I know personally. But softening it would help nobody, least of all those sitting under a message that cannot save them.

How It Happens by Degrees

Nobody votes to stop being a true church. The process is gradual and it follows a recognisable pattern. First the authority of Scripture is qualified, usually with an appeal to scholarship or to compassion. Then the difficult doctrines fall quiet, not denied but simply unmentioned. Then the ordinances become ceremonies detached from what they signify. Then discipline ceases, because there is no longer any agreed standard to apply.

By the time the gospel itself is formally denied, the congregation has usually been functionally without it for many years. This is why Revelation 2:4 speaks of abandoning the love you had at first as a matter for urgent repentance. The Ephesians were still doctrinally sound and working hard, and Jesus was already warning them about the lampstand.

The lesson for any healthy congregation is that faithfulness is not inherited. Each generation must be taught, and the drift begins in small accommodations that seem reasonable at the time.

Ichabod and the Departed Glory

There is a haunting moment in 1 Samuel 4:21-22 where a dying woman names her son Ichabod, saying the glory has departed from Israel. The ark had been captured, and the outward apparatus of religion continued while the presence it existed to serve had gone.

That picture has stayed with me across years of ministry. A church can retain the building, the pattern of services, the hymns and the fellowship lunches, and be without the presence of God. It is possible to run a religious organisation entirely on habit and goodwill, and from a distance it looks much like the real thing.

Who Is Qualified to Say So?

Here I want to insert some caution, because this doctrine has been misused. It is not the business of individual believers to travel around pronouncing other congregations dead. Jesus addresses the churches in Revelation directly, and it is His assessment that counts.

In practice, the judgement is normally made by a congregation about itself, or by other churches when deciding on fellowship and cooperation, or by a believer deciding where to worship. Those are legitimate settings for the question. Social media is not, and a Christian who has developed a taste for this sort of pronouncement should examine his own heart before examining anybody else’s church.

Remember too that God has His people in unlikely places. There were seven thousand in Israel that Elijah knew nothing about (1 Kings 19:18). Believers frequently outlast the institutions that failed them.

The Seven Letters as a Diagnostic

The letters in Revelation 2 and 3 repay slow reading by anyone thinking about what makes a true church, because they cover a range of conditions rather than a single failure. Ephesus was orthodox and had lost its first love. Pergamum tolerated false teaching among otherwise faithful people. Thyatira permitted a teacher who led members into immorality.

Sardis had a reputation for life and was dead. Laodicea was comfortable, self sufficient and unaware that it was wretched, and found the Lord outside the door knocking to be let back in (Revelation 3:20). That image was addressed to a congregation, not to an individual enquirer, which is how it is almost always used today.

Philadelphia and Smyrna received no rebuke at all, and both were weak by any external measure. One had little power and the other was poor and persecuted. The Lord’s assessment of a true church evidently bears very little relation to the assessment a denominational report would make.

Reading the seven together protects us from a single test. A congregation can fail through coldness, through tolerance of error, through complacency or through pretence, and the remedy in every case is the same. Repent, and do the works you did at first.

Can a Church Recover?

Yes, and this is the more hopeful half of the answer. Every warning in Revelation 2 and 3 comes with a call to repent, which implies that repentance was possible. Jesus does not write off congregations that a consultant would have closed.

I have seen it happen. A dying chapel calls a man who preaches the Bible, a handful of members start praying seriously, and within a decade there is a living congregation in a building that had been given up for lost. It is neither quick nor comfortable, and it usually involves the departure of some who preferred things as they were.

Recovery starts where the loss started, with Scripture given its proper place and the gospel preached plainly. There is no other route, and no programme substitutes for it.

What This Means for Your Own Congregation

The right use of this doctrine is self examination rather than inspection of others. Ask whether an unbeliever attending your church for a month would hear how to be saved. Ask whether the Bible governs what is said or decorates it. Ask when the membership last dealt with serious unrepentant sin, and what happened.

Ask also about love, since that was the charge against Ephesus. A congregation can be doctrinally precise, disciplined and orthodox, and be warned by Jesus because the affection has gone out of it. Being a true church is not the same as being a correct one, though it certainly includes being correct.

If You Are in a Congregation That Has Lost It

Some readers will recognise their own church in this and want to know what to do. My counsel is not to leave in a hurry. Speak to the leadership honestly, pray, and see whether there is any appetite for recovery. Faithful members have been the means of reformation more often than departures have.

But if the gospel is genuinely denied from the pulpit and there is no prospect of change, then you should find a congregation where Christ is preached, and you should do it without bitterness and without a farewell speech. I have written more fully about that decision in when you should leave a church, and about the warning signs in signs of an unhealthy church.

So, now what?

Take the four functions, gospel, Scripture, ordinances and discipline, and hold your own congregation against them honestly this week. Not to condemn it, but to see clearly, because drift is only ever visible to people who are actually looking.

Do not use this doctrine as a weapon. The question of what makes a true church is given to us for self examination and for honest decisions about fellowship, and a believer who enjoys declaring other congregations false has usually stopped examining his own.

Then do the thing that most protects a church from decay. Pray for your minister, support faithful preaching, and take responsibility for your own knowledge of Scripture rather than outsourcing it. Congregations do not usually fall because of one dramatic betrayal. They fall because ordinary members stopped noticing.

If Jesus wrote a letter to your congregation in the style of Revelation 2, what do you think the commendation would be, and what would the warning be?

Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Revelation 2:5 (ESV)