From the Archives: "When Churches Die"

Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.

Frank Senn

In 1997, Litrurgy published an article by Frank Senn entitled, “When Churches Die.” Given the current shift in church membership, mobility in the citizenry, rejection of classic Christian theology in favor of “spirituality,” new denominations and unaffiliated congregations, and many other changes in our culture, this article gives readers a chance to consider how necessary it is to mark the deaths of institutions. Frank Senn’s “When Churches Die” offers reasons we ought ritually to honor what is lost not only when congregations disband and move away from their beloved sanctuaries but also what goes awry for larger groups of Christians when denominations come together to form a new entity. The denominations that merged no longer exist, and the changing procedures, offices, practices, names, etc., can be destabilizing.

Selected Quotes from

“When Churches Die”

“A bit of us dies with each loss we experience. This can be easily appreciated when applied to the death of a congregation or parish because the people of the parish have formed a tight relationship and see themselves as one body they have birthed (in some instances), sustained and supported. The same is true for clergy and lay leaders who were heavily involved in the life and work of a denomination.”

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“The church‘s resources––ministers, congregation, rituals––are brought to bear in ministry to the church’s members when they die. Who ministers to the church when the church dies? How do we minister to a dying congregation or a merging denomination? What rituals enable a dying church to negotiate the passage from historical existence to historical nonexistence?”

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Frank C. Senn is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America who over fourty-four years served as pastor in five congregations in Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois. With a PhD from the University of Notre Dame, he taught at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, the University of Chicago Divinity School, the University of Notre Dame, Concordia University Chicago, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, at seminaries in Singapore, Indonesia, and Vancouver and was president of the North American Academy of Liturgy and The Liturgical Conference.

If you would like access to this article, please follow this link:

Senn, Frank. C. (1997). “When Churches Die.” Liturgy, 14(1), 51–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/0458063X.1997.10392390.