Please note….the following post is being written for two purposes.

1.  To educate, frustrate, and amuse pastors and church leaders everywhere.  Who knows, you might get a few good ideas by seeing some really bad ones….and then doing the opposite.

2.  To shamelessly drive traffic to my site by participating in the Pro-Blogger Group Writing Project .

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There are a number of articles and books written on church growth…how to do it…why to do it…that sort of thing.  But where are the people who are telling you how to shrink your church and shrink it fast?  I will tell you where…here at Smart Pastor.  So if you want your church’s attendance to decrease, follow these tips and if in 30 days, your church is not averaging 20-40% less folks in worship, we will give you your money back!

So without further ado (I have no idea what ado is…but we will have no more of it!), here are seven great strategies for decreasing church attendance.

1.  Make strategic use of political statements.  Nothing divides like politics.  If you are in a more mainline church, throw in a quote and attribute it to Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh during your sermon.  If you are in an evangelical setting, quote an ACLU action memo or talk favorably about President Clinton in casual conversation.  This is an easy and low prep way to send people to another body of worship.  Instant results.

2.  Make it hard for people to invest in church life.  I know of one pastor who loved forms.  He loved forms so much that when anybody wanted to start something in the church, no matter how small, you had to fill out out an eight page ministry plan.  One time, shortly after instituting this requirement, a group of ladies approached the pastor and asked to walk in the gym a couple of mornings a week.  "It is getting cold outside and we are looking for a place to exercise.  Can I bring this group of women from my neighborhood, all unchurched, to our church and we could walk inside?"  Naturally, the pastor said that would be great, but you need to fill out this form and get it approved by our church council.  After one look at the form and realizing it would take 2-3 hours to fill it out and answer questions like, "who will lead this ministry should you become incapacitated suddenly?", decided to just take her unchurched friends to walk at the mall instead.

As they should have said in Field of Dreams….if you make it difficult, they will leave.

3.  Take being "culturally relevant" well beyond your churches comfort level.  Many long established churches are slow to change.  This is normal and, from time to time, needs to be challenged..  So rather than easing in to change, why not implement it in a bold and outrageous manner?  Take for example, using movie clips as illustrations.  Rather than ease in to the idea by showing a clip from the Chronicals of Narnia, why not go for Silence of the Lambs or Anchorman?  Why dink around slowly?  If a change needs to be made, one might as well rip off the band aid and get it over with!  Sure, it will send some people down the road to another church (who probably already shows movie clips in service) but it will also establish the change in your church.

4.  Praise the mega-church down the road.  It is hard for people to stay at your church.  Fidelity to a church body is difficult in an age when we are loyal to nothing.  It is hard to stay at a mid-sized church when you do not have your own middle school pastor specific to your middle schools student’s school.

So point out passionately what they have that you don’t.  Talk about how nice the senior pastor’s teeth are and what a wonderful orator he is.  Share how intimidated you are by his ability to exegete scripture and time the delivery of his anecdotes perfectly.  Talk about how many people are baptized every year over there and how many mission trips they are taking.

You will be giving people, by singing the praises of what God is blessing, freedom to leave and be a part of where The Spirit is moving. 

5.  Engage in erratic behavior.  The possibilities are endless here.  Wear odd clothing.  Talk too loudly or too closely to a person.  Have comic books protruding from your briefcase.  Forget to comb your hair…for a week.  Let your imagination run wild.

Those who have been around for a while and the fringe folks will hang with you, after all, they are Christians and have a capacity to forgive, but give it a month and the trickle will become a trend you can hang your hat on.

6.  Sexual Impropriety.  At first this one might not seem to work.  Right after the sin is announced and exposed attendance will jump…people love a good train wreck!  But so long as you don’t need to achieve a goal of decreasing your attendance in a week, this will work by the end of the month.  When people realize that your church’s worship service is not going to devolve into an episode of Murray, they will stay home and do yard work, read the paper, or just plain sleep in.

7.  Change the vision of the church frequently and loudly.  For the people who are committed to your church through thick and thin, this might be the only one that works.  I would suggest starting your sermon in week one by saying, "God told me in a dream…" and then procede to lay out an argument for changing over to the latest trend in church growth, I suggest the Seeker-Sensative model for the greatest divisive effect.  Follow up your sermon that week by sending several all church mailings and letters out about this change.  It may help to over spiritualize the issue and draw lines in the sand.  In the meantime, grow a goatee and get your hair cut short.  The next Sunday follow the same pattern, (God told me in a dream…letters…etc.) only announcing a change to the Emerging Church model. 

You can take this one to the bank…it will work and work well.

There you go…even just implementing one of these ideas should make a noticeable difference at the end of 30 days.  Enjoy the empty seats!