Bad decisions your congregation made?

[Lamb]

What are some bad decisions that your congregation made that didn't benefit the church?

 

[Frankj]

It's kinda hard to judge this, but my last congregation, a Lutheran one FWIW, decided to close their accredited Christian K-8 school and do other things with the money it was spending on it.

I'm unaffiliated now, for numerous reasons, but still drive by the Church fairly often. It has nice new additions to it that make it a more impressive building that they meant to attract more people, but I also notice it also has fewer cars in the parking lot on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings.

This is just my observation, and given from my point of view.

 

[tango]

The leadership structure, and a couple of people in particular within it, have been an abject failure. Sadly the people who aren't good for the church have managed to cement their position so it's all but impossible to get rid of them.

 

[tango]

It's kinda hard to judge this, but my last congregation, a Lutheran one FWIW, decided to close their accredited Christian K-8 school and do other things with the money it was spending on it.

I'm unaffiliated now, for numerous reasons, but still drive by the Church fairly often. It has nice new additions to it that make it a more impressive building that they meant to attract more people, but I also notice it also has fewer cars in the parking lot on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings.

This is just my observation, and given from my point of view.

My last church is doing much the same. Lots of grand ideas for fixing the physical building, few if any ideas for fixing the declining attendance. Still, at least they'll have a thriving building even if they have a dying congregation.

 

[Uncle_Sol]

Places I've been, it wasn't the bulk of the congregation, but the senior leadership team and their favourite volunteers, in each case.
Some examples:
1 ~ (while our original premises into which we could crowd 120, suffered subsidence) to waste several years being strung along by an "architect friend" of the senior elder, who said he could fit 600 people into the building we had our eye on, frustrating the more sincere helpers; to my knowledge it has at last opened accommodating about 150 comfortably, and nice.
2 ~ (a different church) to affiliate us to four or five flighty and manipulative sects, frying all our brains; last I checked they had only dropped out from one or two of those.