What happens when the power goes out? Everything stops. The lights went out at 8:02 AM. We’d been notified that our electric service would be interrupted today so that the electric company could make connections to the new cable they’d recently installed in our neighborhood.

We set the alarm for an earlier-than-usual wakeup, and rushed about to get showered and fed and coffee-ed before eight o’clock. My wife had an all-day event to attend, so when she left I remained in the house. It’s about 43 degrees (F) outside, so it shouldn’t get too cold in the house.

Still, it’s strange. First of all it’s quiet because none of the appliances are running; the fridge, the freezer, the furnace, the sump pump. (Hoping the battery backup sump pump I put in a few weeks ago will work.) When I move from room to room, I have to stop myself from flicking the light switch. The phone is dead. The wifi is off.

This is, of course, a first world problem. Our routine is upset today because we have a highly reliable electric utility and we take the power for granted. Outages are rare and when they occur, they are usually brief. I know it’s not like that in other places.

What happens when the power goes out in a church? Jesus tells us in a vision:

Revelation 2:3-5 (ESV) I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. 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.

There is a power, the Holy Spirit of God, that is active and working in the whole church on earth, and in each congregation. But that power can be removed if the congregation fails to be faithful. Complacency, apostasy, worldliness; any of these can destroy a congregation. I was a member of one such congregation.

When we first joined, weekly attendance was about seventy-five, we had an active Sunday School, and a small choir. The sermons were doctrinally sound. But the decline was inexorable and painful. First, the children grew up and left. Older members died. Those who remained were sometimes focused on “our church”, meaning the building, and our history. Giving dwindled until we could no longer support a pastor. The choir shrunk down to just a few voices, of which I was the only male voice. Still, the people clung to “our church”, refusing to see the truth or explore any new path. I left. A year later the congregation closed its doors. The power went out. The silence was awful.

As an elder in that congregation, I was haunted by this sense of failure. What might I have done differently? Where did I fail? But I have come to the conclusion that the collapse of that congregation came about because we had, …abandoned the love you (we) had at first. In all our doing and planning we had ignored what made us a church in the first place. My friend Bob, another elder, once asked, “Who do you love more, your ‘church’ or Jesus?” There was no response to that pointed and important question. Complacency had set in.

While it is true that the church is under attack from outside more and more these days, it is also true that complacency and dry rot are destroying many congregations from within. Jesus is the head of the church; the church is His body. So when Jesus is marginalized in His own house, when His people cling to the traditions, affiliations, connections, and nice buildings more than they cling to Jesus, the power will go out of that congregation.

Most of the folks from that former congregation have found a new home in other congregations. My wife and I are now part of a congregation from an identical denominational background, one that holds identical creeds and confessions as our old congregation held, but the Spirit is powerfully present. The name of Jesus is lifted up; the true word is proclaimed. Thanks be to God!