Watching nearly every church I attended die a slow, painful death was a hard thing to watch, but was even worse was how obtuse the leadership was.

Blame liberals. Blame the LGBT community. Blame the Mosque down the street. Blame Hillary Clinton. Blame Millennials. Blame the moral decline in society. Blame everyone else, then wonder why no one shows up to church and the ones that do don't serve or give offering.

Churches with an entrenched leadership and community can develop a toxic environment where it becomes a culture in and of itself, and this blinds the leadership into believing that the failures in their ministry are due to entirely external forces.

And old pastor of mine got ripped a new one by his church association. His church is slowly, painfully dying: they had three services, and now there's one because of low attendance; offering is so low that the church is dependent on outside contributions; all of the local and foreign missions work is done by the paid ministry staff and their children; all of the administrative paid ministry staff left because they couldn't afford to pay them, and now there's no one to pick up the work; there's no childcare so during service there are crying babies all the time; and there's virtually no community. Everyone shows up to service then they all immediately leave and go their own way. This is a church of over 500 - and things are still massively broken.