8 Ways Satan Attacks Churches

1. Satan Attacks Through Congregational Division: I’ve seen churches divided over budget decisions, paint colours, worship styles, Bible versions, community outreach, global missions, staffing choices, service times, choir robes, small group curriculum, and church vans. The enemy still knows this truth: believers make little dent in the darkness when they shoot each other in the back.

2. Satan Attacks Through Family Breakdown: We don’t need to look far to find this problem in the church. Even the seemingly healthiest families don’t always stand in the armour of God to fight off the enemy’s arrows.

3. Satan Attacks Through Hidden Sin: The story is tragic but true in more than one situation. The church is not growing, and they invite consultants to help them recognize their obstacles regarding infrastructure, programming, staffing, and facilities. Sometime later, the truth comes out that a more significant obstacle had existed: someone in church leadership had been living in sin for months.

4. Satan Attacks Through Transfer Growth Diversion: Let me summarize this point: the enemy is seldom threatened when churches grow only by “swapping sheep” with other churches down the street or across the city. Transfer growth often distracts believers from doing evangelism – and thus plays into the enemy’s hands.

Worship

5. Satan Attacks Through Self-Dependence: Some churches, I am convinced, would continue to exist for some time even if God withdrew His presence. That is, they operate in their own strength and ability, but they do it well. Often, they have enough size that decline is almost imperceptible. Though these churches may speak passionately about the “power of God,” they rely more on their own power.

6. Satan Attacks Through Discipleship Distraction: The enemy delights in churches that have no strategic, effective discipleship strategy. After all, these churches have no plan to teach believers how to wear the full armour of God (Ephesians 6:11). They frequently leave new believers to fight battles on their own, select unprepared persons for leadership and then provide no training for those leaders. Because no one discipled them, their members often lose battles in a spiritual war they did not know existed.

7. Satan Attacks Through Hopelessness: It’s easy to get here. Church leaders give all they have to give, yet with few results. The church is dying but unwilling to change. Lay leaders protect their turf. Staff members sometimes battle among themselves. Seemingly, no lives are experiencing transformation. “What’s the point?” the enemy asks. “Why not just give up?”
8. Satan Attacks Through False Teaching: Most of my work is with evangelical churches, and I don’t often see blatant false teaching. What I see is much more subtle than that:

Small group leaders teaching unbiblical theology, with no internal system in place to recognize or address that problem

No oversight or accountability about the curriculum taught in small groups

Theologically-suspect material in the literature rack

Problematic “recommended reading” in the church library

Music lyrics that promote bad theology

Poor exegesis of biblical texts.

We do have hope, of course, in Jesus’ words: “I will build My church, and the forces of Hades will not overpower it” (Matthew 16:18b). The enemy is viciously strategic against the church, but we need not let him win.

Receive Jesus Christ today and go to church for spiritual fellowship.

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