Starting points for church revitalization
Did you know that most churches have a 30-year life cycle before they start to decline?
That’s why revitalization is so important. But be warned, the process does not come naturally to churches. As a matter of fact, leading a revitalization effort is one of the hardest things you can do, so understanding the process of revival is crucial.
If your church needs to work on revitalization, here are some starting points for you to think through.
1. Evaluate your current commitment to the church. If you want to lead a church into revitalization, you have to be all-in for the long haul. If there is any possibility you will be leaving, don’t change a thing. Instead, find someone to come alongside you and help guide the church through this transition. Attempting to straddle two worlds isn’t healthy for you or the church. If your heart’s not in it, you are probably not called to change it.
2. Establish prayer teams that are focused on revitalization. A church leader once said all failures are prayer failures. What we pray for is what we move towards. When your people pray for their church, I believe God listens because His children are obeying His command. A church that fails to pray during revitalization may end up leaning on strategies from leadership books and not from God’s Book.
3. Examine the numbers. Numbers may not tell the whole story, but they often indicate what’s going on beneath the surface. God is ultimately responsible for building His churches, but if no one is inviting and investing in the people of the community, something is wrong. An ongoing lack of commitment to outreach seldom leads to a changed church.
4. Engage your community well. It shocks me how many pastors are clueless or simply guesstimate about their local demographics. Great leaders know their communities and how to minister in them. Knowing your community well will both increase your burden for the lost and bring an evangelistic focus to your revitalization efforts.
5. Don’t change the church, change a life. Even Jesus didn’t get all his followers on board. You and I won’t convince everyone of the importance of revitalization, but we can still ask God to help us see a change in one life at a time. Several changed lives can change a church.
6. Focus on the church you have, not the one you want. Stop comparing your church to someone else’s. Focus on who is in front of you, and begin with them. When a few of your members catch your passion, you will have sparked a flame. Revival begins when a small group catches a vision and grows from there. Find out who shares the same passion for Jesus and go ahead together.
7. Get out and share the Gospel instead of just talking about it. Pastors must lead by example. When you share stories of your witnessing encounters, people will follow their leader. But you can’t talk about what you aren’t doing. If you’re not in your community telling others about Jesus, your church won’t do it either. The root cause of church decline is an inward instead of an outward focus. Evangelism is not a training event, it is a lifestyle fueled by passion.
8. Celebrate every victory. Everyone loves a good party, so when you have wins, celebrate them. What gets celebrated gets repeated. A celebration could be anything from having someone standing in your parking lot waving and smiling at first-time guests to sending handwritten thank you cards to all your volunteers showing your appreciation for serving and sacrificing their time to make the church great. Don’t get so wrapped up in the big vision that you forget the small wins.
Revitalization is not about doing everything right, but about focusing on the right things so that your church is growing and changing from week to week.
Gary Mortiz serves as the church revitalization director at the Baptist Convention of New England.