Gary Moritz implements a contextualized approach to church revitalization and community engagement
Gary Moritz preaches with an “Authentic, Transparent, Transformational” method.
The Church will last for eternity; our churches will not.“Every church will die eventually and the church’s people will die, but the Church itself won’t die. The (‘big C’) Church will go on forever; the Church is unstoppable,” said Gary J. Moritz, Director of Church Revitalization and Renewal for the Baptist Churches of New England (BCNE.net).A case in point: “The churches that the Apostle Paul planted do not exist today in their original form. However, their influence is still felt as they planted churches that then planted other churches, leading to the continuation of Christianity across the world,” according to an online essay published by the Renew.org Network, a voluntary association of church leaders who “help train and prepare ministry and lay leaders to better understand and teach biblical Christianity.”Although his focus was on those early Christ-followers, who were “perplexed but not driven to despair,” Paul may also have been thinking about the churches he started when he wrote the Corinthians: “For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor 4:18b, ESV).The BCNE is “is committed to partnering with church planters and is equally committed to “providing resources and coaching to help [pastors and churches] implement a contextualized revitalization process.”There is hope for New England Baptist congregations that are slowly losing their vitality, focus, members, and support. Over the years, church revitalization has been called strengthening, replanting, rebuilding, renewal, and relaunching. Each term has its merits, but the goal is the same: restoring a church’s health, sparking its missional energy, and reversing its steady decline.When revitalizing a church, visibility precedes vitality
When asked how a church (small c) might be revitalized or renewed before its doors are closed permanently and its members scatter, Moritz replied: “I think that it’s pretty simple. You have to point the people outward, not inward. When you turn inward, you sink. When you push outward and you start to have an outward concept, you start to reach your community. You start to get into the cracks and crevices of the community.”When a pastor begins to build meaningful relationships by engaging and serving his neighbors, his church revitalization journey will likely yield invitations “into contexts that you normally don’t fit” and community leaders will “want to hear your voice,” Moritz commented.Eventually, “you start to have an impact in the community and then the people start showing up at your church saying, ‘That’s our church. That’s the church that always helps us.’ Then you become an organization that helps the community.”A former US Marine and a native of Long Island, NY, Moritz has been the lead pastor since October 2015—call him the revitalizer-in-chief—of the rapidly growing City United Church in Lunenburg, MA, a small town some fifty miles northwest of Boston. “The church that I stepped into was headed for foreclosure.” It was planted in 1974 as an independent, fundamentalist Baptist church. Only after Moritz became its pastor did the church join with the BCNE.The energetic pastor discovered the hard way “what revitalization meant. Nobody was talking about church revitalization. Everybody was talking about planting a church, and I found myself being overlooked by many people. Nobody wanted to help me, so I tried to figure it out for myself.”When Moritz and his wife, Jana, were called to the north central Massachusetts congregation, “I had no idea what was under the hood.” He soon found out that the congregation was “restructuring,” and then, “I found out what bankruptcy really meant. We started off with $3.2 million worth of debt. That’s what I inherited. Now, we’re at a minimal debt.”Soon people started to come. “In year four, we had explosive growth. We went from less than seventy people, and we broke 300 pretty fast, within about two-and-a-half years, which scared me,” he said,“I had all these people showing up,” Moritz continued. “I didn't quite know how to handle them. We didn’t have enough money to even buy a database system to hold the information on all these people. So it was kind of rough.” When asked to account for the dramatic and rapid church growth, he said: “I just started preaching the Bible” with an “Authentic, Transparent, Transformational” method.“I think it started with me not asking the people to do anything. Instead I would just go out and share my faith with people. I’d stand on stage and share stories from that week” with an evangelistic emphasis. “Slowly I’d invite people and they would show up. Then it just kind of caught on.”Gary Moritz and his wife, Jana, the church’s director of operations, started to “build out systems” that would help them renew the church which, according to a report on April 12, 2023 in Outreach Magazine, had “thrived in its heyday with a daycare, a Christian school, a radio station, and a 1,000-seat auditorium.”“Over time, we started to reach the community,” the pastor stated. “We regained our reputation in the community. [Since then] the church has just taken off. Now “we’re known in the community. The people know us and we’re respected.”“Coming into such a dire situation,” the Outreach Magazine article stated, “they couldn’t make all the needed changes at once. “Instead, they had to deal with the most pressing issues first, reevaluating the organization and ultimately paring down what was not focused on their mission.”“They quickly learned that reaching people in New England is not about a crowd or the hype but about personal relationships,” the article continued. “It’s about spending time one-on-one with people where they’re at, even if that’s messy or uncomfortable,” said Jana Moritz.Vitality as a normative measure of church health
City United Church members brought a measure of revitalization to their church when they served their community by distributing Thanksgiving gift baskets.
In an essay on revitalizing summer ministry, Moritz said BCNE pastors can “empower and encourage your people to get involved in local missions and service projects. There are great opportunities to bring revitalization to your church by serving the community.” He highlighted Habitat for Humanity, food pantries, and housing shelters as organizations that need community servants.“Places of brokenness are everywhere,” he noted, “and your church can step into the brokenness and participate in regional community revitalization while also revitalizing your church. This momentum will be a way to connect in the community and connect with local leaders.” “Yes, summer is a time for relaxation, but it is also time to plan and engage” others in the ministry.We invite you to invest in the Baptist Foundation of New England’s new CHAIR OF CHURCH MULTIPLICATION, which underwrites staff salaries for both revitalization of existing congregations and planting of new churches. You may wish to support another ministry chair. Your generous gift will help ensure that New England always has an adequate BCNE missionary staff to get the gospel to every corner of New England.
A decade after they started to revitalize City United Church, Gary and Jana Moritz captured many of the insights they learned in a book, Carry On: Tactical Strategies for Church Revitalization and Renewal. “Every church has a life cycle, and every pastor will be replaced. Every community will change, and everything has a season. There are many reasons why a church suffers a decline,” they wrote.The book begins by highlighting strategies for “Tactical Engagement” (“determine to be ‘all in’”) and “Tactical Envisioning” (“understand that the work that God wants to do begins with you.”) Other chapters focus the reader on the interrelated issues of tactical enlistment, preparation, teamwork, resilience, and perseverance.Moritz started The Church Vitality Network and a “Vitalnomics” podcast “to see vitality become a normative measure of success in the North American church” and “to leverage the dormant potential in the American church for activated vitality through multiplication.” It is clear to anyone who talks with Moritz that he has a passion for revitalizing churches and fostering leaders through resources, development, and counseling.The busy pastor also works with Auxano , a Lifeway Christian Resources “vision framing process” that is based on principles outlined in the 2008 book, Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement, and with Exponential to “broaden the impact and bring clarity to vitality through multiplication.”Moritz is an associate professor and a subject matter expert in church revitalization and renewal in the John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA. In 2013, he wrote a thesis on “Creating and Sustaining a Health and Wellness Ministry Within the Local Church” and received a DMin from Liberty. The school, started by the late television evangelist Jerry Falwell Sr., now offers an accredited online DMin in Church Revitalization.In conclusion, Moritz extended an invitation to pastors who want to advance their church revitalization practices: “Any BCNE pastor who needs help, may contact me [gmoritz@bcne.net] and join one of our free coaching hubs.”—A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor.