Throughout the latter half of the last decade, a spiritual wind has refocused pastoral leadership to reevaluate the established church and to see that God wants to redeem and not bury the local church. Where once pastors would not want to take a church that was struggling or in most cases, dying, today there is a new breed of ministers who are taking up the challenge to help revitalize the local church.
I believe God is thankful for those ministers called into the arena of church revitalization. The work you do is done is done to the glory of God as he helps reshape the local church into a vibrant church that reaches its neighbors with the gospel.
There are four clear reasons a pastor should become a church revitalizer besides the call of God on their life to serve the local church.
- Established Churches Need Vision, Leadership and Clear Direction.
Study after study has shown that most evangelical churches in North America are in some state of decline. With decreasing membership, aging buildings, deferred maintenance and lack of community engagement, the church has seen its numbers reduce. While some outlier churches have seen an increase in attendance and community engagement, most are facing a crisis moment to either reengage or close the local church.
The concept of a church hiring a younger pastor as the silver bullet is misguided but sought often by churches who are in decline. The sad truth is that there are not enough younger pastors in the pipeline to fill all the pulpits needed in the next ten years as Baby Boomers continue to retire and the early wave of Gen X begins to leave the pulpits for retirement.
The established church needs visionary pastors who see what could be. The revitalizer’s role is to help the church capture where it finds itself today and lead it into a new future defined not by programs but by the needs of people in the shadow of the steeple. The revitalizer will help the church reengage the community, embrace community needs, and overlay those needs in a spiritual context that embraces where the church finds the marketplace. This role is exciting yet challenging and will need a person with a clear vision and discernable leadership qualities that will help not force an established church to become a church back on a mission with God.
- Established Churches Need a Fresh Perceptive to Reach Their Community.
A church revitalizer enters the church community understanding that they are called not to deconstruct the local church but to reconstruct the hopes and dreams of those members still sitting in the pew. Through observation, conversations and relationships, the revitalizer guides the church into a new season in the church’s life by listening to members’ fears and faith. Leaning into these stories, gather stories of where God was and is at work, and help them recapture the God dreams they have for the local church.
Through a fresh outlook ladened with positive antidotes and encouraging celebrations highlighting small and large wins, the revitalizer can provide new opportunities for the church and community to connect. These connections times are about drawing in new members rather than drawing out current members to serve in the community. Only after the revitalizer has laid the foundation can the church build community relationships. Take your time with this step, as this step lays the groundwork for future blessings.
- Established Churches Have Incredible Legacies.
When a revitalizer comes to a church for the first time, they must realize that God has worked inside the church for decades. They need to know that changing something out of hand might be so destructive that it terminates their ministry before it really begins. Instead, they become the church’s leading historian, understanding the past to reengage the past with the present.
The history of a local church is not to be buried but honored. Why do you think there are all the name plates and plaques around a church? It is about celebrating the heroes of the church who strived to serve God and the local church faithfully. Honoring the past and the people connected to it should be done in a way that captures the moment the church is living in. Develop a legacy room or living museum in your lobby where you can share the past through pictures, awards, and stories by connecting it to God’s new future for the local church.
As Mark Clifton from the North American Mission Board is fond of saying, “God wants to redeem his church.” Redemption comes from celebrating the past, evaluating the present, and preparing for the future. That may mean some plaques and nameplates are relocated to the legacy room or living museum as the church redesigns former offices into classrooms and pews into chairs. Relocating the honorary nameplates does not remove the honor but extends the legacy as the church continues reconfiguring spaces to reach new people with the gospel.
- Established Churches Have Resources that God Can Use.
What the local church might lack in church membership it makes up in resources (buildings, financial accounts, property). A revitalizer sees these resources as something other than tangible or even transactional but a tool to do effective ministry. The leader helps the remaining church members recapture the community’s vision by leveraging the resources they currently have to engage the community in new ways. That may mean remapping the campus and the ministries housed in certain rooms in the building by relocating them to new areas with a design for future connections. Or using some of the financial resources to tackle deferred maintenance issues by updating high-traffic areas for future guests’ enjoyment. Or viewing the church property not as a gathering place for members, but as a future gathering space for community events in partnership with area service clubs or nonprofit social agencies.
For instance, that might look like moving parking bumpers from one of your parking lots to open up the space for a future community playground or tearing down an old shed to provide space for a new picnic shelter for community use. Remember revitalizer, there is no silver bullet to reach the community, but little by little change and will come. Each project contextualized to fit the local church and community needs can recapture the imagination of the church-community relationship. At the end of the day, the goal should be to leverage the church’s resources to help the community while helping the church become a more gospel-centered witness in the community it was planted in decades ago.