In a season of desperation, church leadership will either hold on to the last vestiges of tradition or cling to the garment of Christ. This pivotal moment often invites the necessity of church revitalization. While God has a fantastic plan for the local body, human preferences and personal needs can often distort that divine purpose. For a congregation to truly live, it must move beyond self-preservation and commit to a greater vision, to one another, and to an extraordinary God.
Committing to a greater vision requires shifting the focus from internal comfort to external mission. When a church prioritizes its own survival over its calling, it inadvertently blocks the growth God intends. Revitalization begins when the leadership and the congregation decide that the mission of the Gospel is more important than maintaining the status quo.
1. Commit to a Greater Vision.
Over the years, as the church begins to decline, members often look inward instead of outward. Leadership may reflexively shut down new ministries or withhold funds out of fear, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of scarcity. By focusing solely on their own needs, they lose the very resources and people they originally desired to reach with the Gospel.
Hebrews 12:1 reminds us that there is a great cloud of witnesses cheering the church on, yet the local church finds itself in a death spiral spinning out of control because it forgot to give the church over to God, who is in complete control.
Some revitalization strategists believe legacy churches should die, and their funds should be reinvested in church planting. I am not one of them. Churches and denominations can revitalize churches to become healthy church planters. All we have to do is commit to a greater vision that obeys God’s will and uses the church facilities and campus for a more significant community impact. Suppose your local church has a smaller footprint than before (fewer people). In that case, you will have more buildings (space in general) that are underutilized and that can see new life through partnerships with nonprofits, private schools, childcare facilities, homeschool groups, etc.
God will send new partners if the church can reimagine its current space with a gospel-centered community focus. Reversing a church’s decline is more about positive biblical vision and direction than gimmicks.
2. Commit to Each Other.
As the church has declined, a mighty remnant of believers held to the calling of keeping the doors open. If you find yourself in a church with just a handful of people, see it as an opportunity to commit to each other, to pray for and encourage one another.
Prayer becomes the incubator for new ideas to rebound from decline and hope for new solutions to old problems for future growth. As the church moves forward, it must commit to praying earnestly for each other and its neighborhood. It is not one or the other, but a multiprong approach to seeking after the will of God. Prayer becomes, in essence, the spiritual priming agent for the new well that will spring forth new life.
3. Commit to a Foundational View of Serving Others.
When the church is slowly dying, there is a tendency to cut itself off from the ever-changing neighborhood around it. Instead of putting up barriers between the church and community, begin to see the community as a helpmate in redeeming the church. As Christ is in the church, so too he is in the neighborhood. Imagine how the church could open its campus as a community park with a new playground, a dog park in a fenced-in area, or a large picnic shelter where the neighborhood could host community yard sales. Begin to think with eyes out instead of eyes in on the church’s needs.
The community outside the church’s walls needs a Bible-teaching church as much as the church needs a community that is invested in what it offers. God is in the redeeming business, and he wants to redeem the local church, but it must do its part in developing a community-centric focus on reaching the lost. The turnaround will not happen overnight, but through a commitment to serving others, Jesus’ redemption will not be just a wish but a reality.