Authentic church revitalization is extremely difficult to pull off. Frankly, it’s unrealistic. If your church wants to authentically revitalize, you’ll need to 1) thoroughly and impartially analyze what is currently broken, 2) reform your church governance structure to guarantee bold, clear, and accountable decision-making, 3) identify a clear and unique local commission, and 4) make the necessary high-risk changes to your church practice and function. This may look straightforward on paper, but in real life, it’s a battle with the law of averages that no church can win.
Why? Because what always happens somewhere between 1 and 2 is this: church members who welcomed revitalization suddenly get cold feet. They get even more vocal and uncomfortable and withhold their volunteerism and giving somewhere between 2 and 3. When 4 comes around, they all-out mutiny. No church leadership can weather this storm. The very people they need to do the mission of the church bolt—some quietly, many loudly. As the church seems on the verge of dwindling before their eyes, an irresistible pressure is put upon them to soften what needs to be done for an authentic revitalization. They are forced to make concessions to various factions in the church, particularly the informally powerful and the ostensibly generous.
(By the way, the above notwithstanding, authentic church revitalization is still possible for the brave and desperate. It is possible by the Holy Spirit’s power and guidance and harmony. In other blogs, I discuss the specifics of How.)
So if authentic church revitalization is so improbably difficult, why try for it? Why would any pastoral staff or elder board, in their right minds, attempt such a thing? Why not keep the status quo, try to be more holy, make a few church growth tweaks and hope for a brighter future? (See next month’s blog) Or why not wipe the slate clean and start fresh with a restart or a church plant that has comparatively none of the baggage and roadblocks?
Micro and organic church models proliferate and are increasingly popular. They seem to promise a return to an enviable and innocent primitivism of the early New Testament church. But they have two fundamental limitations. First, they have a fundamental leadership training track problem. Despite their protestations, good leadership matters, quality control matters, and it rarely just happens. There’s little incentive or provision for leadership training in these models. Second, there’s no there there. It’s really difficult for the average person in a disciple making movement or micro church to maintain a continuing sense of circumscription or definition as a church family. Sometimes this does happen, and it’s a blessing when it does.
Church plants and restarts have the benefit of not having any church politics in place. They can start fresh and make a whole new creation, innovative and quickly appropriate to the culture around them. But then they suffer, too, from a lack of history, undeveloped safeguards, and insufficient resources.
The importance of insisting on the difficult task of authentically revitalizing historic churches was reinforced for me on a recent trip to Ireland. A few of us from the BCNE went there on an exploratory mission to help the rest of the Greater Boston Area BCNE churches partner with Irish Baptist churches. Ireland offers a glimpse of what New England will be in twenty years in terms of culture and spirituality. And you know what we noticed right away? Church planting options seem DOA and discipleship making movements unworkable. Because of cultural dynamics, the only clearly viable way forward seems to be through churches that are already established. They have the history, they have the street cred, the base of operations and the already-developed relationships.
If your church is dying, plateaued, or growing for less-than-stellar reasons, the riskiest path forward is also the one with the most promise—authentic revitalization. If God is calling you toward revitalization, put away the other fallback options, and risk it all on this one. Perhaps an initial exploratory step for you will be a partnership with an Irish Baptist church. They’ve already seen our future, and might know more than we do how to prepare.
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