Senior-level pastors of theologically conservative churches seem to be particularly myopic about church revitalization. We tend to see only one legitimate answer to the question, “What do we need to do to revitalize?” We don’t tend to be very inquisitive. I think this is the reason someone like Will Mancini, who really should know better, is so dismissive of the topic in his book, Future Church. Maybe he is constantly hearing pastors in the revitalization conversation answering loudly and unequivocally, “All we really need is bolder preaching, purer doctrine, holier living, and greater Spirit-filled zeal.” We think if we simply do better at Acts 2.42 and 2Tim 4.2, Acts 2.47 will always follow. Senior-level pastors tend to equate revival and revitalization. But they’ve only got it half right.
Why are we so myopic? I think it almost always boils down to identity. In North American church lore, we’ve made church growth all about spiritual revival and about the pastor, (or else we’ve made it about merely adding on church growth techniques). And we’ve made the pastor all about preaching and discipling. For most of us, if our churches are stagnating, we have no other categories to think in than these. So we think we’re not preaching well enough, or not discipling creatively or purely enough. Or else we get mad at our sheep and think we’re doing it well enough but they’re too ensnared and entangled by the cares of this world to respond vivaciously enough. So we dig in deeper, just knowing that if we somehow get better at nurturing spiritual zeal in ourselves and our churches, God will add to our number daily those who are being saved. Our identity, and any evaluation of our job performance, centers on our skill as a pastor and preacher and on our ability to spur church growth through greater spiritual fervor. But that’s never where our identity should be.
I think we’re afraid. We’re afraid of two things. We’re afraid that if our church decline is not due to weak preaching or discipleship, then that will mean that it’s a result of poor leadership. My poor leadership. Second, I think we’re afraid that if our church foundering is not due to weak preaching and discipleship, then whatever the true problem is is outside of our training and skillset. We’re afraid we don’t know what to do, or how to be the expert, if the cause of our church’s poor health cannot be directly exegeted from a Scripture passage. Sometimes we fend off this fear by waging ad hominem attacks on leadership principles, calling them secular and alleging they have no part in pastoring or ecclesiology. But deep down we know we’re wrong in doing so.
Why are we half wrong to equate revival and revitalization? Because any authentic revitalization will both require and create spiritual revival in us and our church. It’s just that, in most cases, especially in conservative churches, spiritual revival is not the primary driving force of authentic revitalization—it’s missional, decisive leadership. Put plainly, most theologically conservative churches that are dying or struggling have good spiritual health—the reason they’re dying or struggling is because of reticent or confused leadership.
Did you know that the picture of the local pastor so many of us are so sure of was practically nonexistent a hundred or more years ago? Pastor as shepherd, in the sense of caring for the needs of the sheep, is actually a historically-recent, nice-sounding, seemingly-biblical hijack of the duties of the pastor. The precedent in the New Testament is that the duties of the pastor boil down to discipling and leading. We know discipling inside-and-out in all its various forms, and we’ve been trained for it. But have we discounted clear, decisive, courageous leadership in our pastoring? Have we denied it the great gobs of time it takes in our weekly schedule? Have we underestimated it as the primary driving force in authentic church revitalization? Here’s the secret nobody seems to want to say out loud: in your church, you can’t have white-hot missionality without clear governance. It’ll never happen. (Ironically, the reverse is also true.)
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