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Table of Contents
Nine Steps To Revitalizing The Smaller Church
1. Reflect on God’s promises.
As we consider His plans for us and the opportunities around us, we may become more energized to move forward in obedience with renewed desire. The passages listed below may help focus your thoughts:
| Jeremiah 32:27 |
Proverbs 3:5,6 |
Proverbs 16:3 |
| Isaiah 41:13 |
Psalm 32:8 |
Psalm 37:3–5 |
| Ephesians 3:20,21 |
Zechariah 4:6 |
Mark 9:23 |
2. Remind your people how God has worked in the past.
The Journey Wall exercise is one way to remember God’s past work. Together with your congregational leaders, highlight the ways God has worked in the past year and identify patterns where you have seen the church grow, plateau, and decline. Draw pictures and symbols to represent ways He has blessed, challenged, and led your congregation. Give examples in light of the themes you generated earlier, and strive to understand the barriers to growth. At the conclusion, celebrate His faithfulness and generate ideas about what God may want you to accomplish in the future.
3. Consider seeking outside help.
Many pastors have discovered the value of an outside perspective. Ministry coaches can provide needed help in identifying ways to strengthen and grow congregations. Developing a relationship with a ministry coach outside your congregation can give you an objective perspective on strategic issues related to your ministry.
Just as Paul needed a Barnabas, today’s pastors need someone they can relate to on a personal level. Do you have anyone outside your congregation you can go to with church-related concerns? If no names come to mind, consider finding a coach. The benefits are numerous. They include objective feedback, guidance, encouragement, accountability, wise counsel, friendship, and support.
4. Evaluate your congregation’s strengths and weaknesses.
Conduct a ministry audit using the eight quality characteristics as your blueprint for an effective church. Identify your strengths and weaknesses and summarize them in themes and key issues. We recommend using the Natural Church Development survey for an objective assessment of your church’s health. The survey helps you focus your energies on the most important issue that needs to be addressed. See the resource list on pages 82 and 83 for information on obtaining ChurchSmart resources.
5. Develop goals.
Set barrier-breaking goals that are ambitious but still within reach. Train your people to break barriers quickly (within 3 years) with periods of inspiration and intense effort.
If you want to focus your energies on evangelism, take your leaders through the simple goal-setting process below.
Identify and list all your current church activities. Include fellowship activities, organizational activities, activities of the pastor, and both structured and unstructured activities. Group activities into the following categories: preevangelism, evangelism, assimilation, growth and/or service, and leadership development. Most churches find they spend a lot of energy on activities that don’t bring much benefit.
Evaluate your current effectiveness. Which activities are working well? What functions are missing? What needs improvement?
Brainstorm ways to reach new people. Identify the group(s) you want to reach, their needs, and potential programs to meet those needs. Expand your possibilities by recognizing kinship and friendship links, needs and/or dissatisfactions, and important life transitions.
Listen to people’s hearts with God’s ears. Research the community and the unchurched population, finding both hard (Your local library has demographic studies from the Census Bureau. You can also contact Demographic and Church Research Network at 417-862-2781, ext. 3381, for a demographic study of your community.) and soft data (conduct personal interviews using active listening skills). Listen for hurts and wounds, unmet needs, unfulfilled goals, and unanswered questions. Create a profile of the target population. Think like they think, so you can identify with them. A compassionate heart softened and prepared by God’s Spirit gives birth to a godly vision for ministry.
List activities you think will be growth producing. Try to select the best options for your situation and consider whether they are pre-evangelism, evangelism, or assimilation activities. Then focus on the critical few that will really make a difference.
Determine appropriate action steps. Put a strategy together that identifies what, how, when, and who will implement the strategies. Build in some form of evaluation and accountability to determine the fruitfulness of your efforts. Celebrate the gains and learn from your losses. Reevaluate periodically.
6. Review your values.
Based on your ministry audit and goals, review the values of your congregation. Consider actual values in addition to the stated, official values. Ask yourself whether your actual values reflect who you are or who you want to become. Consider whether any changes need to be made in your values and what would be required to make those changes.
7. Refocus your vision.
Ask the following questions to help clarify your vision:
- Is your philosophy of ministry clear, concise, and compelling? (Ask your leaders to articulate it for you.)
- How are people taking responsibility? Are their roles clearly defined?
- How will the changes you are planning impact the ministry?
8. Implement the plan.
Provide visionary leadership by taking the initiative. As the leader of your congregation, you must lead the change. This means you must have a firm, personal resolve. Empathize with your people and recognize that all change is perceived as pain. Your greatest challenge will be to keep your congregation willing to endure the pain in exchange for the gain that comes through change. You must lead the thrust to reach new people while at the same time continuing to care for your own people. To accomplish both, you will most likely need to expand the organization.
9. Repeat the cycle.
The challenges and struggles facing the smaller church can only be overcome by an authentic work of God’s Spirit. Apart from God’s grace, the smaller church may remain small—or worse yet, it may grow. It is by His grace that we are brought back to the truly important focus of revitalization.
What is need? Healthy, churches grow, growing churches change, change forces us to trust God, trust leads to obedience, obedience makes us healthy, healthy churches grow. ( James Ryle, adapted from Promise Keepers Clergy Rally.)
Robert E. Logan, Los Angeles, California.
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