Six Character Traits Needed for Church Revitalization
Feature: By Justin Nash
Church revitalization can be taxing and frustrating work. It is often three steps forward and two steps back. Here is a list of six critical character traits your church and its leaders will need to be successful in the important work of revitalizing a church.
1. Honesty
You must be willing to make a really honest assessment of your situation. Prepare yourself for the truth no matter what. When your church is unhealthy and declining, denial can be deadly. Ignoring problems will not make them go away. They will simply get worse and worse.
Make a commitment to be honest with yourself and the church. Fully confront your reality no matter what it is. This is the first step to getting better. The good news is that when you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of your situation, the right decisions often become self-evident
2. Responsibility
Take full responsibility for the structures and situations that currently exist in your church, even if you had nothing to do with them. Own the situation as if you were responsible for it. Previous leadership, congregational decisions or traumatic events may have led you to this point of needing revitalization.
But remember, it is not helpful blaming anyone. Simply assess the situation and try to understand why it is the way it is. Of course, this will mean looking to the past to understand the events that brought you to this point. The purpose of such an assessment is not to know who to blame, but to know how to get better. Don’t allow blame to get you stuck in the past.
3. Patience
Revitalizing a church takes time – lots of time, so be patient. We live in a quick fix, instant everything world. However, there are no quick fixes or silver bullets when it comes to church revitalization. You simply cannot turn around a 100-year old church in 12 weeks, or 12 months for that matter.
On average, it takes three to five years for a revitalizing church to see fruit from its revitalization efforts. So don’t be discouraged. Be patient and trust in God’s work and his timing.
4. Commitment
The enemy will retaliate against you as you try to regain territory for the glory of God.
Church revitalization is long, hard and often painful work – you must be fully committed or you’ll quit before revitalization efforts can bear fruit. You will experience any number of difficulties in revitalization including, but not limited to, conflict, loss of people, discouragement, financial problems, failure and intense spiritual warfare. The enemy will retaliate against you as you try to regain territory for the glory of God. Therefore, your leaders must be committed as a group up front and hold one another accountable to see your revitalization efforts through to the end.
5. Hopefulness
This may all sound a bit doom and gloom, but it’s not. Remember for whom you are working. You are working for the omnipotent and sovereign Creator of all things. He spoke and everything leapt into existence. So trust in God and his power to bring dead things to life and to produce fruit in barren places. If God can resurrect dead men, he can create new life in your church. Be hopeful, not in your church, but place your hope fully in God.
6. Prayerfulness
Church revitalization is something only God can do, so we need to plead with him to do that work in our churches.
This is essential and foundational to every aspect of reviving a church. Church revitalization is something only God can do, so we need to plead with him to do that work in our churches. Perfunctory prayers will not do. We must saturate all of our thoughts and efforts with continual, consistent and specific prayer. There has never been a successful and sustaining change in a church without prayer. It is the lifeblood of any revitalization effort.