You Cannot Revitalize Your Church
Blog post by Justin Nash
At times, church revitalization can be hard and discouraging work. There is no one size-fits-all approach or silver bullet solution for revitalizing. There are endless books to read, conferences to attend and systems to be implemented. Some are very helpful, others, not so much. Instead of offering up one particular system, philosophy or approach to church revitalization, I’d like to offer three foundational rules for revitalizing pastors to remember.
Rule #1
You cannot revitalize your church - Only God can do that
No matter how gifted you are as a preacher, teacher, leader or visionary, you CANNOT revitalize any church. Renewal and revitalization are works that only God in his sovereignty and power can do. Revitalization is his work alone. The Lord may use you to revitalize, but whether he does so is based on his sovereign will, not your ability as a pastor or church leader. Remember rule number 1. It will keep you humble by reminding you of your limitations and complete dependency on God for success in ministry, thus driving you to constant prayer. It will also be very freeing for you. If you think the success of the church’s revitalization depends on you, you will carry a burden that will eventually crush you. But, if you realize revitalization is God’s responsibility, you can rest in simply being faithful in the work he gives and then leave the results to him.
Rule #2
You must love the people whom are entrusted to you
(You must love people, period).
If you don’t love people, don’t become a pastor. There are many people who enter the pastorate because they love preaching, teaching, building or leading. These aren’t bad things to love, but if we are not driven by a love for God that overflows into a love for people, we will fail miserably at shepherding a church. In a revitalization, this means that the sheep we are accountable to shepherd will become expendable parts in the renewal process that we can use up and then discard. We are called to love people, not use them. This is the very thing that the prophets condemned religious leaders for in the Old Testament. If we are to be successful in the revitalization process, we must love the people God has entrusted to us and see them as the foundation of the renewal, not as an obstacle to it. As Mark Clifton says, “Love the church you have, not the church you wish you had.”
Rule #3
Be patient.
Revitalization takes time. This is not a popular sentiment in our instant-everything day and age. Pastors and churches want to see immediate results. Sometimes God blesses with immediate and long-lasting renewal in declining and dying churches. Most of the time, he does not. Renewal is a process, not an event. We can become impatient and chase after short-term gains at the expense of long-term health. Remember – weeds grow quickly; trees grow slowly. We want to nurture trees with strong and deep roots that produce fruit for generations, not weeds that spring up overnight and wilt in the next day’s sun. Research suggests that most revitalization efforts take somewhere between three to five years to begin seeing real positive change. Many pastors and churches give up long before that time. You cannot accomplish nearly as much as you think in a year, but you can accomplish infinitely more in 10 years than you can imagine. So be patient.
Remember these three rules and you will be well on you way in your church revitalization efforts.