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8 Questions About Church Revitalization

I recently was interviewed by someone who is considering church revitalization for his next ministry assignment. My answers are not formalized—it was a casual conversation—but I figured someone else might have the same questions.

There were eight questions—I was sure there would be seven—but eight was the number!

And that’s just a little humor to get us started in the discussion of church revitalization. After experience in church planting and church revitalization, let me say neither should be attempted without some ability to laugh at times—other than pray, of course, that’s all you can do!

Eight questions about church revitalization:

1. What motivated you to move into revitalization vs. church planting?

It’s a calling. I wouldn’t attempt church planting or church revitalization—or any ministry for that matter—without a clear one. But the need is huge. We have more Kingdom dollars invested in non-productive, non-growing churches than in church plants. Obviously we need lots of church plants, but we also need to revive some of the older churches.

2. What questions did you specifically ask your current church before taking the position?

Here’s the bottom line: There’s not a question that will answer everything you want to know. You’ll have to take a risk. Just like in church planting when you don’t know if anyone will show up. In church revitalization, you’re going to find things out when you get there.

You are dealing with a very complex structure. The older the church the more complex. The search committee can tell you lots of things—all that they believe to be true—and still some of it won’t be true. It won’t be that they misled you, but that the culture hadn’t been fully tested until you arrived and tried to change some things that haven’t been tried previously. That’s part of the process.

But a key I wanted to understand the best I could was my freedom to lead. Obviously, Jesus is the leader, but did they want to rely on my leadership as I yielded to God’s leadership? Was the church ready? Could I hire my staff—and release staff if needed? How are decisions made? I looked at the budget and bylaws and every policy I could find. (And they found more after I arrived—but the policies you won’t know are the unwritten ones.)

3. If you could change anything about your transition into your current role as senior pastor of a historically established church, what would it be and why?

I would have asked for some of the harder decisions to have already been done. Specifically dealing with structure and staffing.