Category Archives: revitalization

revitalization

A Reply to David Drury’s “Church Revitalization Models”

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David Drury has a good overview of Church Revitalization Models at his Substack. I encourage you to read it. As a revitalization pastor myself, I had a few comments in reply.

  •  Yes, there is no one size fits all strategy or context, even though there are similar attributes and organizational life stage.
  • Every congregation needs to realize they are maybe just two years away from needing at least a vision refresh, if not revitalization, because society is changing so fast.
  • The leadership is hard, but I disagree on feeling unappreciated. I find that congregants appreciate the work and the worker a lot. District leadership sometimes does not. Revitalization is like turning a ship, and while I hear lip service to that, the expectation is still a quick turn-a-round. Other than full restart, I’ve never seen a sustainable quick turn-a-round. I have been denied revitalization status, even though that would help with resources and reduce my USF burden. Church planting gets a high budget value while revitalization is minimal.
  • The campus/adoption model looks great in books, but I rarely see it happen, so it is basically a theoretical model, in my opinion. Small congregations resist coming under the authority of larger churches. Larger congregation resist giving their financial and people resources to another congregation. The context and people the large church is reaching is probably different than the small church. There is change resistance on both ends, which David addressed only on the small church end.

Photo credit Earthquake Stock photos by Vecteezy

revitalization

The Overlap of Inward and Outward Focus

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I’m wresting with the idea of inward vs outward focus as presented in revitalization books.

When I read Acts and the Epistles, I see the service of the Church as inward focused and the gospel as the outward focus. Jesus didn’t separate the two, as he sent out his disciples to preach the kingdom of God and heal (Luke 9:1-2). Jesus taught the people about the kingdom of God, healed them, and gave them food to eat (Luke 9:10-17). When people came to Jesus only for food, he rebuked them (John 6:26).

Our modern revitalization strategies push for an outward focused service orientation. The experts tell us to survey the community to discover the needs and fill one. Community service is meant to be the opposite of the attractional church model, but it may be just a repacking of it. Instead of “come to our church to be entertained and served,” it is, “we will come to your neighborhood to entertain and serve.”

If our congregations actually reflect the demographic of the larger community wouldn’t the physical needs of the Christians generally be the same as the non-Christians? Why did the church in Jerusalem have a good reputation with all the people (Acts 2:47)? Perhaps because they saw how the kingdom was lived out in the church (Acts 2:45-46), meeting the same needs of food, shelter, and community that was needed outside the Christian community. Why did (some of) the church push for the end of slavery and voting rights for all? We were trying to live out those kingdom principles in the Church first.

Sometimes the local church does not look like the surrounding community. It may be monoethnic, single or few generations, of a different culture, or socio-economic or educational level. That congregation needs to stop being an island and build some bridges. And there may always be some community bridges we need to build. But for the church that is a valid cross section of their community, the community needs are among them. Thus, as long as they do not limit their healing and kingdom mindedness to their in-group only, might inward and outward focus overlap?