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Even when a church is dying, new life can come to it, but it takes work. These five foundational steps can help.
Today’s Listener Question:
FROM KENT
I’m in contact with a church in a mountain town in North Carolina considering taking me on as their replant pastor, but I’m not convinced they actually know what that means. They are a small group of about 30 people (half of them are family members), in the desperation stage before their death. How do I explain to them what a replant is, make it clear what changes need to take place before I commit, and evaluate if they truly are open to replanting or if they only think they are? The church is a stereotypical 1950’s mid-century building, small entry, pews to the back of the sanctuary and memorial plaques on almost every pew and door. Help!
Episode Highlights:
- Dying churches need to look to the past before they’ll be ready to look to the future.
- Churches who won’t repent corporately are often led by pastors who won’t repent personally.
- Just because a church’s doors are open doesn’t mean the church isn’t already dead.
- Repentance is not something to avoid, it’s a refreshing fountain we should run to daily.
- God would not be calling so many people to replant churches if He wasn’t intending to replant those churches.
- You will not see a church revitalize without prayer.
The five foundational steps we discuss are:
- Remember
- Repent
- Discover
- Pray
- Understand
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
- ChurchReplanters.com
- ChurchAnswers.com
- Replanter Assessment
- Find more resources at the Revitalize & Replant page at ThomRainer.com
Submit Your Question:
Do you have a question about church revitalization or replanting for us to use on the podcast? Visit the podcast page to submit your question. If we use it on the show, you’ll get a copy of Autopsy of a Deceased Church and Reclaiming Glory.
The research: Nothing seems to take as long to die organizationally as a Southern Baptist church–it can be decades for its doors to close unnecessarily for the last time.
The solution is not easy, but it is simple: (A x B x C) > D = Change.
No A, B, and/or C means no Change (i.e., self-sustaining new condition). No overcoming D (i.e., the price that congregation is willing to pay NOT to be dysfunctional) means no Change.
Sometimes, a congregation must repent of spiritual failures–but usually for intellectual ones; it simply could/would not think of one more good way to serve its neighborhood relevantly.
Zip code populations are stable/growing; congregations can grow/change with them.
I don’t know the correct forum to ask this sort of request, but with so many of the daily posts being about replanting and revitalizing churches, would it be possible to have a week of testimonies from pastors who have gone through it and pastors who are currently going through it. I serve at a small (100ish) church and God has done a major revitalizing work in my 6 years, but there have been a lot of ups and downs in the process. I think honest stories of the blessings and difficulties from large/small, urban/suburban/rural churches would do me and many other pastors a world of good. Just a thought.
Having those testimonies would be useful to everyone who is starting or moving through the process of replanting.
Jesus reminded us that we cannot put new wine into old wineskins.
My thoughts exactly , Sometimes the church needs to be buried and put up headstone before the spirit of desperation can guide toward replanting. I hope that I not sounding cynical when I say this but repainting without a spirit of desperation being present in the church is almost impossible