Building on Small Wins

THE

CHURCH

Sept/Oct 2021 Vol 8, Issue 5

Revitalizer Ae R vitalization e R treat in e vE ry Issue

Building on Small Wins

“The only magazine dedicated to Church Revitalization.”

ChurchRevitalizer.Guru

From The Editor Welcome to the Church Revitalizer Magazine!

I am always surprised how many churches going through revitalization never celebrate small victories with their church members.

Many church revitalizers tell me they can’t do it because it feels silly to celebrate an effort that doesn’t seem like an achievement. They have a hard time even acknowledging small wins. Yet the membership which has been locked in decline for a while needs that very thing—celebration and victory of even the smallest blessing.

It is often said that they would celebrate a large victory, yet it is my stance that unless you begin with small win blessings, you will never achieve larger ones. The renewed church should celebrate what they are becoming and not wait until they are totally there.

Celebrating small wins begins to reinforce the new behaviors that are necessary in church revitalization. The big, church-changing achievements will come as a result of daily tiny activities in the right direction. Small wins are so important because these modest accomplishments attract allies to the cause of renewal while deterring the opponents.

Small wins help move the renewing church toward a new trajectory by nudging them in the correct direction while eliminate the impediments that were causing the decline. It is all about understanding the importance of the present moment in revitalization and taking the time to celebrate small wins as they come. We tend to take the present moment for granted as we dream about eventual renewal. Perhaps that is because it seems so insignificant, and we believe the little things we do in the moment are not changing us. Small wins are progress points on your way to your goal. Small wins help you feel like you’re accomplishing something. If we focus too much on the bigger goals, we’ll feel like we will never get there. Small wins may seem impossible to get to at first, but once you reach that first one, the other ones will fall into place. Small wins are a big part of church revitalization and renewal.

Within this edition we want to look at Building on Small Wins in Church Revitalization.

Stay connected, more is coming!

Dr. Tom Cheyney is the Founder and Directional Leader of Renovate National Church Revitalization Conference and Executive Editor of the Church Revitalizer.

Contents

Do Not Forget the Hermit Hour Tom Cheyney

p. 10

On a Winning Streak Ken Priddy

Momentum Making from the Pulpit

p. 14

Bill Tenny-Brittian

p. 18

6 Small Changes That Can Improve Your Guest Services Ministry (part 1) Bob Whitesel

p. 24

Five Ways to Win Together Gary Moritz

p. 30

Also in this issue: The Revitalizer

Book Review with Rob Hurtgen

p. 29 4

Revitalization is a Daily Journey Michael Atherton

p. 34

Lead to Revitalize!

15 Practices of a Church Revitalization Leader This book is a publication from the Kentucky Baptist Convention from eleven authors.

Sept/Oct | Vol 8, No 5

No Way! Did That Just Happen?

Ron Smith

p. 38

Celebrating the “Little Wins”

6 Steps to Maximize ‘Wins’ in Church Revitalization

Discipling Small Wins

George Thomasson

Steve Smith

p. 42

p. 46

Steve Sells

p. 48

The Muscle of Baby Steps Tracy Jaggers

Quick Steps Lead to Future Victories Desmond Barrett

p. 54

p. 50

Numbers: Do They Really Matter? p. 56 Fred Boone Wrestling and Winning p. 58 Chris Irving Revitalization through Celebration p. 60 Scott Brown

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THE

CHURCH

Revitalizer Volume 8, No. 5

The Church Revitalizer Is published bi-monthly by Renovate Publishing Group 1906 West Lee Road Orlando, FL 32810 Email: ChurchRevitalizer.guru

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Do Not Forget the Hermit Hour

By Tom Cheyney Do you as the church revitalizer have a hermit hour? I know it sounds strange but developing such a thing might just help you get the things right that need to be set right. What is this precisely? This is a daily ritual where you withdraw from the rest of the world to be completely isolated and focus on the small things in renewal that might give you that initial nudge.

During your hermit hour, you have all notifications turned off, your email inbox closed, and your office door shut behind you. You lock yourself in a bubble of deep concentration and work on something that truly matters.

Uniting activities that bring people together Declining churches need to begin developing activities that get one another working together, praying together, and enjoying the fellowship of one another.

One hour might not seem like much, but as you stack them on top of each other, they will quickly start adding up. And within a few short weeks, you will probably notice a significant improvement in your ability to focus, your skills, and your results. So, I encourage you to schedule your hermit hour as soon as possible. Once you see the benefits, I’m sure you will keep adding more.

Gentle plans that demonstrate a new day You can’t steam roll over the present membership with a lightning rod that kicks the church into a fifth gear before it learns to walk together again. Nudging is gentle, not a ram rod. Care in reconnection is vital to your efforts.

I believe the following acrostic for nudge works well if you can keep it in mind. Here is my nudge list for my hermit hour each day:

Evangelistic projects and events to reach into community Nothing will happen that is lasting unless you put the emphasis on evangelism once more. The fact is that most churches decline because they have given up doing the work of evangelism and that has allowed it to decline further and further each year. Developing events that reach out into the community is vital. The church must reconnect with the community it has been called to serve.

New things not previously tried As you begin thinking about the small wins in church revitalization, consider a few new ideas that you and your church have not previously tried which could be the bump to get started towards renewal.

Everybody at one time or another needs a little nudge. Each time I enter another church revitalization project and begin working with a new church or set of churches, I think back to what I have affectionately called “The NUDGE List.” Remember when you were a kid and one of your parents gave you a

What are the nudges you should focus on during your hermit hour?

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Discipleship groups emphasized Few churches revitalize without a concerted effort to redevelop small groups within the church. They must be relaunched and emphasized as part of the renewal plan for growth and revitalization.

gentle nudge to get you back to your homework assignment?

Churches that are falling back into becoming legacy churches often need the nudge in a similar way. So how do you create a nudge list for church revitalization? Think about ideas and ways that will send a message to the community that you are doing something new with. If you are the pastor, think about ways you can share the dream using short term, midterm, and long-range ideas and goals.

to replicate. Shallow work can eat up your hermit hour so be careful not to linger too long in that arena. As the church revitalizer, if you cultivate the ability to do deep work, you will thrive in the ability to develop a plan for church renewal. Having a hermit hour three or four times a week will help you generate results quickly while becoming aware of the satisfaction that comes from developing a plan and crafting a strategy to achieve it.

What would your churches nudge list look like?

Create a 3-3-3 Methodology for Your Actions Having a 3-3-3 plan works simply like this: Every three months you set goals that you want to achieve in the next ninety days.

Then each week you define the three objectives that will have the greatest impact on your ninety days goals. Then every day you select the three tasks that will help you make the most progress towards your weekly goals and plans. All of this can happen during your daily hermit hour as you think about the revitalization of your church. The great thing about this is that it provides a clear direction and keeps your focused on doing the most important things without getting distracted. All of your daily tasks move you toward your weekly purposes, and your weekly purposes move you toward your quarterly goals.

Since you are limited to only three tasks, objectives, and goals, you are forced to continually work on what is most important.

What would your churches nudge list look like as it begins the revitalization process? Think about that for a few minutes.

What are some simple things you and your church can do to begin to lead it back to becoming a healthy church once more? Here are a few suggestions that I have used, and others have used, to begin the gentle nudge of their church: Facility improvement (a little paint, rearranging the mess, cleaning up, etc.)

Pastoral dreams for the church shared Discipleship emphasized (and bragged about as a positive) Music team revived (and bragged about as a positive) Hosted musical events New young adult ministry launched Nursery renovated (and bragged about as a positive) Quarterly church fellowships launched to connect members with prospects.

Establishment of a kid’s ministry (and bragged about as a positive) such as kid’s church, upward, etc.

Visiting every member and prospect Preached family message series Practiced evangelism through community events Practiced evangelism through community events Loved immediate church and extended church as well Laity challenged and enlisted for service New member’s class initiated Celebrations with community are joined Signage renovated They are not big, but each one begins to move the church toward reengagement of its community and inactive members.

During your hermit hour you could concentrate on these things and begin developing a strategy for the top five.

The Two Types of Work that Produce Small Wins In revitalization there are two primary types of work that will lead you and your church to small initial wins. I call these shallow work and deep work. Shallow work is the non-taxing work that you can do as you prepare for initiating a strategy that comes from your hermit hour. This is the launching work, which is full of creativity and low on a plan. Deep work are the tasks that you do in a state of distraction-free focus, pushing your skills to their limits as you work on those nudges which have come to light during your hermit hour. This kind of work creates lots of new value, improves your abilities, and is hard

Keep Large Goals from Distracting You from Small Ones You do not get large wins without a series of tiny ones. Yet so many church revitalizers focus on huge ones and never get to achieve them because they failed to climb up to them through small ones. Most denominational types will tell you to go big or go home. Shoot for the stars. Aim high. That is easy to shout from the bench or bleachers. Church members love to praise starting and finishing big objectives but seldom take the time to appreciate the steps they took to get there.

These ambitious statements could truly be setting you back because they sidetrack you from all your small wins. Church members need to celebrate small victories before they can glory in big ones. Many church revitalizers who are wrapped up in business world practices think tiny actions lead to small consequences, and grand motions have the most impact.

But that is a fallacy. Celebrating small wins might seem trivial, but each one is a step toward reaching the bigger dreams you have for your church. John Maxwell often would say to those of us he coached through his events, “Small disciplines repeated with consistency everyday lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.” So true and profound. Why are small wins important? Consider if you will: Small Wins Help You Measure Growth Small wins help us track all the incremental steps involved in achieving much larger goals. Regardless of the type of goal you set, it will take time to achieve it. If you wait until you have reached the end to celebrate your accomplishments, your day-to-day progress may be impacted because you do not recognize the improvements you are making.

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Small Wins Boost Your Confidence We all want to shoot for the brass ring, but large abstract goals are associated with “greater psychological distress, such as anxiety and depression,” as this study found. On the other hand, smaller concrete goals have been linked to increased happiness levels. The power of small wins is that they allow you to focus not on figuring out the what of your next actionable step but zoom straight to the how. And because the smaller goal is attainable and deliverable, you gain feedback faster. As you stack your small wins, you will also create a constant source of motivation and inevitably build confidence.

Small Wins Create More Motivation Speaking of motivation, the way you perceive a goal can make or break your outcome. By changing the way you think about small wins, you can also work happier. And that is crucial for your motivation. We are often unable to gauge the significance of what happens without reflection and review to connect the dots. Your progress is largely made up of small wins, and your happiness is made of small, cumulative bursts.

Celebrating the Small Wins with Your Church Members It is difficult at first to understand why you need to share even the small wins with your church members. Often it seems so trivial to do such a thing. In declining churches small wins are the beginning display that the Lord is revisiting a church that has been dormant for such a long time. You will need to work at seeing the small victory and sharing it with your flock. Here is a good way to share the blessings of renewal with your people: If you are not already, become accountable to your church membership By becoming more accountable to the entire flock it allows everyone to celebrate the tiny things that God is doing to initiate renewal in your church. Discontinue the practice of only sharing the tiny blessings with a few. Do not keep your goals, big or small, to yourself. Allow your members who are still in the work, to provide assistance and encouragement, as well as inspiration You, as the church revitalizer, are more likely to keep working toward your goals knowing that someone else is cheering you on to complete a task.

Set and share mini goals that are achievable When determining what counts as small wins, consciously note what exactly you need to do to achieve your major goal.

Then, break it down into daily or weekly micro-goals that signify progress. This way, you understand what gets you to your finish line and can recognize your accomplishments.

Reward your membership and reward yourself for the mini victory It is so nice to receive a blessing that what you have done is appreciated and noticed by the very members you are work-

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ing with to revitalize the church. Small wins add up to big wins if they are built one upon another. I would hold an ice cream fellowship, which seemed to be something our folks enjoyed.

Keep building momentum until you have accomplished your objective You can dream as big as you want, but the most sustainable, feedback-rich way to achieve greatness is to keep things small. Build the next mini goal upon the previous one. Tiny wins allow you to keep moving right up to the stage where you are at the final push for the great big win in renewal.

To avoid coasting and becoming distracted from your main goal, you need to always keep the big picture in mind. Try increasing the capacity of your small wins as you gain more confidence as the church revitalizer and get closer to renewal achievement. Visualize your churches finish line and keep advancing forward in renewal.

Wrapping it up Realize that your daily hermit hour is not used for sleeping but for dreaming and jotting down ideas that could help you bring about church renewal. If you can’t do it, decide to not be part of church revitalization and renewal. It is crucial to acknowledge your small wins in revitalization. Those mini doses of encouragement will fuel your strength as a church revitalizer to keep going and help you lean into the joy of why you are doing what you are doing in renewal. Celebrating small wins can give you the lift you need to remember that you are enough, you are not behind on your goals, and you are constantly making steady progress. Some progress is better than no progress. Small wins are standalone. They can become an immediate success. Small wins are low in effort. Small wins are high impact. People love mini victories. Small minute wins are often shortcuts to the larger wins you will need later in renewal. Making a list of quick wins is not very hard but making sure that what you are revitalizing is worth the effort can be a lot trickier.

Tom Cheyney is the Founder & Directional Leader of the RENOVATE National Church Revitalization Conference (RenovateConference.org).

Some of Tom’s books include: The Church Revitalizer as Change Agent, Slaying the Dragons of Church Revitalization: Dealing with the Critical Issues that are Hurting Your Church; and Church Revitalization in Rural America: Restoring Churches in America’s Heartland. Tom lives in Orlando, Florida with his wife Cheryl and travels all over North America assisting declining churches by bringing revitalization and renewal to the congregations.

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Centrifugal Buzz:

On a Winning Streak

By Ken Priddy People in general, and Americans in particular, think big, dream big and want to win big. “Win big or go home,” is more than the hyperbolic battle cry of sports enthusiasts. It’s at the core of our competitive being in a zero sum, win-lose culture.

It’s not enough for someone to win, it seems; others have to lose. Unfortunately, this “bigger is better” mentality is alive and well in the American evangelical church. Though we say that it’s not about numbers, we are acutely aware of where churches stand in terms of attendance size from giga-churches to mega-churches to large churches to medium churches to small churches with an added distinction between growing churches, plateaued churches and declining churches. Woe to the small, declining church that is at the end of the line, in the pit of the valley, at the bottom of the ecclesiastical heap. Why not just shut down and erase yourself from the ministry landscape? No one would miss you, right?

We claim an understanding that in God’s plan, all churches have value and that it might actually be God’s divine and strategic will that great things be accomplished in and through small churches, even, at times, small declining churches, but whose books are we reading, whose conferences are we attending, whose models are we mimicking? Interesting! I don’t recall a single instance in Scripture where anything close to “win big or go home” is mentioned. Rather, I find, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you,” (James 4:10 ESV).

It seems to me that humbling ourselves before the Lord might be served by biblically redefining “winning” and applying that definition to the long-standing and ever-increasing problem of decline in the American church, regardless of attendance size.

What would winning look like in a declining church and how might winning be leveraged so that such a church might become healthier, might begin to grow and, perhaps, even multiply?

In redefining winning, I’m going to lean on Acts 2:42-47. There are many places we could go but this is a magazine article and not a book, so Acts 2 is where I’ll cast anchor. I’m sure you know the context and the content of this passage, so I’ll summarize.

We’re told in Acts 2:42 that the early followers of Christ were devoted to four things: the apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers. Verses 43-46 give us a

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further glimpse into the life and lifestyle of these early believers and, then, the passage is capped off in verse 47 where we learn that the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. This is what I’m going to call a win. If only that were happening in our churches today! The people of God devoted themselves to godly things and God added to the number of people. So, it would appear that winning involves right devotion and that winning also involves numerical growth.

Wait a minute! I thought we were getting away from bigger is better. We are, because the fact that God was adding to the number was not really about the number, not really about the size. It was about the gathering of the lost from the harvest.

It just so happened that every time a soul was gathered, the body grew by one. There is an inevitable outcome of numerical growth when God moves in this way, but numerical growth is not the goal. The redemption of sinners is the goal as the body of Christ is devoted to the things that God has spotlighted for this devotion.

The key to understanding the connection between devotion and numerical growth is to examine the substance of the apostles’ teaching. What did the apostles teach? Before I offer a sim-

teachings of Jesus instructed us to love God and love people – the Great Commandment, and to go and make disciples – the Great Commission. Compelled by these teachings of the apostles, on the shoulders of the prophets and Jesus himself, the early church loved God and loved people and shared their faith in the plentiful harvest. Consequently, and I do believe there is a cause-and-effect relationship here, God added to their number day by day those who were being saved. That’s what I call a win.

A declining church of any size is a church that has been on a losing streak for some time, or at least perceives itself to have been on a losing streak; losing people, losing tithes and offerings, losing leaders, losing volunteers to serve, losing energy, losing vision; losing hope. There is a great need for a win or two, however small, that can serve as a boost toward productive ministry and the ultimate revitalization of the church. Several positive elements can result from a cluster of small wins.

Momentum can be built, negativity can be flipped toward positivity, confidence in leaders can be restored, and hope for the future can be rekindled. There is no need to think about winning big. Winning small is sufficient and is right in line with James’ encouragement to humble ourselves before the Lord.

ple answer to that question, let me highlight another passage of Scripture, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord,” (Ephesians 2:19-21 ESV). Notice the link between the teaching of the apostles and the teaching of the prophets. Their teachings were essentially the same with Jesus as the cornerstone. How so? The prophets taught that the Messiah was coming. The apostles taught that the Messiah had come, fulfilling the teaching of the prophets. The cornerstone or pivot point or hinge (pick an analogy) was Jesus who bridges the gap between the prophets and the apostles.

The critical factor, here, is that the teaching of the apostles was centered on the person and work of Jesus, answering in greater and greater detail the question that Jesus asked in Caesarea Philippi, “Who do you say that I am?” This is the apostles’ teaching to which the early church was devoted. The leading prophet who informed the teaching of the apostles was Jesus himself. Among the primary teachings of Jesus were what we have come to know as the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Stated simply, these two monumental

The road to a winning streak is paved with the apostles’ teaching. My observation is that many churches, however, mistakenly limit the application of the apostles’ teaching as depicted in Acts 2:42 to the already believing Christian. They file this under the conventional church programming heading of discipleship. Of course, the already believing body of Christ does, indeed, need to be devoted to the apostles’ teaching, but that teaching is saturated with the call to take this teaching, this Gospel, into the plentiful harvest to gather the lost, bringing them into the family of God. The result is a win-win-win; a win for a church, a win for a community and a win for the kingdom.

Ken Priddy (D.Min., Ph.D.) is Founder and Executive Director of the GO Center, a training and consulting ministry committed to church vitalization and revitalization. Ken also directs LEADERTOWN: A Laboratory for Organization & Leadership Development.

His thirty-plus year journey in church planting and revitalization has grown into a national presence among evangelical leaders. He’s an effective trainer and consultant, but perhaps his most significant contribution is his extensive development of training curricula.

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Momentum Making from the Pulpit

By Bill Tenny-Brittian Preaching has a role to play in revitalizing a church. In some ways, it’s even a significant role, but it’s probably not nearly as significant as most pastors think it is. Don’t get me wrong, bad preaching can kill a church deader than dead. But the other tautology isn’t true. Great preaching won’t grow a church, at least not on its own. You and I both know some really good preachers – sound, biblical preachers with good delivery skills – serving in some pretty tiny churches. And we both know some mediocre preachers who are serving in good sized churches. (One caveat, you won’t find mediocre preachers in mega churches, at least not very often and not for very long! … But those congregations didn’t become mega churches because of the great preaching. As you already know, growing a church takes a lot more than that.)

That said, your preaching can have a serious impact on your church’s revitalization process and I’d like to help you take that to the next level.

Let me begin by saying that I’ve been teaching preaching at Phillips Theological Seminary in their Ministry Training Program for about five years. I won’t say it’s my student’s favorite class, but it gets really high marks. Add to that that, I’ve been in the trenches for over thirty-five years, have been studying effective preaching for nearly forty years, and I’ve been testing everything I’m about to share for decades with pretty good results. So, with that said, let me share three things I’ve learned and recommend about how to build momentum from your pulpit.

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Preach Series I’m going to make a guess and say most of you reading this already preach series regularly, but just in case you’re a diehard lectionary preacher, let me make a pitch to get you to make the switch. (And if you don’t preach series all the time, let me convince you to embrace the practice.)

Rather than spending article space trying to convince you that the lectionary is pretty much out of date and out of step with popular culture, let me just share two good reasons for why series are the better way to fill out your preaching schedule.

First off, series preaching builds momentum, which is the whole point of this article in the first place. A well titled, well thought out series provides your congregation with something to invite their unchurched acquaintances to attend.

For instance, if your fall series is on how families can make the most of the pre-season holidays, your members probably know a family with children that might be interested in the topic. That’s especially true if your sermon titles are enticing. In a four-week series you could preach sermons with topics and titles like Helping Your Kids Find a Work Ethic (a nod to Labor Day using 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12 as your text) and Getting Your Kids Ready for a Battling Culture (dealing with Columbus Day vs. Indigenous Peoples’ Day using 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 to explain how to leverage culture for the sake of the Kingdom). You could add a sermon on Halloween, All Saints, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving … there are plenty of options. The key, of course, is to develop series

that appeal to your target audience and to create titles that both entice and explain what the sermon series and the sermons themselves are all about.

wanting to see some sort of life change in your listener’s heart, you’ll want to consider enrolling them rather than recruiting them.1 Let me explain.

Which is the second reason for preaching in series. It’s about that momentum thing. When you offer a three-to-six-part series, and if you can hook a visitor with the first sermon, they’ll be compelled to attend the second, the third, and so on. In practice, I’ve found if you can get people coming to worship for three or four weeks, and if your congregation is doing a good job of building connections with your visitors, then you have a pretty good chance of turning those visitors into returning guests, and returning guests into long-term participants, and eventually into members. And turning visitors into returning guests is the point of it all, because it takes more than one sermon to walk someone into the kingdom of God in our current culture.

By and large, pastors have been culturally taught to recruit people to “do” something. We need a Middle School Sunday School Teacher and we so go to Bob and tell him how much our children need him. If we’re really good at recruiting, we’ll tell him how those middle school hearts will be touched by his leadership. We’ll show them the new curriculum and share how easy it is to use. And we’ll promise that he’ll have an active support system that will be there should he run into any difficulties.

One more thing about series preaching. I recommend that you design your preaching series a year at a time. Take a couple days to go on a spiritual planning retreat and outline your series and sermons for the year. Develop the series around the cultural seasons of the year such as popular holidays, back to school, the seasons, and so on. In addition, you’ll want to work in some series to keep the church’s mission, vision, and values fresh – and if you’re clever, you can tie even these series to common cultural themes. Other series ideas include dealing with common concerns your target audience may have such as child rearing, retirement, finances, work ethics, and so on. Ultimately, the best advice I can share for developing relevant series for your target is to make sure you’re spending lots of time with the unchurched in your community. Get to know them so well that you know what’s on their minds and hearts, then develop series to meet those needs.

Finally, if you’re concerned about the possibility that you’ll have to change a sermon or two because of unfolding local or global events, don’t worry too much about it. This is a plan, not a chain. You can always either usurp a sermon or, just as easily, weave the crisis into the series itself. In my own experience, I’ve seen the Holy Spirit work through my December sermon planning in ways that seemed to anticipate events later in the year. Create the plan, work the plan, but don’t be enslaved by the plan. The Holy Spirit will nudge when you need to step away from it for a week.

Enroll, Don’t Recruit What’s the point of your preaching? That’s neither a random, nor a rhetorical question. Take a moment to think about it and consider the question. What return do you want from all that work you do? What outcomes are you aiming for as your words hit your listener’s ears?

I’m going to say more about this in the next section on Building Accountability, but let me suggest that if you’re

Do you notice that the process above is all about the “features” of the ministry? It’s about the kids. It’s about the curriculum. It’s about the support. What it’s not about is Bob. Even if you throw in, “And I noticed that you’re really good with kids” or “You clearly have a spiritual gift of teaching,” it’s not really about him – it’s about how he can impact the ministry. It’s church and ministry centric.

Compare that to enrollment. When you enroll someone, you begin with them and their personal vision. The goal of an enrollment conversation is twofold. The first, and most important goal, is to help someone get clarity on what they want most for their future and what’s stopping them from getting there. The second goal is to help them see how their participation in whatever it is you’re recruiting them for can be a part of getting the future they want to achieve. Now, to be fair, their goal and the ministry position you hope they’ll fill isn’t always compatible. At which point you can either return to a recruiting model or, better yet, find someone else for the ministry in question. But if there’s any sort of connection between their imagined future and the ministry in question, then it’s both easier to get them involved and more fulfilling for them as well. (I know, you’re probably wondering how this applies to preaching, but hang in … I’ll get there.)

So, an enrollment conversation with a prospective Middle School Sunday School Teacher begins with them and might look like this: “So, Bob, let me ask you. What do you most what to experience spiritually over the next twelve months?”

“Well, I’d really like to spend more time in the Word and feel closer to God.” 1 I’m indebted to my friend Ted McGrath who introduced me to the enrollment process. I’ve taken what I’ve learned from him and found that it can be effectively applied to the church in many ways, including evangelism. More on that in a future article.

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“Great vision. What do you think is the biggest obstacle getting in the way of that?”

“Hmm. That’s a tough one. I think I just don’t build in the time I need to study and pray.”

“Bob, if I could show you a plan and path forward that would help you reach your vision in the next few months, would you be willing to consider it?”

“Sure, I’d at least consider it.”

“Before I share, let me ask you, how committed are you to that vision? Let’s say on a scale of one to ten, how badly do you really want to spend more time in the Bible and to feel closer to God?” “I’d have to say at least a nine, but probably a ten.”

“Okay, great. When it comes to finding the time to study Scripture, most people don’t get around to it because they don’t have a compelling reason to study. They want to study, but just wanting isn’t enough. On the other hand, when they’ve got a good reason for needing to study, they find it’s much easier to make the time.

Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, it does. It makes a lot of sense.”

“Good. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that when someone steps up to teach the Bible, they start digging deeper into scripture than ever before. And because they’re teaching the Scriptures every week, they will make the time to study because they have a good reason to do so.”

At this point, I suspect you can see where this is going. The point is, “You can spend more time in the Word and you’ll find yourself drawing closer to God when you teach the Middle School Sunday School Class. And you’ll find that you will make the time to study because there’s a good reason for you to do so. As you do, your spiritual life will become a priority in your life.” Of course, before Bob nods yes, you’ll want to share the “features” of the ministry including easy to use curriculum, access to great coaching to ensure he’s successful at it, and so on.

But notice the difference … the enrollment model started off with Bob’s vision and ended with a plan to help him achieve it. And because we knew he was committed to achieving his vision, we could be confident that he was at a place to see how the plan would help him get what he wanted most for his spiritual life.

You may be thinking, “That’s great for a one-on-one, but I thought this was about making momentum from the pulpit.” So yes, let’s take enrollment into the worship center.

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When we were taught to preach, we generally learned how to recruit from the platform. Even our come-to-Jesus salvation sermons tend to be wrapped up in the features of becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. Sometimes those features include eternal life. Sometimes it’s a full and abundant life.

Sometimes it’s the freedom from sin, guilt, and shame. It is true that all of these apply to everyone and brings great rewards, but again it’s starting with the features rather than with our vision and version of the future. And yet, vision trumps features every day of the week, including Sundays.

However, to enroll from the pulpit, you must know your target audience well. Very well. You need to know how they think, why they think that, and most of all, what it is they want. Notice I said “What it is they want” not “What you think they want.” We have a serious arrogance problem in the church today in that we think that we can project ourselves into the minds of Unchurched Daniel and Rachel. We say, “What they really want is inner peace and to be free from guilt.” Yeah, probably not. What they really want is to be able to pay the mortgage without running out of money.

Or to find a great school for their kids. Or to turn their failing marriage around. Of course, none of that may be true in your local context, but the only way you’re going to find that out is by getting out of your office and into relationship with Dan and Rachel.

Once you know, once you really know, what your target’s desires are, then it’s a simple task to rework your sermon content from recruiting to enrollment. Start with whatever the need is and cast a vision of the desire fulfilled. Over the years, I’ve found the solution to every life’s problem and desire can be found right there between Genesis 1:1 and Revelation 22:21, and when all else fails, there’s always that “full and abundant life” verse in John 10:10 to fall back on.

That verse pretty much covers it all.

Enroll your listeners in their own vision. When you do, they’ll find the momentum to keep coming back.

Build Accountability Finally, let’s talk about your sermon and personal accountability, and by that, I mean the accountability of the hearers of the Word to not be hearers only (James 1:22). In my preaching class at Phillips, there are only two ways to bomb my class. The first, of course, is to not do the work. But second, and honestly I think more importantly, is if you preach a sermon that doesn’t ask the listeners to do something then you’ve just forfeited a decent grade. Now, by doing I mean just that. Asking the congregation to do something.

Physically. Something in both space and time. I don’t mean to “think about” something or to “realize” something else.

Here’s a real-world truth: real life transformation can be traced from someone’s actions backwards to their belief, not the other way around.

Let me prove it.

Does your board chair believe in evangelism?

Of course s/he does.

BUT … when was the last time they actually shared their faith with an unbeliever? I don’t mean that they invited someone to church, but actually engaged in evangelism.

If your board chair is like 99 percent of the nation’s church board chairs, that answer is a very long time ago, if ever. Belief ≠ Doing. On the other hand, doing reflects what someone believes.

The very best sermon I’ve ever heard delivered was from a young woman pastor in a Lutheran Church. She wrapped stories and emotions and current events and great biblical exposition into her message. Her delivery was impassioned and entertaining. I felt every major emotion from humor to heart brokenness. She put a checkmark in almost every Great Sermon box. But if she’d been in my preaching class, she’d have gotten a D or worse. Why? Because at the end, her closing plea was for the congregation to “Be More Forgiving.” Just that. Be more forgiving.

She didn’t ask me to pick up the phone and call someone I held a grudge against.

She didn’t ask me to go and have a conversation with the person in the congregation who had stepped on my toes.

She didn’t ask me to do anything.

Just “Let go and let God” or something equally banal. Let’s be honest, no one is going to be invited to the stage to deliver a twenty-minute TED Talk that concludes with “Be more forgiving” because everybody already knows deep in their heart they should be more forgiving. Telling us to do so is pointless. On the other hand, compel me to pull out my phone and text my daughter to let her off the hook for the $50 she borrowed two years ago (and still feels guilty about) or to make peace with my neighbor whose dog keeps rifling through my trash … those are do’s that could be life transforming and relationship healing. Telling someone to be more forgiving is something everyone already “believes in,” just like most of your members already believe in evangelism – and they aren’t doing that either.

If you want to get momentum for your church’s revitalization, you must inspire your members and your visitors and your returning guests to get out there and do something.

That said, let me invite you to engage in the practice I’ve been teaching for years. At the end of every sermon, always include a “Do This.” You could call it an Invitation, but it’s more than an invitation to walk the aisle to recommit their lives. It’s an invitation to do something that week as a result

of what you’ve experienced in worship. Your Do-This invitation should be something specific, concrete, and meaningful. Sometimes it could be, “Invite one of your neighbors to join you next week as we kick off the new sermon series on Coping with Loss.” Or it could be, “This week, reread John 3 and share your thoughts on the church’s Facebook Page.” It can be profound like “Send a card to someone who bullied you when you were a child and tell them you forgive them.”

Or it can be habit forming, “Before you get out of bed this week, talk to God and commit three outcomes you want to experience during the day. Then share those commitments with your prayer partner.”

So, where’s the accountability part in all this? (I mean, that is the title of this section, after all!) Simply this. The week after you make a To Do invitation, before you preach the next sermon in the series, stop and ask the congregation to share what they experienced from the To Do the week before. I’d suggest getting a few of your faithful folks on board with the conversation before worship so you know you’ll have at least a couple responses. If you repeat this pattern for every sermon and in every worship service, you’ll begin to hear more stories about how God is working in people’s lives … and when onlookers see God working, they get inspired. And when people are inspired, they begin to do the things that are life transforming. And when people’s lives are transformed, people talk about it. And when people talk about it with their unchurched friends, the unchurched friends begin to hope that maybe that could happen to me.

And when they start to hope that, they’ll show up. And when they show up, if they DO what you’ve invited them To Do, their lives will begin to be transformed. And when that happens … well, momentum happens. And when momentum happens, churches get revitalized.

So, there you have it. Three concrete ways to build momentum from the pulpit. Pick one and put it into practice for a month or two. When you do, you’ll see your vision begin to materialize. And who knows, maybe your preaching, coupled with a good Enrollment and a meaningful Do This, will be a significant part of your church’s revitalization.

Bill Tenny-Brittian is the managing partner of The Effective Church Group. For over thirty years, The Effective Church Group has been equipping churches and church leaders so they can be successful in reaching their mission. He is the co-author of The Role of the Senior Pastor and also teaches Pastoral Leadership for Phillips Seminary with an emphasis on leadership.

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Let’s Cover the Land in

Thank You Jesus Signs!

How it all started...

In 2016, a young teenager named Lucas Hunt prayed for help to display Easter signs in his hometown of Asheboro, NC. Also, he prayed that these efforts would have a giant impact on the Kingdom. A few weeks later a board member at his church, Connie Frazier, sought the Lord’s direction concerning an Easter project for their congregation.

Lucas and Connie were unaware of each other’s prayers and desires. Then, God spoke very clearly to Connie instructing her to design a Thank You Jesus yard sign that would be distributed nationwide.

Thank You Jesus signs were embraced and the wave of gratitude took hold.

Lucas’ prayers and vision, support from Lucas’ parents and Connie’s design and business background led to the creation of the Thank You Jesus signs. This project, with its roots in a small rural church, has turned into a 501(C)3 that receives royalties from the artwork to invest in sharing the Gospel. The investments include grants to spiritual non-profit organizations that seek to share God’s love and the many reasons why we Thank Jesus.

Over 250,000 signs have been sold along with car magnets, gar den flags and bracelets. Hundreds of people have been led by the Lord to purchase and display the signs as a ministry of sharing God’s goodness through Jesus Christ. Become part of the Thank You Jesus movement as it spreads throughout the country!

t r a p e Becofmthe o !

T N E M MOVE

www.thankyoujesussigns.com

6 Small Changes That Can Improve Your Guest Services Ministry (part 1)

By Bob Whitesel Guest services are your church’s front door to people who are hurting and seeking. And, in many churches guest services have been in place for quite some time. But as a church coach who analyzes churches regularly, I’ve noticed that most guest services are not as effective as they were 10, even five years ago.

Most churches need to reenergize their guest services. And this means to pivot the focus away from the needs of the church for volunteers/workers and move the focus to meeting the needs of those God is sending to us. Guests often visit us because they are hurting, have questions and/or need a friend. There are so many needs in the divided world today … and guest service workers are our front-line ministers.

Successful change begins with small wins according to research. Yet too often pastors and church leaders start with big changes and expect the change to trickle down. But research by Harvard leadership professor John Kotter reveals that change works its way up. It begins with small changes that validate bigger changes.

So here is part 1 in a two-part series. These are the first two small shifts or pivots that can lead to lasting improvement in your guest services. But remember, you don’t have to undertake all six. Just pick a few that work for you. And if they don’t work out, try another. Your goal is to have a couple of successful small changes that demonstrate to the larger con-

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gregation the importance of focusing your guest services on the needs of the people God is sending to your church.

Secret shoppers.

During my 30+ years of church consulting I regularly visit churches to analyze how guests feel. I even did it while I was at Fuller Theological Seminary in California working on my two doctorates. During one such California visit I remember a conversation with one young pastor. It went something like this: “Bob we’ve got a great guest services ministry. It’s populated by some of our most committed and long-term people. I’m sure you will find they are reaching out well to guests.”

With that admonition, I visited the church incognito along with a Presbyterian pastor who was shadowing me as part of my Missional Coaches program (to learn my consulting tools from 30 years of doing this). On Sunday morning, we both went our separate ways and reported back.

I visited the main guest services desk. There I found five energetic people happily conversing with another and drinking coffee. When I came up to the booth, they looked at me and said welcome, but they largely continued their conversations with one another. Then one person peeled off and came over to me and said, “Can I help you?” I said, “Yes I’d like to know about small groups.” The person told me they

had a brochure around somewhere and they would find it.

After about 2-3 minutes of rummaging through drawers (and uncomfortable glances from the other people at the welcome desk who were still conversing with each other) she said I should check back after the service. I thanked her, went outside and then around to another door to enter the foyer from the opposite end. There I came upon another guest services table. I asked them about children’s ministry, explaining I had grandchildren that would be interested in the children’s program. The lady told me to go back outside and go around to another door. Though the directions were convoluted, I surmised what she was suggesting because I had already walked the grounds. However, I was uncertain a newcomer would be able (or willing) to find the rather hidden children’s drop-off around the side of the building.

My Presbyterian pastor trainee also entered incognito but came through a door that was nearest the front of the church. Though it was in the front of the building, this was the historic entrance and today is largely unused. No one was there to greet him. But when he came in, he found a couple looking around. No one had greeted them either. Together they decided to go and look for the guest services.

Soon they found an usher who they asked about finding out more about the church. Apparently put off by guests coming from the area of the church in which they should not have been, he sternly warned that they should go back the way they came, enter in the doors by the parking lot and there they would find guest services.

Though these are small events, they can leave a lasting negative impression! It was possible in the guest’s eyes that the church was not sensitive to the uncomfortableness and newness of the guest. In my experience these events happen almost every Sunday in a church. And the leaders would address this, but they are largely unaware.

I’ve found that many guest missteps can be pivoted to better options when you get feedback from incognito church shoppers. People from your own church aren’t usually able to gauge feelings of guests because they already know many people within the church. The fellowship factor clouds any perception of a lapse in friendliness.

The “secret shopper” tactic is to ask a friend who attends a different church to be a “secret shopper at your church.”

Then offer to be a secret shopper for their church. On the same Sunday, you go to their church as a secret shopper and they visit your church.

Don’t immediately write down what you’re feeling during the visit, but wait until afterwards. Then write it down and compare your notes. Put together a report with one part on your church and one part on their church. Then share it with

your appropriate church leaders. Churches that I coach often do this once a quarter to analyze improvements in outreach to newcomers.

Availability of prayer.

People usually visit a church because they have needs. Research by Dr. Flavil Yeakley at the University of Illinois found out that the No. 1 reason people come to church is because of illness or death of a loved one. Secondly, they visit our churches due to marriage and/or family crises. And thirdly, they visit because of financial problems. Therefore, many people are coming to our churches with questions about death/illness, marriage/family and financial difficulties.

However, when our churches try to recruit them to be volunteers or to join a membership class, the guest can feel the church is callous and insensitive to their needs.

Our first response to their needs should be to listen to them and to pray. This means taking time to hear their problems.

But when guests enter the church, we usually don’t have space or availability to listen to them or to pray for them.

Thus, another small win is to create a prayer room close to the front entrance. With good signage, a quiet atmosphere and trained prayer partners in the room, people who are in need will be encouraged to stop in before the service and receive prayer. Often people are in such a need that they chafe at the idea of waiting for 45-60 minutes before being able to go to the prayer room. The prayer room should certainly still be available after the service. But having this initial availability allows hurting people to have their needs addressed at the onset of their visit.

Part 2 in the Next Issue.

These are the first two of six small actions that can begin to refocus and pivot your guest services to greater impact. For more information on Pivots 3, 4, 5 and 6 … check out the next issue.

Bob Whitesel is an award-winning author/consultant on church health and growth. He has been called “the key spokesperson on change theory in the church today” by a national magazine, co-founded an accredited seminary (Wesley Seminary at IWU) and created one of the nation’s most respected church health and growth consulting firms: ChurchHealth.net

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The

Revitalizer LIBRARY

Lead to Revitalize: 15 Practices of a Church Revitalization Leader is a publication from the Kentucky Baptist Convention. The work is a collection of eleven authors addressing essential topics such as evangelism, prayer, preaching, and leading change. Lead to Revitalize is a gold mine waiting for the reader to claim its prize nugget.

Lead to Revitalize is one of the few volumes that call its readers, most likely church leaders and pastors, to depend upon the Lord. Several of the chapters focus on developing the heart of the revitalization leader. The work addresses topics of vision, church practice, and organizational leadership. Those issues, however, flow from the heart of a leader who is dependent upon the Lord, regularly seeking the Lord in prayer and leading the congregation to do the same. Andy McDonald writes, The best revitalization strategy in the world won’t produce a revitalized church if there is no dependence on Christ as reflected in desperate cries for His help in prayer. Before you develop a strategy, before you make a single plan, and before you recruit your first leader in a revitalization effort, bathe every bit of the work in prayer. Acknowledge that you are completely dependent on Christ and that apart from Him, you can do nothing (12.)

Additionally, the work focuses much attention on developing the heart of the revitalization leader. Practical tips and strategies are delivered, but the majority of the pages lend themselves to growing the shepherd who will yield to the Lord in the hopes of leading a local flock to greener pastures.

One criticism of the book is its organization. The authors address each of their topics, but they feel randomly placed together. As a result, working through the book, the reader will navigate between topics that feel disjointed from one another. Organizing the material into groupings such as spiritual formation, leadership necessities, and church practices would aid the readability and retrieval of material.

A second criticism is that various sections are cliché. Some of the paragraphs and suggestions are the repeated and repackaged messages. While habit does build success, repackaging the same Christmas gift every year is tiresome. Perhaps though, the regular volume of repeated catchphrases designed for well-crafted optics is jading this reviewer’s reading.

Lead to Revitalize is a good book, easy to read, and a great addition to the Revitalizers Library. The work should be read in a group setting of pastors and church leaders discussing each chapter and its application to their lives and the churches they serve.

Rob Hurtgen is the Pastor of First Baptist Church Chillicothe, Missouri. He holds an M.Div from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry degree in Church Revitalization from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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Five Ways to Win Together

By Gary Moritz Achieving small wins in church revitalization can go a long way. Many churches feel hopeless and ineffective due to the challenges and circumstances they are facing. While some churches are content with the status quo and living off the fumes of their past wins, many churches desire to experience the momentum that new wins can bring. God is still building His church, and He wants to use you and your church to accomplish it. Small wins can help jumpstart a church revitalization.

I remember a scene from one of my kid’s favorite movies. In that scene a Mexican Chihuahua felt defeated. One of his dog friends said to him, “Remember bro, you are not a ‘Mexi-can’t’, you are ‘Mexi-can’.” After that short pep talk, the dog continued to victory. Too many pastors and leaders think “Can’t” when they should be thinking “Can”. Why? Because God can.

You can experience small wins in your church even though you feel as if you are losing big. Instead of focusing on all the big problems, start focusing on small wins in a few areas.

1. Win by praying together.

If your church needs a miracle, then pray more. We move towards what we pray towards. Understanding the urgency and power of prayer is a sign of a righteous people (James 5:16).

Prayer changes people. It changes attitudes, it changes perspectives, and it changes the church. When a church is not praying, it is straying. The result of prayerlessness results in self entering the body which will eventually cause the church to self-destruct. People coming together in prayer for the church builds small wins. It focuses people on the heart of God and what He wants for their lives and the church. It makes people see and think differently and builds reliance on God. After all, without Him, we can do nothing.

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Make your small win celebrations prayer celebrations, a time when you pause and thank God for what He has done. If you want to see growth in your ministry, then start praying over every area of your ministry. Challenge your people and your volunteers to pray together for God to move and work through them. From the parking team to the tech team, everyone serving and leading should be praying with the expectation that someone’s life will change as they serve. Life-changing stories come through salvations, baptisms, a first-time guest, a breakthrough, or an accomplishment in someone’s life. Use whatever good is happening to embrace the wins and live in expectation of what God is going to do next.

2. Win by thinking positively together.

When you have positive people in your church who are united and desire the same outcome as you, this a win. Think of these people as prayer allies and partners in the future mission and vision of the church. Positive church members pray. Positive church members carry the burdens of the people and ask God for breakthroughs. Positive church members fight for their church and stand by it. Positive church members think about what is best for their church and its future. Positive church members think through situations and pray for the right answers. Their words, tone, and attitude protect the culture of the church.

Thinking positively together can feed a hunger for God. When we think about the power of God and what He can do, nothing is impossible. We can’t help but think positively. Established churches in need of revitalization need to keep thinking and adapting while innovating for the future. Think about what God wants for your people and what He can do in and

through them. Together you can see the power of the God move through your church if you focus on thinking positively together.

3. Win by strengthening together.

In church revitalization, it is easy to overlook the strengths of your church. Much of the focus in church revitalization focuses on the negative, not the positive or strengths of the church.

God has entrusted people to you who have gifts and abilities that can be used to bring strength to the body. Your responsibility is to develop those strengths and equip them to do the work of the ministry. Do you know the strengths, gifts, and abilities of the people in your church? One of my favorite things to do as a pastor is help people discover their God-given giftings and abilities and how they can use them in the church and community. Focus on who you currently have and what is going right. Then work to help them help you make things even better. Count the blessings that God has placed right in front of you. Don’t waste energy looking over the fence at what you don’t have or wish you had. Deploy your current people using their abilities and availability to create new opportunities to engage others to do the same. Release them to do more extraordinary things for the Kingdom.

If your church is going to strengthen and work together to see wins, then everyone must put aside their personal preferences and work together. While people may have good intentions, dividing over music, paint, carpet, or budgets is not the way to strengthen the church. The only way you can win is to have a shared mission and vision for your church and community. Stepping outside of the four walls of the church and seeing the brokenness in the community will cause momentum for the entire body to act. The church doesn’t need spectators.

It needs people willing to engage in the work of the ministry. When the needs of the community become the priority and not the individual needs of the people in the church, the entire body is strengthened in behavior, belief, conversation, giving, love, and faith. The church becomes less critical towards one another and more praiseworthy to God. 4. Win by dreaming together.

When was the last time you meditated on the power of God, the power that formed the universe, the power that is behind our existence, and the power that rescued us from a life of sin?

God’s power is something to meditate on and dream about.

What if you prayed for God’s power to reach your community, to rescue every broken person, in every broken house, and to restore every broken soul? As a church revitalizer, you cannot bring health and vitality to your church apart from the power of God. You cannot do it in your own strength. God has the power to restore what has been broken, and the biggest threat to a church is a pastor or church member that thinks they can build the church on their own strength, intellect, and wisdom. Building the church is Jesus’ job (Matthew 16:18).

When we step out of the way and let the Holy Spirit of God step into our situations to move and do whatever He wants to do, powerful things will happen. What would happen if you

and your people came together to dream with God about the possibilities in your church and community? What if outreach wasn’t just a program, but a way of life? Dream with your church and share with them that God can open every eye to the miraculous possibilities of God’s blessing. “For with God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

5. Establish the WIN together.

Have you ever found yourself trying to solve a problem only to realize it was a problem you weren’t meant to solve? I am guilty of this. Sometimes we bring inadequate solutions to the wrong problem because we are asking the wrong questions. If you are going to experience small wins, you must first define What’s Important Now (WIN). Wins look different for different churches and groups of people. Sometimes the battles we face daily are because people do not understand their WIN. They may be working to solve the wrong problem. To experience the small wins, people need to understand their big WIN. This involves asking the right questions. As people are serving and engaging in your church, do they really know what is important and what makes them successful in their role?

Take a volunteer on the parking team. Their WIN as they serve on this team is to be the first and last smile for every person as they come onto the church campus making sure they point them in the right direction. A worship leader’s WIN may be to prepare the hearts of the people to hear the message that is coming after the worship through song preparing the way for the Lord to work. While almost every serving team and ministry in the church has a different WIN, they all work together to accomplish the overall mission and vision of the church. Winning is about coming together. Spend some time with each team or ministry in the church and work towards developing a strong WIN that is focused on the mission and vision of the church and their role. This helps make the WIN clear and allows people to celebrate when it is achieved.

The challenges and circumstances you are facing may seem big, but don’t lose sight of our BIG God. Determine to work on achieving small wins that can help build momentum towards greater health and vitality.

Gary Moritz is the lead pastor of City United Church, located in Lunenburg, MA. With a church planter mindset, the Lord called him and his family to New England in 2013 to take over a church in need of revitalization through a pastoral succession. He also works for Liberty University as a subject matter expert on church revitalization and as a assistant professor in the School of Divinity, and he serves as the Director of Church Revitalization for the Baptist Convention of New England.

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Available in Paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com

The Leadership Link:

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Revitalization is a Daily Journey

By Michael Atherton The work of revitalization is better described as a marathon than a sprint. Far too often, the revitalizer gets started down the road of revitalization and, after a series of disappointments, they lose heart. Such disappointment can lead the revitalizer to give up on their efforts, or worse yet, to leave their service arena in pursuit of another ministry. However, this all-too-common reality can often be avoided by simply choosing from the outset to enter the revitalization scene with reasonable expectations.

How might we define reasonable expectations within this context? For starters, not every revitalization project will produce a megachurch. How many pastors expect that a revisioning process or changing our methodology will automatically build a church running 1000 to 1500 people? Anything less, we are conditioned to level a failure. This conclusion is unfortunate because the scorecard for becoming a kingdom-minded, gospel-focused church is about more than just numbers. To say it another way, you can be running 1000 in attendance each week and still be in desperate need of revitalization because it is more than just a numbers game.

Beyond numbers, we can also affirm that many revitalizers today carry the unrealistic expectation that their project/process will only take a few months. The fact is the church you are serving did not get into the state of needing revitalization in just a few months, and they likely won’t experience such in just a few months. A revitalizer willing to tackle the call of revitalization is probably signing up for a 1000-to-1250-day journey (that is, three to four years).

As such, revitalization is more than a program. It is more than numerical growth. More than a building renovation or a new name, revitalization is a process that often requires daily attention. I would draw your attention to

Nehemiah. To be fair, Nehemiah’s task should not serve as an obvious template for a modern-day church revitalization effort. Clearly, Nehemiah’s mission was different, but he employed some principles that could undoubtedly encourage the revitalizer on his daily journey.

1. Nehemiah was committed to prayer.

After receiving news of the broken-down walls, notice that Nehemiah’s response was simply to pray and fast for many days. In fact, he likely spent as many as three months in intense prayer over this matter (read his prayer in Nehemiah 1:4-11). There are all kinds of lessons to be gleaned from Nehemiah’s life of prayer. But that is a lesson to be explored at a later time. Suffice it to say, Nehemiah was a man committed to prayer. Though Nehemiah 1:4-11 is often considered the model prayer of Nehemiah, the fact is that, in the 13 chapters of the book that chronicles his wall rebuilding effort, Nehemiah is found praying in no less than ten different instances.

• Nehemiah 1:4-11 • Nehemiah 2:4 • Nehemiah 4:4-5 • Nehemiah 5:19 • Nehemiah 6:9 • Nehemiah 6:14 • Nehemiah 9:5-38 • Nehemiah 13:14 • Nehemiah 13:22 • Nehemiah 13:29-30 God has called you to serve His church, and our responsibility is to carry out His ideas, His plans, and His vision.

There is no way to understand His plan and vision if you do not meet with Him regularly and consistently in prayer. As a revitalizer, you must, let me say it again, you must hear from the Lord. Would Joshua have ever thought to walk around the walls of Jericho for seven

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days if the Lord had not spoken to him? Would Jonah have ever gone to Nineveh had God not spoken to him? Would Nehemiah have ever gone back to rebuild the walls had God not spoken to him? I could go on and on….

As one who has been part of multiple revitalization efforts, I can assure you, your efforts will surely fall short if you are unwilling to practice prayer daily and diligently. Revitalization is way too tough to do on your own!

2. Nehemiah was committed to involving others.

In Nehemiah 3, we read the account of when the people got to work rebuilding the wall. You may gloss over this chapter rendering it equivalent to a genealogical passage. But that would be a mistake as there are many lessons to learn.

For example, within the thirty-two verses, you will read the phrase “next to him/them” or “after him/them” some 31 times. Nehemiah may have been leading the effort, but he was far from the only one working. In all, there were over 75 names of individuals listed and some 15 groupings of people.

As a revitalization leader, when you come to appreciate that God has uniquely gifted and placed each person within your ministry for a purpose, you will gain an even greater appreciation of the value they bring to the process. Each person God places under your care represents resources of time, talents, and treasures that will likely need to be harnessed to accomplish a revitalizing task. A leader can glean from each individual that will help propel you through the challenging tasks of revitalization. Each person can represent the encouragement necessary to press forward through the difficult days of revitalization.

3. Nehemiah was committed to the discipline of focus.

Sometimes life feels like an exercise in avoiding distractions. Multiple times throughout the wall-building efforts, hope must have given way to hopelessness. Whether the people were facing an emotional distraction or the threat of physical attack, it seemed that fear and anxiety lurked around every corner. There were times when Nehemiah was tempted to take his focus off the job and meet with those who had less than his best interest in mind. Yet, at every turn, Nehemiah encouraged the people to keep their eyes focused on the finish line.

Despite the opposition, the challenges, and the setbacks, Nehemiah was remarkably able to lead the people to finish the fortification of the wall around Jerusalem in a mere fif-

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ty-two days. Can you imagine this type of undertaking, with all the obstacles and opposition? Yet Nehemiah made the concerted effort to acknowledge that he would focus on God and the job he had been commissioned to do instead of the noises of all the distractions surrounding him.

The discipline of focus is likely underestimated as it relates to ministry revitalization. Consider the light that illuminates the room where your family will enjoy dinner this evening.

That light receives very little praise for simply doing its job.

There is really nothing special about it, nothing that grabs your attention. But, light, when highly focused and intensified, can become powerful. In a laser form, it will have the ability to cut metals or assist in surgical procedures. What is the difference? Focus! The same is true in revitalization.

A church will receive anything but pedestrian results when the leader can help the congregation harness the value of focus.

A Concluding Thought Contrary to what you may believe, some in the church wonder if their leader is able to cast a vision and stay focused long enough to see it through. They have had pastor after pastor share many compelling visions Mission statements have changed every three years. Their staff has come and gone. Their new and improved websites and social media presence have been touted as being their missing piece repeatedly. Programs have been buried, started, rehabilitated, and strengthened. Though each of these tools has its place, at some point, we have to ask the million-dollar question: Are you willing to stay committed to the daily journey of revitalization long enough to see that compelling vision become a reality?

Michael Atherton has served as the Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of O’Fallon, O’Fallon, MO for 15 years. Leading a church in a church merger, he has learned firsthand the challenges of a revitalizer. Mike is the author of The Revitalized Church. Mike leads a Mentored Master of Divinity program at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary and is past President of the Colorado Baptist Convention.

The local church is the only organization that can facilitate eternal hope, lasting change, and total transformation in the lives of people and communities everywhere. Even so, today’s local churches are often in desperate need of renewal and revitalization themselves. In The Revitalized Church, Pastor Michael Atherton uses his firsthand experiences to show how a local church community can once again become vibrant. The Revitalized Church shares Atherton’s eighteen-month journey merging two church communities with a common vision and discusses the challenges and the victories he encountered. In addition, he examines the key biblical leadership principles that were used to help sustain the church community.

No Way! Did that just happen?

By Ron Smith Have you ever had one of those moments where you could not believe what just happened?

Most often those moments come as a surprise. Caught up during life we get so focused on the end game we are surprised when something small happens. After the surprise of the moment processes, we then realize just how big that one thing was.

Can you remember when your children took their first step? Can you recall that moment when you realized you reached your desired weight after months of dieting? There are those moments when we wake up to the reality that we “did it” and we exclaim, No Way, did that just happen?

When we first start on a journey, we begin with the end game in mind. When a football team takes the field at the ten-yard line they look to the end zone as the goal. The “win” is defined in that scenario as scoring a touchdown. But it takes 90 more yards from the 10-yard line to achieve success.

The work of revitalization has the goal of scoring a touchdown.

Success in the long term is defined by the touchdown of church health being restored, life change occurring, and numerical growth happening.

How do we get to the end zone when it seems so far away? How does a pastor keep the church focused, energized, and motivated on the journey? To arrive at this answer we need to understand the psychology of change, growth, and success.

For all of us we wake with the desire to be more, to do more and to cross the plane of the field and exclaim “touchdown.”

The touchdown is different for every church. What is common among all churches pursuing change is the big picture of what

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needs to happen. Whether daunting or delighting the declaration of a big vision places the journey of 90 yards between us and the goal.

Along the way, and with each step, the process of moving towards the goal begins to wear on us. We face setbacks. We lose yards. We view obstacles to overcome. All of this can eat away at energy, focus, and motivation.

The psychology of change, growth, and success are best achieved when we celebrate each step and the small steps along the way.

Multiple business journals, leadership books, and studies all make note of the significant contribution of celebrating the little to arrive at the big.

Let me share some proven insight. After five turnarounds in almost every time zone I think I may have taken a few notes. After thirty years I feel like I am just now getting some level of understanding on the calling and task of the pastorate.

As we look at the “endzone” let’s think about what it takes to get there. To know where we are headed let me give you the points and then expound on them.

The yard markers needed to reach the goal along the way are: blessing, changing, measuring, and celebrating.

The steps along the way that produce big in the end are learning how to a) Bless your people, b) Change the emotional posture, c) Measure Differently and d) Celebrate Frequently.

Most people like cheerleaders over bosses. We would much rather hear things like, “you can do it, good job, and you’re going to

make it.” Not many of us wake up and hope to be bossed around and barked at to work harder.

The power of speaking life and blessing people with words of hope, encouragement, inspiration, and motivation cannot be missed. Learn to watch the church and point out the good. Use your words to share stories. Bless your people. When you bless your people, you are building the future. Write about the blessing. Send cards, notes, and emails.

Here is a great principle to remember: Work plus praise increases energy. Work without praise drains energy.

John Maxwell gives great advice on the power of words.1 “The least important word: I*(gets the least amount done) The most important word: We*(gets the most amount done) The two most important words: Thank You The three most important words: All is forgiven The four most important words: What is your opinion The five most important words: You did a great job The six most important words: I want to know you better”

In our weekly staff meeting the very first agenda item is a time to share where we see God moving. We spend the first moments of staff listening to the ways we heard from others or witnessed ourselves the great things God was doing. We label this time as God sightings. Each week we as a staff are encouraged to keep up the good work. It’s a WEEKLY reminder to stay in the game and to not give up.

Pastors you will need to prop up your people to see God so they take steps of faith that will propel them forward.

This leads us to an easy transition and understanding of the next step, measure differently.

It’s good to measure by large metrics such as buildings, baptisms, and budgets. What gets us there is the journey of many steps. Along the way learn to measure the moments not just the monuments. Learn to measure the everyday with catalysts of God sightings and God moments.

*Emphasis added

Setting big goals is necessary. Communicating frequently in little sound bites tunes the heart and the ear to tell the feet to keep moving forward.

Words of life along the way keep the motivation high. As motivation is present energy is created sparking the process of creativity, communication, and excitement. All of this allows you to have moments of, “No way! Did that just happen?”

When these steps are taken it becomes crystal clear what we need to celebrate. I would rather attend a wedding over a funeral. I would RSVP quickly for a celebration event before I RSVP’d for a “how to do your taxes” seminar. People like to celebrate.

Pastors bless your people! Speak life if you want to experience life. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruits” (Proverbs 18:21).

Of all the people that have been given life and the power to understand life it is Christians. We need to celebrate this life. The more often we celebrate the more frequent we will hear, No Way! Did that just happen? And then we look up and the distance of 90 yards was covered quickly!

As you bless people with words you are beginning to change the emotional posture. Words and emotions go together. Words are the catalyst and emotions are nourishers. When applied properly they change the posture of our emotional stance. Life presents us with obstacles and toxins. A negative mouth and a negative mind breed a negative culture. A negative culture is not healthy enough to move the ball down the field.

How do you change the emotional posture? Listen to your own words. Listen to the words of others around you. Are the words catalysts and nourishers that realize steps of success? Often, we do not realize how negative our speech is.

People need to hear words of hope and encouragement. This applies to the “people” corporately. Speak life to the church. Give them snapshot views of success that the church is experiencing.

Never underestimate the power of the little steps!

As God instructed Joshua, “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you,” (Joshua 1:3).

Ron Smith is the Senior Pastor of WaterStone Church in Longwood and Lake Mary, Florida. Ron is the author of Churches Gone Wild. Ron serves as the National Coach for Renovate and the Co-Leader of Renovate One Day with Tom Cheyney.

1 John Maxwell, Be a People Person: Effective Leadership

Through Effective Relationships (David C Cook; New edition (October 1, 2007).

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TACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR CHURCH REVITALIZATION AND RENEWAL “Gary Moritz has lived the life of leading revitalization as well as anyone I know, especially in a New England context. In Carry On, you do not merely have someone reporting to you the theories of church revitalization, you have someone who has led it and lived it, tactic by tactic. What an incredible gift this book is to church leaders around the world.”

Thom S. Rainer, Founder and CEO, Church Answers; Bestselling Author of The Post Quarantine Church

THIS BOOK WILL OFFER YOU STEPS, RESOURCES, AND DIRECTION ON HOW TO BECOME TACTICAL IN THE FIGHT. USE IT AS A FIELD MANUAL TO HELP YOU AND THOSE AROUND YOU UNDERSTAND REVITALIZATION AND THE STEPS NEEDED TO BRING YOUR CHURCH BACK TO HEALTH.

IT WILL TAKE ...

TACTICAL ENGAGEMENT

TACTICAL ENVISIONING

TACTICAL ENLARGEMENT

TACTICAL EXECUTION

Determine to be “All In” and refuse to quit the fight for church revitalization and renewal.

Learn to trust in, dream about, and envision what God wants to do in you and your community.

Stay true to your call and learn to say “Yes” to whatever zip code God calls you to.

Identify and execute your tactical next steps towards revitalization and renewal.

NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON Gary Moritz is married to the co-author Jana Moritz and is the lead pastor of City United Church located in Lunenburg, MA. Together, the Lord called them and their family to New England in 2013 to take over a church in need of revitalization through a pastoral succession. Gary works for Liberty University as a Subject Matter Expert in Church Revitalization and as an assistant professor in the School of Divinity. He also serves as the Director of Church Revitalization for the Baptist Convention of New England and is the co-host of Revitalizationtoday.com with Dr. Tom Cheyney.

6 Steps to Maximize ‘Wins’ in Church Revitalization

By George Thomasson I have often heard it said, “A win is a win.” Someone will usually say this when a team has played below its potential.

Somehow, however, they managed to win the game. It felt like a hollow victory, but still-a win is a win.

After the game, an astute coaching staff will watch the films, identify problem areas and work on solutions motivating the players to reach their goals for the season. The coaches know that it is not just about one game but about an entire season. They will always take steps to move the team forward in the standings.

Church revitalization is not a sprint but a marathon! It is made up of one step at a time toward renewed spiritual vitality and gospel impact. But what are some practical steps that churches can implement to build toward revitalization?

And how can leaders help their people celebrate even small “wins?” There are many such steps, but I will just share six.\ 1. Deal with reality.

Before you can get someone saved, you first must get them lost. What I mean is that before a person is willing to become a follower of Christ, he must first realize his need for Christ.

He must be shown that he is a sinner who cannot save himself and only through Christ’s death and resurrection on his behalf can he experience forgiveness and eternal life. In a similar way, a declining church must be confronted with its spiritual condition. Pull out the records. Show them a 10year profile of devastating decline. Help them to see that if something radical isn’t done soon, the church will cease to exist.

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In our county in Georgia, a church located on the busiest traffic corridor in the county disbanded a few months ago.

Several healthy churches offered to make them a campus in their multisite strategy promising to remodel their facilities, bring in children’s workers, worship teams, preachers and provide large launch teams. Refusing to deal with the inevitable reality of their decline, they put off accepting help until it was too late. To their credit, they donated the property to their local association to be sold to establish a foundation to assist other declining churches in revitalization. Though this will certainly be a blessing to help many churches, the need for a strong church in that area still exists.

2. Define the purpose.

Help the people to understand that the ultimate purpose of church revitalization is not to save the church from dying.

The real purpose is to become a vital, effective church focused on reaching its community with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Help the people to see that it is not their church. It is God’s church. It is not for their enjoyment but for their employment!

Their church should exist to bring glory to Christ. Paul said emphatically that “Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her.” Eph. 5:25 His church is made up of precious people who have received new life and an eternal purpose. What is that purpose. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.” Jn. 10:10 He also said, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Lk. 19:10 The purpose of a revitalized church is to become a vital, relevant, community of believers shar-

ing the good news of Jesus in their community and around the world. They are to make disciples who make disciples.

Mt. 28:19, 20 3. Determine limitations.

Help the church to answer the questions: “What factors have contributed to our decline? What is holding us back from being an effective, growing church?” The remaining leaders must be challenged to struggle with these questions. It will not be easy and in many ways very humbling. They may suggest some of the following factors: • A non-existent or inadequate guest services ministry.

• Poorly maintained facilities that no longer reflect their updated community.

• No clear and compelling mission, values, strategy, measures, and vision.

• Out-of-touch ministries of worship, children, students, and adults.

• The absence of an effective disciple-making process that prepares people for service.

• The lack of an online system to welcome new people through social media presence.

Once specific limitations are determined by the leadership, begin sharing them with the church. Lead the church to pray intentionally for God’s direction to address the areas of concern.

4. Decide on teams.

Prioritize the limitations asking the question - “What limitations, if solved, will make the greatest impact toward revitalization?” Then recruit small teams according to leadership ability, passion and giftedness to work on solutions for their assigned limitation. One good way to do this is to call them “90-Day Teams.” Leadership should meet with all the teams at the same time to thank them for their willingness to serve, clarify expectations and answer questions. They will report back to the full group in 90-days. This is a great way to inject peer-to-peer accountability and excitement for anticipated progress.

5. Delineate goals.

Each team should be instructed on how to develop S.M.A.R.T. goals.

• Specific – Goals that are too general cannot be measured and do not usually result in desired accomplishment. An example would be not to just pray for the missionaries but to pray for a specific missionary family on a specific mission field.

• Measurable – If a goal cannot be measured, how will you know when it is reached? Many will set as a goal, for instance, to have more people trained in children’s ministry. It is much better to say 6 more new leaders trained in children’s ministry.

• Attainable – If the goal is so big that it is unlikely to be reached, it can demoralize the team. Our staff, for instance, set a goal to have 1,000 people come through our Connection Room per year. We only had a few hundred people visit the Connection Room, even though we did all we could to encourage them to come. We realized it was not really an attainable goal and reduced it the next year.

• Relevant – Make sure that your goals, if reached, will help reach your objective of solving your assigned limitation.

• Timely – When do you hope to accomplish your goal? If left open ended, like, “We want to reach 20 new families,” it will beg the question, “By when?” It should read, “We want to reach 20 new families in the next 12 months.”

Note: Some have suggested updating the S.M.A.R.T. acronym by adding E.R. for Evaluated and Reviewed (I would suggest Resourced – What resources do you need to accomplish your goal?)

A specific date should be set for teams to submit their goals and they should be reviewed and adjusted as needed.

6. Delight in wins.

As you track progress toward accomplishing your goals, don’t forget to celebrate, no matter how small the wins seem to be. Remember, the church has probably been in rapid decline for many years. The people are most likely disillusioned and dejected about the state of their church. They are in desperate need of good news. When they hear a good report, they will be greatly encouraged.

Example: If one of your goals is to enlist 5 people to serve as greeters in your new Guest Services Ministry by October 1, 2021, don’t wait till the deadline to report progress. If you have 3 people enlisted in September, share enthusiastically from the pulpit that 3 have already consented to serve as greeters and encourage your people to pray about being one of the remaining 2. This way you help your people to celebrate small victories. Remember, a win is a win as you move forward in this marathon adventure called church revitalization.

George Thomasson is a native of Arkansas but spent most of his ministry in Florida and Texas. He holds degrees from Palm Beach Atlantic University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He presently serves as Mobilization Pastor for Christ Place Church in Flowery Branch, Georgia.

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Many coaches have the gift of providing pastors in church revitalization the listening ear they need, but what they lack is the wealth of resources needed to provide the church revitalizer with the tools to keep them succeeding. At the heart of every successful church revitalization coach is a strong belief that every pastor is a uniquely valuable servant of the Lord with distinct giftedness and potential for greatness in the realm of revitalization! The Renovate Group will help you uncover the ongoing tools you will need to begin your journey into the coaching of pastors who desire to see their churches revitalized.

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Discipling Small Wins

By Steve Smith In a previous article I talked about the Messy Middle that every revitalizing pastor will enter. The Messy Middle is the challenging time which you encounter after you begin to lead your congregation in pursuing spiritual health and renewed outreach to the harvest field where God has your church.

When you are in the Messy Middle you will sense that: • Not everything is working. In fact, some things you try will absolutely never work for your church. This feels frustrating.

• Not everyone is coming on board with the changes.

Perhaps you’ve got your early adopters, but not the majority yet. Or some of the people that were joining you earlier are now pushing back because they don’t like the changes.

• Some people are leaving the church over the changes.

That hurts.

• Some influential people are demanding that you go back to the way things were.

• You don’t seem to have momentum. It feels like you’re pushing everything uphill but never reaching the top.

• Some people that you are partnering with are not working collaboratively.

In the previous article, I talked about becoming an adaptive leader in order to deal honestly with leaders who are not yet with you. That is the long game of overcoming the Messy Middle.

But how do you thrive in the short run? How do you help your congregation stay the path with you when momentum seems stalled and the big picture is not emerging? The answer is, celebrate your small wins.

What constitutes a true small win?

While it is easier to point to some finished project, such as makeover of the chapel, or launching a better system, like a more inclusive small group model, these types of wins will have only a temporary impact on your congregation. For the moment they think, “We have done something good.” This can please them and generate fresh excitement. But the joy and momentum of these kinds of wins can be lost at the next church business meeting.

Instead, I suggest that true small wins that have a long-lasting effect when projects and programs are not quite working consist of the people you disciple. And it is the accumulation of growing disciples that ultimately pushes the church past the bump of the Messy Middle.

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Why do I say this? While I was in training, I heard one of my teachers say, “If you want to have excellent leaders around you, you will have to raise them up yourself.” Because of this insight I invested time in discipling and mentoring people who were unready to lead or, if already leaders, unready to partner with me. Through this I gained spiritual capital that paid out huge dividends during the rocky moments of our Messy Middle.

Meet Gordon. Gordon was the lay leader of a small church needing revitalization that I pastored. Funny, gifted and intelligent, he was well on his way to leading the church away from God’s purpose for it. He had most of its members in his pyramid business downline. He generally made most of the decisions for the church, which ticked off others, a number of whom had permanently left the congregation (including one couple who quit the church the Sunday I started). I began to spend time with him to informally disciple him. I taught him to refocus his life on the gospel. And he did. And he changed in ways that others in the congregation noticed. He used his influence to bring others in the church to pursue revitalization together. He welcomed new people into the church without making them a target for his business. His compassionate side came to the forefront and his spiritual life became real. This was a win.

Meet Gayle. She was a senior member of the congregation.

Although highly gifted and having a huge heart, she was

that no one was willing to adopt and I had to go back to the drawing board. They all encouraged me to get past this stumble.

They were the small wins that helped change our church’s reputation in that tiny community. Instead of being known for unpleasant encounters and division, they became known as a compassionate church that took in broken people and helped them become whole.

As you might have noticed, to get such small wins, you have to be a discipler. Not just a discipler of the new believer so he or she will become part of the army, but also of those who have attained positions of influence over the congregation.

So let me make five suggestions to help you in this pursuit:

essentially on the sidelines when I arrived. Her kids had all grown, her felt need to invest in the life of the church had diminished—until her accident. While laying in her hospital bed, God showed her His plan for her future service, which she shared with me during one of my many visits. Gayle became one of my partners in ministry and I, in turn, guided her to spiritual truths and practices in which she excelled. She also influenced the congregation to pursue revitalization. People responded to her influence. This was a win.

Meet Betty. She was the person with whom Gayle had the head-on car collision. She and her husband needed to know Jesus. I visited her in the hospital after the collision and showed her Christ’s love. She and her husband came to church. They gave their lives to Jesus. I and others discipled them. She eventually became a Bible teacher. They too were open to seeing God use the church in a fresh way. This was a win.

These people, plus numerous others that I and the church members discipled were true small wins. They were the small wins that mattered when we were hit from the outside by a couple of doctrinal disputes which pulled some of our attenders into their orbit. They stood their ground with me and refused to let these theological aberrations derail us.

They were the small wins that mattered when I bumped my nose on introducing an evangelism approach for the church

1. Always guide those you disciple to pursue intimacy with God. You are not the Holy Spirit and you don’t want to be.

He is the one who will change their hearts and minds.

2. Don’t give in to the idea that underdeveloped leaders will never want to grow further. Help them weigh out the difference between their spiritual maturity and their positional authority.

3. Give those who have only lived their faith out as a church-goer a picture of what it means to be a kingdom servant. Expand their biblical and practical understanding of belonging to Jesus.

4. Read significant books together instead of the latest Christian best seller. For example, Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer is one that every leader should read. Find books like this to build into the disciples you are making.

5. Make their potential part in the vision strategy alive for them. Use your role in leading your church’s vision strategy to personally recruit and challenge the various people you disciple to step up their spiritual game so they can fulfill a particular role in revitalizing the congregation.

Face it, not every ministry day, week or even month is going to be wonderful. Some days during the Messy Middle will be really hard. Learning to be an adaptive leader will help you get through this. But the small wins of raising up excellent leaders around you will sustain your heart for the journey.

Dr. Steve Smith is the Founder of Church Equippers Ministries, equipping churches to make and retain more disciples. He trains pastors by coaching them in Church GameChangers, which includes training in transformational discipleship and the step-by-step building of church ministry systems. For more information, go to: www.churchequippers.com.

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Celebrating the “Little Wins”

By Steve Sells Celebrating “little wins” is essential to any church revitalization process and the spiritual well-being of any church congregation. In fact, it will move the revitalization process forward. We tend to celebrate when the big accomplishment comes along but it is just as vital to acknowledge the many smaller wins in the process. Commemorating the “little win” allows the congregation to enjoy the small successes as they wait for the big achievements. Sometimes the wins are so small that not everyone in the church sees them.

Celebration comes from the heart. I am reminded of the words of Psalm 126:3 when I think of celebrating what God has done for us…“The Lord had done great things for us; we were joyful.” However, sometimes leaders become exhausted and burdened down by the pressure of the task that they lose sight of the joy that comes from celebrating what God has done. When a church enters a revitalization process the leader must cultivate an atmosphere of celebration. The leader must constantly and consistently point out how God has blessed by giving victory in even the smallest of wins. A leader’s determination to lead his congregation to celebrate the “little wins” will transform the culture of the church. In that celebration the congregation affirms that the focus of the goal and the power needed to achieve it is God himself. That changes people inside.

How Do You Celebrate the “Little Wins?”

Celebrate as a family. The celebration should be a part of the worship experience in the local church. When a goal is met, when a victory has been won or when a “little win” occurs let the people know. Not only do they have a right

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to know the fruits of their labor but they also deserve the blessing from knowing. There are at least four characteristics of this type of celebration.

First, keep it simple. Make the presentation sharp and brief. Tell the most important aspect of the win. Declare that God gave the victory and the congregation can rejoice in His faithfulness. Second, make it notable. Focus on the main emphasis of the win. Tell how the victory affects the entire program and how God will continue to give victories as the church obeys Him. Third, make it identifiable. Share the essence of the victory. What did it accomplish? What will be the results of the win? Don’t be unclear. Uncertainty inspires no one. Give details of how it affects the life of the church. Fourth, just give the facts. Always avoid general statements. Share what the goal was and how it will affect the other future goals and the ongoing process.

Celebration Leads to Action Investing deliberate time into celebrating wins will promote unity and coherence in the church body. As you celebrate success, great or small, people will naturally gravitate to that success and want to be a part of it. Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer in the May, 2011 edition of The Harvard Business Review writes “When we think about progress, we often imagine how good it feels to achieve a long-term goal or experience a major breakthrough. The good news is that even small wins can boost inner work life tremendously. Many of the progress events our research participants reported represented only minor steps forward. Yet they often evoked outsize positive reactions.”

They called this concept the “Progress Principle.” It is the same in the work of church revitalization. We all love to see the big goals achieved, even at times to the disregard of the small victories. We tend to say they are not that important but it is essential to understand that the “little wins” are as important as the big victories because it motivates the congregation to keep moving forward to accomplish even greater goals and victories.

During a church revitalization process if the church celebrates even the “little wins,” people get excited about the accomplishments and they remember the actions they took to gain the win. Oftentimes we recall many of the churches past big accomplishments while at the same time we ignore the “little wins” of the present process. It is a given fact that every person wants to be a part of a successful and winning effort that not only gets things done but looks forward to the next win. When all is said and done, “little wins” will attract more people to the effort/ process and they will work harder for the anticipated end results.

Celebration Gives Hopefulness Hope defined by Webster’s II New College Dictionary, is “to wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment.” It means the faith to trust in your actions and reactions. Hopefulness is a wish coupled with hope to see something fruitful as a result of hard work and energy.

The word hope and the idea of hope is powerful and energizing. It is a power that energizes us with excitement and persistence as the church looks ahead to the future.

Hope will make the everyday obstacles we face into dynamic opportunities for a greater future. Hope gives us motivation to continue in the path of success and hard work. Hope is a force that drives the revitalization process.

In the revitalization process, when emphasis is placed on the “little wins,” hope for a better future for the struggling congregation naturally occurs. An unknown philosopher once said, “A person can live 40 days without food, 4 days without water, 4 minutes without air, but only 4 seconds without hope. Hope truly is a power that energizes us with life.”

Hope that comes from the “little wins” will give the struggling congregation a positive attitude about the future and if the church lacks this hope there cannot be any power that will foster the success of the revitalization process.

Celebration Fosters Momentum John Maxwell said, “It is never the size of your problem that is the problem. It’s a lack of momentum.” Celebrating the “little wins” in a revitalization process is essential for the church to gain momentum and move forward.

When the small victories are celebrated momentum will increase and continue to increase more and more during the process. As a church revitalizer, one of the best stimuli I’ve seen for building momentum is for the church and its leaders to recognize and celebrate every small win achieved.

When the church celebrates small wins the congregations and leaders experiences are reinforced. These positive outcomes already impact the church in a good way and when you celebrate them it creates additional motivation to experience them once again. When you have momentum, a feeling that anything is possible will prompt you to boldly take action and seize more opportunities. However, momentum is lost when the desire to move forward seems to wane and motivation ceases. The reality is that building momentum comes from acting, progressing, and celebrating achievements in the areas of the churches life.

Making time to recognize every small win builds positivity and faith. John Maxwell says, “Momentum magnifies success. Momentum shrinks problems and obstacles. Momentum energizes. Momentum enhances performance.

Momentum makes change easier. Momentum can’t be faked.”

Conclusion To sum up why celebrating “little wins” is important: They build self-confidence and incentive into the congregation. They increase the vitality and enthusiasm in the congregation. It gives joy to the congregation by knowing they have been a part of the progress that has been made. Finally, they make the congregation more focused on the process and more dependent on God to give the results.

Steve Sells is the president and CEO of Operation Transformation church revitalization ministry in Salisbury, North Carolina. Steve has served in ministry for 43 years in North Carolina and Georgia. Dr. Sells is the co-author of the book With Greater Power. He seeks to help churches of all sizes experience new health and growth.

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By Tracy Jaggers

The Muscle of Baby Steps

Ben and Erin Napier are hosts of the HGTV show, “Hometown.”

They have taken the dreams of a small-town revitalization by storm. The Laurel Mercantile (owned by the Napiers) even has a collector’s mug with the phrase, “We have the POWER to do this.” This phrase was devised by the series director during their first summer of filming in the sweltering heat of southern Mississippi. This axiom is applicable to revitalization in general. Revitalization is a process of many exciting and rewarding BABY STEPS!

Ben and Erin started a small, grass-roots movement to assist Laurel’s downtown in regaining its former beauty and vibrancy. What they started has become a booming trend! It didn’t happen overnight, but with a series of small, incremental improvements, their efforts provided enough momentum to transform and improve the quality of life for years to come.

In the world of small towns and Main Street renovations this is known as “incrementalism.” Incrementalism is not flashy and not always immediately rewarding. It requires numerous small changes that need to take place over a period of time.

Some are well-received, and others are totally rejected, but like the domino effect, a chain reaction is set in motion, and the beauty of the plan brings about something new, exciting, and desirable to replicate. This is the MUSCLE of Baby Steps!

Every child begins walking with small, baby steps. Some steps lead to excitement, applause, and the joy of making it from one spot to another. Others end up on their face with embarrassment and a painful “booboo.” So how can we as revitalizers help a church work through the process with the least amount of pain and bloodshed? Neil Armstrong said it best

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on that monumental day of July 20, 1969, from the surface of the moon – “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” His words have been repeated thousands of times and the message still rings clear – the first steps maybe small, but the journey beyond can be gigantic. We start by taking a small step and we press on for the health and effectiveness of the entire congregation. Our baby steps can lead to a thriving church and a transformed community.

The first steps can be a bit mundane and laborious. Consider how many times a baby who is learning to walk, gets picked up, set precariously on their wobbly legs, and told, “Come to papa or mama?” This must be exasperating for the infant! But this is where we all start. The Change Readiness Assessment determines if the pastor is the one to lead the process and if he has the trust of the congregation. Will they follow him into battle? Second, unpacking the process helps the congregation and leaders to determine where their church is on the congregational lifecycle bell curve. This can be unpleasant and even embarrassing. Here is where the measurement tools are laid out for display and the timeline is presented.

At this stage I usually lose the commitment of a majority of churches. They have forgotten how long it took for them to get into the pit from which they now feel trapped. We begin by having the pastor preach on the Biblical rationale for the revitalization process and start praying about the candidates for a Future Vision Team.

Now that we have begun toddling along, we introduce the revitalization specialist. He shares the process with the entire membership, presents the church health survey and begins

congregational and leadership interviews. Next, before compiling the data needed for the church report, are observations and evaluations of the facilities, property, parking, signage, technology, security, documents, ministries, committees, teams, events, plans, etc. Only after thorough inspection will the weakest areas be exposed. The reason for such intense examination is that the specialist does not want to be considered a liar or manipulator of the church’s leadership. The revelations of this stage are from the church members and interviews with people in the community.

Now, with all the facts in hand, the specialist presents the report - the survey, church member interviews, demographics, observations, evaluations, and community interviews are presented to the staff just prior to the Church Conference Weekend. During this retreat, the report is submitted, and the congregation hears the “what and why” of their survey responses. They hear what makes a church healthy and barriers to church health. Then, they break up into smaller groups and dream, declare their ministry values, uncover the areas of greatest church need and present their greatest hopes and deepest concerns for the future of their church family. We come back together to synthesize their findings and ponder the ideas that would break down the barriers to a thriving and exciting ministry in their local church. The Conference Weekend is often the time I see members become aware of the depth of their decline and hear testimonies of a craving to re-ignite the fire and mission that once drove the church into the community and the world. This step is the “one giant leap for mankind.” When the congregation embraces a fresh zeal for the lost and becomes broken over their own apathy, revival is only one more baby step ahead!

Next, we examine and secure the players who will make up the Future Vision Team. By use of a Personality Inventory and Spiritual Gifts assessment we can locate a balanced and harmonious team; this is performed by the specialist in conjunction with the pastor. After securing a covenant by each team member, the team is ready for training. We deal with the biblical rationale for a revitalization team, the difference between a purpose-driven and values-driven philosophy of ministry, strategic planning molded together with intentional implementation and a receptivity to the responses of the Church Conference Weekend.

These findings and suggestions become the marching orders for the Future Vision Team. The team learns to use the Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)

analysis to evaluate the bulk of the church’s activity/ministry.

Every ministry is evaluated, and adjustments are offered to those who lead these ministries. The church needs to know how to do more, with less, in this present culture. Priorities are determined and goals are set using the SMART goals plan (Simple, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely). Measurement tools and checkpoints are clarified and the persons who will champion each of the goals is assigned during the training sessions. Any church conflict must be addressed before or during this stage. Adding some equipping courses to the weekly schedule of the church should be considered at this juncture as well (mentoring; coaching; discipleship training and potential worker training, etc.).

Finally, the Vision Team and the pastor set the goals, proclaim the vision, encourage engagement in the revitalization process and motivate the leaders to perform ministries and events with the values and goals discovered in the Weekend Retreat and Vision Team training. Innovative technology, security procedures and safety protocols should be developed and incorporated by those who function within these roles.

Church documents need to be reviewed and adjusted to align with the new values and strategies, and committees and teams should be renovated to assist in adhering to and acting in agreement with the new paradigm.

We, as followers of Christ, must not make the baby steps about theology or methodology only. We need to be displaying a willing receptivity to the Holy Spirit and immediate obedience to His voice and movement. Some of these strategies may appear worldly or elementary, but baby steps look easy until you walk in the shoes of those who are new to the family of God and those who are yet-to-be-reached. In business, the axiom is, “think like a customer.” In the church, the strategy should be, “how can we effectively answer the question: ‘What must I do to be saved!’” These are the baby steps most important for the health of the church!

Tracy Jaggers is the Director of the Gateway Baptist Association, Edwardsville, Illinois. Tracy’s doctorate is in Church Revitalization from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, MO. He writes for state and national revitalization websites and speaks for revitalization conferences and webinars. He is a contributing author for the book entitled, Practical Tools for Reinventing the Dying Church. His website is: www. churchrecharge.com.

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Does God really set people free?

Or are we just talking?

Transformational Discipleship was developed to train leaders how to guide both brand-new and longtime believers towards deep spiritual change.

This training is foundational for every believer. It guides people who are stuck on their faith journey due to unresolved, often hidden issues in their lives towards true spiritual, emotional and mental freedom through intimacy with God.

“It’s not like anything I have been through before.”

Pastor John Wright, Titusville, FL “This is life transforming. I’m going to teach the socks off this thing.”

Dr. Phil Phillips, Ft. Myers, FL

Quick Steps Lead to Future Victories

By Desmond Barrett

In January of 2019, I arrived at my current assignment with excitement and anticipation for what God would do. In a way, I was coming home to Appalachia, and I was ready to reconnect with roots built over the years serving in her mountainous arms as a pastor. The first year it seemed everything I did had an anointing, seeing growth in attendance, baptisms, membership, new believers, families with children, and the list could go on. The honeymoon was sweet and gave me space to enjoy what God was doing.

Year two was a rude awakening as I moved from enjoying the service to navigating uncharted territory brought on by a pandemic. The once vibrant campus I pastored became a ghost town as she closed physically for four months. When the church reopened, the church saw a decline in membership, loss of many of the young families, staff leaving to new assignments, and financial hardship brought on by the lack of giving. The honeymoon, which was so sweet, had moved towards divorce as the rude awakening of what was, was no longer, and the pain set in.

When the church was growing and reaching new people, the negative voices upset over the change inside the church were muted and moved to the background. But, year two exposed the freshness of the change. The reality of a once-in-a-generation pandemic exposed the fault lines that were hidden as growth took hold. Now the church was fighting a strong headwind on two fronts the negative voices and the pandemic decline.

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Research from Barna and Lifeway has shown that years two thru four are seen as some of the most challenging years in ministry. Many pastors and churches do not make it out of stage two because of all the pushback. Year one (stage 1) is the honeymoon year (and if you are lucky, it will move into year two). Years two through four are tactical battles for the heart and soul of the church. It is spiritual guarilla warfare.

Years five thru seven (stage 3) are traditionally growth years driven by people who have settled into the church’s vision.

Years eight thru ten (stage 4) are seen for many leaders as rest years, enjoying the new reality of the church before the cycle starts all over again. So, what does a pastor do to get to the big wins in ministry?

Quick Wins In a season of uncertainty, I always look for a quick win to stop the bleeding and to help turn things around. Even in a direr situation, there is always hope if you will pause, reflect, and then follow the Holy Spirits’ guidance. Go after low-hanging fruit. For me, low-hanging fruit was redesigning directional signs, the worship card, and developing a mission/vision wall that reinforces who we are becoming as a church. It reestablished a center for the church, created a freshness that something new was happening, and focused those willing to adapt that the church was moving forward again.

Quick Reengage The lapse of regular attenders due to the pandemic has shrunk the church. Where members usually attend regularly, they are now attending once or twice a month if the church is lucky. The lack of commitment to the local church has been demonstrated across all denominational lines and communities of faith. God is calling the church to quickly reengage with those who have been lost due to the comforts of staying home. There are several ways to reconnect with those lost through social media, phone calls, text messages, messenger, postcards, and prayer. So many times, the church gets caught up in our needs and misses the people’s needs. You have an excellent opportunity to pray for the family or individual who has not returned. Make them part of your prayer life. Let the families know you are praying. It will encourage their soul and plant seeds for a return.

Quick Response People inside and outside the church have been watching how she bears the pandemic, masks mandate, politics, and community engagement through social media posts, up close and personal as attenders, and through the gossip train that runs across town. The church has been living in crises mode for nearly two years. Constant fatigue can lead to failure as a leader. Evaluate how you have handled the challenges that the church has faced? Pastor, God has called you to be decisive and deliberate in your leadership style. I did not say that to be brash and arrogant. But to make God choices over faction choices, be Christ in your leadership, and compassionate in your words.

Quick Vision The vision God gave you for the church most likely has changed as a culture shift occurs. Let me encourage you to begin to dream again by learning the new needs of the church, sharing what you learned, and reinforce the vision as you point people to Jesus. God is not surprised by the challenges you face today in the church. He is not surprised how church members can tear down others because they are living under stress. Do not get blinded by the world’s abuse, and keep your eyes on the vision that God has given the church.

Be quick to share the vision over and over until people get tired of hearing it. It is only then that the image of what is to take hold genuinely.

Quick Turn How many times have you gotten stuck because others have wanted to pull you back into the past? Let me encourage you to move on and move forward to the new day at hand.

Do not linger too long on the past. While you can learn a lot

from the past, there is no need to rehash old battles that are not yours to fight. Keep moving forward by sharing the vision, winning small victories, and responding in love to those trying to hold the church back. The big ‘C’ Church has lost nearly two years of forward moment. It is time for the church to take back territory that the devil has a foothold in.

It is time for the church to rise and claim victories, however small inside the church. Look for the low-hanging fruit. Begin to plan and execute that plan to rebuild God’s kingdom one victory at a time.

Quick Celebration The church is a great place to celebrate what God is doing.

Far too many people are quick to post a negative comment on social media or talk negatively about what is happening or not happening in the church. It is time to celebrate the ‘God Things’ happening in the life of the church. Celebrate corporately on Sunday morning. Celebrate in small groups as part of a small group meeting. Celebrate one-on-one in conversations. Begin to turn negative conversations or whimsical look-backs into celebrating what’s happening now. God is still working in the life of your church. He still has victories for the church, but we often only see the negative or hear the loudest voice in the room, instead of seeing God in the new family that visited, the remodel of the nursery, or the telephone tree set up to take prayer request.

It takes quick steps in God’s direction to claim future victories in the life of your church revitalization. Be encouraged today; God sees your need, hears your prayers, and is moving things in your favor behind the scenes. A supernatural spiritual breakthrough is coming your church’s way if you keep looking for quick wins, reengage church members, respond to God voices, share the vision, turn from the past or a setback, and celebrate the successes in the life of your church.

Dr. Desmond Barrett is the Lead Pastor at Summit Church of the Nazarene in Ashland, Kentucky and is the cofounder of the Rural Revitalization Network. He is a graduate of Nazarene Bible College (BA) and Trevecca Nazarene University (MOL) and (EdD) in leadership and professional practice. He is the author of Revitalizing the Declining Church: From Death’s Door to Community Growth and has done extensive research in church revitalization and serves as church revitalizer, consultant, coach, podcast host, author, and mentor to revitalizing pastors and churches.

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Dynamic Small Groups

Numbers: Do They Really Matter?

By Fred Boone Many times, the first question someone will ask about your church is “How big is your church?” They are not asking how many were baptized last year or what is the size of your building. They don’t care how many buildings you have or how many acres you own. They want to know how many people attend. I have noticed over the years that many times the answer to the question is how many members they have or how many they have enrolled in their Sunday School or Small Group Ministry and not the actual attendance. It doesn’t matter how much you hate the question or how little it has to do with the quality of your ministry or the spiritual impact you are having, people want to know how many attend. I have heard on many occasions when someone wanted to defend how unspiritual it was to be concerned with numbers. Well, they are right if the purpose is to brag, or you are trying to impress people. But the fact of the matter is numbers are important. The proper attitude about reporting numbers is to give glory to the Lord. The Bible gives us insight to this fact. In the Old Testament there is an entire book written about numbering the people for the Lord’s glory. Also, notice the New Testament and the number of times there is a number reported. Jesus chose twelve disciples (Mk 3:14), six waterpots were turned into wine (Jn. 2:6), one hundred and fifty-three fish were in the net (Jn. 21:11). Then you don’t have to go too far in

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Acts to find the numbers reported. In the upper room there was one hundred and twenty (Acts 1:15), then there was three thousand (Acts 2:41), the number of men was about five thousand (Acts 4:4), and then it got to a point that they couldn’t be counted – Acts 5:14 “And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number.” I believe you can see that numbers are important, and we should have the right attitude about keeping good records.

Record keeping is an art, and many churches are challenged about how to keep good records. I have served in eight churches and have studied hundreds of churches over a thirty-five-year period of time. In all of my experience I haven’t found one church with accurate and consistent records. A record system is a thermometer of the health of a Christian Body - the church. Records indicate growth or decline, activity or inactivity, zeal, or apathy, improvement or deterioration. Records do not affect the health of a church for the good or the bad. They just report. But without this reliable thermometer, the health of a church is unknown.

A record system is a map that charts the road ahead. Records show realities and possibilities. But records do not change things. A church that maintains a record system yet fails to study it and plan by it, is no better off than a church

without a record system altogether. This is because records are not vitamins or protein; they are only signs. And signs cannot affect anything until someone needs them.

I want to address the proper records a church should keep for their Small Group Ministry. It doesn’t matter whether you have a Sunday School that meets on campus or Small Groups that meet off campus, good and accurate records are important to help you maintain and develop a vibrant and growing ministry. The first and most important number you should have, is the total number enrolled in all your groups. This would include the Preschool (Babies to four-year old’s), Children, Youth and Adults. The enrollment would be the total number of people that have been enlisted for a particular group. There are a couple of ways to start. Many churches start with their membership and enroll every member. Another method is to have a sign-up campaign. In either case this enrollment is the foundation for building the ministry. I tell my leaders that their enrollment is their ministry list because ministry begins with enrollment. Enrollment controls attendance because we know from experience if you have a maintained enrollment, you will average fifty percent of your enrollment. This group of people will be your core group. They will determine your worship attendance. Eighty percent of your financial support will come from those enrolled in your small groups. A valid enrollment would include all basic information about the member. It would include their full name, address, phone number, email, marriage status, birthdate and any connections with other relatives in your church. Without belaboring the point, I hope you can see that the enrollment is a critical number you keep and represents the foundation of your ministry. When I am evaluating a churches small group ministry the first number I ask for is their enrollment today and what it was a year ago.

This gives me an immediate understanding of their outreach vision and potential. The goal would be to increase the enrollment every week. We call this “open enrollment”, where you can enroll anyone, anytime, anyplace with their permission.

The next most important number you should keep and evaluate is your weekly attendance. This number determines your effectiveness. I am shocked today to discover that churches have given up on trying to get this number.

The excuse that it is too hard or not really necessary is disturbing. I recently attended a national conference where a church was teaching that you didn’t really need that number. Years ago, I attended another national conference put on by a very prominent church that I had a lot of respect

for. They advertised that they had 110% of their worship attendance involved in their small group ministry. That would be a phenomenal feat that I had never heard of I wanted to know how this was accomplished. I attended the conference and discovered in the end that the 110% was their enrollment number and because they did actually keep attendance, they were averaging 25% of that number. Now they had a lot of people participating weekly in their small groups and because they kept good records, they knew who was actually involved and who was not attending. The records and the numbers gave them the tools to make thoughtful evaluations and the ability to improve and sharpen their ministry. With these two numbers I am able to make a snap-shot evaluation of a small group ministry. The enrollment and average attendance numbers reveal some key insights to the total health of the small group ministry. Southern Baptist discovered years ago that a healthy growing Sunday School would average 50% of its enrollment. If they dropped too far below that number, it indicated that they needed more workers in the organization to minister to the members or that they needed to add additional classes or groups. If they were averaging 60% or higher it revealed that they needed to put an emphasis on new people being enrolled or a need for more prospects for their classes. However, you would never know this without keeping good records and paying attention to the numbers.

Yes, NUMBERS are important! First, because they give glory to God. Our motivation should seek to glorify the Lord by proclaiming the gospel and seeing people come to Him. It should result in seeing more people baptized and added to the church each week. Howard Hendricks said, “experience is not the best teacher, only evaluated experience.” Numbers aren’t good or bad, they are tools. They are the tools we use to evaluate our ministry. Keep counting for the “Glory of the Lord!”

Fred Boone is the Executive Pastor and LIFE Groups Pastor of First Baptist Church of Mount Dora, Florida.

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Wrestling and Winning

By Chris Irving Pro wrestling is staged. No big surprise there but I remember as a kid not knowing that it was staged. My brother and I got wrapped up in each match especially when it involved our favorite wrestlers, the Von Erik brothers. No one could withstand the “Iron Claw.” Only as I grew older did I learn that it was all staged and scripted ahead of time.

The combatants go into the ring with the winner and loser pre-determined. The perceived struggle is all for show and entertainment. But think about the perspective of winner.

He is fighting from a place of knowing that he has already won the match.

I submit to you that the church is in this same kind of struggle. The battle is scripted, to a certain extent, and victory is certain. Now we know that our struggle is not against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12), but the struggle in church revitalization is real and we wage war in real time. The victory being certain in Christ implores the church to live in faith, trusting Jesus for the victory in the daily grind of revitalization ministry. Wins, even small wins, bring a great opportunity to learn, grow, and create momentum that leads us to the Heavy Weight Championship of the World for God’s glory and our good.

Small Wins Celebrate God’s Faithfulness Let us acknowledge that we cannot build on wins in the church without first acknowledging the reality of God’s faithfulness. There are no wins in the church without the faithfulness of God. Anything that occurs without Him are the simple accomplishments of man that will eventually

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crumble under pressure because the foundation is based on the thoughts and actions of man and not God’s enduring faithfulness.

Building momentum in church revitalization can be a struggle, but as small victories occur, you must celebrate the truth that God is faithful. A win is like the call to worship of Psalm 145:1-2, “I exalt you, my God the King, and bless your name forever and ever. I will bless you every day; I will praise your name forever ever.” The Church can look back and see God’s faithfulness while looking forward with confidence that He will do it again.

Small Wins Strengthens Community Along the California coastline, there are some of the largest trees in the world, the famous redwood trees. These massive trees share a unique root system where the roots are intertwined underneath the ground. If they are not intertwined, then there is no growth. This connection strengthens not only the individual trees but the whole forest of trees. There is a connectedness in the first church in Acts 2 that creates momentum as the story of the church moves along. The word Luke uses in Acts 2 is “koinonia.” It is a very special word as it simply means that we hold certain things in common.

The one thing that holds the church together is our common belief in Christ Jesus. Without Him we are not the church, and we are not living in biblical community. Fellowship and community lead us to share in the life of Christ

and in life together. It is also true that we share the in the victories of revitalization together. The church shares in the victory because the church goes to battle as a united force.

In wrestling terminology, the church is a tag team. That which unites is the glory of Christ. As the church marks out the course to church health, each step along the way is a victory worth celebrating. Each one of these small victories is another step to building healthy church community.

I can remember my first pastorate in a small community where the cows outnumbered the humans. It was a quiet slice of the rolling hills of Texas. The church leadership created a system of goals and prayed through how God might want us to reach them for His glory. Each time we reached a step, like the purchase of a new piano to aid our worship services, we celebrated that win for God’s glory. Let me make clear that we celebrated God’s faithfulness. Each time we won, it created momentum for the next goal. Momentum has a communal effect. It is like a tidal wave that will sweep across the church and then those on the outside of the community begin to buy in to what God is doing. Building momentum helps strengthen to community.

Small Wins Reinforce the Vision and Values of the Church Wrestlers win because its determined ahead of time how the match will go. Wins in church revitalization are determined also by the vision and values laid out by the church.

Early in the process as you build the guiding coalition, you will have to chart the course before you. This is similar to how the writers will determine who wins the wrestling match. Of course, the guiding coalition will need to chart the course according to the vision and values of the church.

Vision is defined by Gary MacIntosh as “not what you want but rather what God wants for your church.” He goes on to define the vision as God bringing together three things: leadership passion, community needs, and gifts of the church.1 I would define these three aspects of vision with the word values. The vision God has for your church is going to be based on the values He has put into you and the church. The values of the church are birthed out of God’s gifting, God’s passion, and most importantly His Word. If you do not have a clear vision for your church, start with reading the Bible and ask the Lord to show you what His vision is for you.

Let me share with you an example of how the Bible helped me understand God’s vision for the church I was pastoring at the time. I had been on the field going into my 7th year.

We were approaching 2017 and I asked the Lord a simple question, “what do you want for FBC in 2017.” In His Word,

He took me to Luke 20:17 which reads, “But he looked at them and said, “Then what is the meaning of this Scripture: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” That year we began to pray about our foundations in Christ. What were the foundations of the church and her ministries? In 2018, the Lord took me to John 20:18 which says, “Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” The vision for 2018 shifted from “Foundations” to “Show them Jesus.” We concentrated on evangelism and mission in 2018 and 2019. Wins were celebrated when someone came to Jesus and followed through with baptism. This is how wins help build momentum and reinforce the vision and values of the church.

Small wins help to reinforce that the vision based on values are on track with what God is leading the church to do and be for His glory and the church’s good. Celebrating the win helps create that momentum and for us to know that God’s vision has captured the hearts and minds of the church.

Small Wins Renew Commitment to the Cause Revitalization is a long process. I’ll never forget the first time I heard Renovate’s Founding Father Tom Cheyney tell us in class that church revitalization takes a minimum of 1,000 days. Friend, that is a long time. Some churches may not have that long to live, and others may take longer. But the reality is we must remain committed to the cause of church revitalization. It’s what we do as revitalizers. I enjoy running a good 5k. Prior to an ankle injury, my time was improving. But one thing I always enjoy is around the halfway point of the race, there is usually a table set up with cups of water. I drink about half the cup and pour the rest on my head. It is refreshing, and in a way, that water renews my commitment to finish the race. One thing is certain that we have a race marked out before us and we must run this race to completion.

Friend, press on to the end because the script is already written. Jesus wins. He is the champion, and no one can change the script. Because Jesus wins…the church wins.

Celebrate it!

Dr. Chris Irving serves as Senior Pastor of Coastal Oaks Church in Rockport, TX. He led two rural churches to health through revitalization and is currently involved in a revitalization work at Coastal Oaks. He is the husband of Amber, and father to Matt, Jake, Karalyn, Katie, Kylie, Marley, Ben, Max, and Nova.

1 McIntosh, Gary L. There’s Hope for Your Church: First Steps to Restoring Health and Growth. (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, MI) 74.

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Revitalization through Celebration

By Scott Brown We celebrate most the things that matter to us the most. Birthdays, anniversaries, personal victories, baby’s first steps are all great reasons we celebrate. We love to celebrate, and what we celebrate we imitate and then we begin to duplicate. Child psychologists write about the power of positive reinforcement in the lives of children. Praising good behavior encourages more of it. Celebrate the things of which you want to see more. What about in the church? What do we celebrate in our faith families? What kinds of things do we take time to praise? The things that mean the most to us we celebrate. Once more, the things we celebrate we imitate and then we begin to duplicate. I’ve participated in note burnings when a church debt is paid off, offerings went up. I’ve been to volunteer banquets, more volunteers signed up. I’ve participated in missionary commissioning services, more missionaries were then called out.

What does this mean for those of us who are leading churches toward revitalization? A primary component of church renewal is changing the culture from one of disunity to one of unity, one of disfunction to one of proper function, one of death to one of life. The

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best way to change the culture in a church is to begin changing how that church sees itself. If a church believes it is dead, they are right. If a church is hopeless, there is no hope. If a church is hopeful for the future, though, they start to see God working and good things happening, revitalization is already happening!

Excitement is contagious. When I get around people who are excited, I get excited! When I hear God’s people singing, I can’t help but to join in. Sunday should be exciting. It’s my favorite day of the week. I get up early, get loaded up with coffee, and I can’t wait to see my faith family as they gather for worship. Just think of all we have to celebrate together. We were slaves to sin but now we are free in the Lord. We were dead but now we live! God Almighty died for me, the tomb is empty, death is defeated, and we are more than conquerors in Christ! Let’s celebrate! Regardless where you meet or what style of songs you’re singing, there should be a buzz in the air when God’s people gather to worship.

We should have the aroma of life. Those who are dead in their sins should be jealous of the life they see in us as we celebrate what it means to truly know Jesus.

In Acts 16 Paul and Silas are maligned, beaten, and imprisoned. Placed in stocks and chained to the wall, we find them praising God. What do they have to celebrate? Everything! They know Jesus and they now share in His sufferings. Regardless of their outward situation, they have every reason to continue praising Jesus. God sends a great earthquake and their chains fall off, but no one leaves. They are still there celebrating Jesus. That night the jailer who beat them, and his whole family, find a reason to celebrate when they call upon Jesus as Lord. God does great things when His people start to celebrate Him. I pastored a church that had previously split, the building was in disrepair, the finances were dwindling, and the few people left had almost given up all hope.

When they spoke about their church there was such sorrow and sadness. Who would want to go to that church? Those few visitors who accidentally came to a service would rarely return. All the problems were obvious and glaring. God did some great things worth celebrating but they were hard to see through all the turmoil. We had to start picking the low hanging fruit and intentionally celebrating every good thing. When we found a way to lower the electric bill, we celebrated. When someone finally was able to fix the leak in the roof, we celebrated. We began talking in small groups about all the great things we saw God doing in our community, and we celebrated. I publicly shared about visits I made and times I got to share the gospel. We introduced the “soul winner’s candle” which I lit in front of the church before the service every time someone was saved as a direct result of our ministry, and then we celebrated. Eventually, other people started lighting the candle for those they saw saved, and we celebrated even more! Slowly, but surely, the outlook went from grim to good. People began to want to talk about the church. They started happily bringing friends, who even started coming back! Deacon meetings became less tense. Church services became more joyful. We still had problems, they just became

less obvious and then almost nonexistent compared to all the great things we were seeing. More got saved, more began giving, visitors kept returning. God did a great work, and then we celebrated. That church’s outlook changed, then their culture changed, and then that church changed from death to life… and then we celebrated.

Church revitalization cannot be forced, it must be led and inspired. The quickest way to inspire people is to make a big deal out of good news. Every win, every small step forward, every ounce of progress is exciting as we see God bring resurrection to something that was all but dead! I’m not saying throw a parade every time someone gives an offering but you’d do well to write an encouraging letter of thanks to someone who starts giving to your church who previously wasn’t. Send a random note to a children’s worker who has been persevering in hard times and celebrate their work. You won’t regret stopping the sermon to acknowledge the great number of kids in church and genuinely thanking God for that. Do yourself one more favor and often remind your deacons you love them and it is an honor to serve alongside them. Treat your church like it is the best church in town and soon it will be. Treat your church like it’s the best in town and they just might treat you like the best pastor in town, too.

Dr. Scott Brown is the pastor of First Baptist Waverly, Tn. He is a church revitalizer and a revitalization coach with Renovate. He is passionate about equipping and encouraging leaders toward the great and godly work of church revitalization.

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