What is revitalization?

Pretty much every piece of information I've sent out about our ministry says that I'm training in how to do church revitalization.  So I know you know that's part of what we're doing in New England.  But you might be wondering what exactly church revitalization is. So I thought I'd take a little time to tell you more about it.

Simply put, revitalization is the process of trying to revive the life of a dying church.  It's a simple idea but putting it in practice isn't easy.  There are some important theological issues as well as tons of practical considerations.  But before I tell you about those, let's think for a moment about why churches need to be revitalized in the first place.


Why do churches need revitalizing?
Most churches go through cycles of growth.  They start out growing but eventually come to a plateau.  There are lots of reasons why a church may plateau, but whatever the reason, from there things can go one of two ways.  The church can reassess things, address whatever needs to be addressed and then begin to grow again, or it can slip into decline.  Once a church is in decline it becomes both increasingly important and increasingly difficult to go back, find the real problem and deal with it.  And the longer it is in decline the harder it becomes until the church either takes drastic steps to change (which can either help things or make it worse) or gives up. When a church gives up (or it's drastic measures backfire) it starts to die.  This church is now in need of revitalization. 

I know it's a popular, pastory kind of thing to say that every church needs revitalization, but I don't think that's true.  Every church needs continual spiritual renewal, but revitalization, at least to me, is like spiritual CPR.  It means you've come to a point where you have to abandon all the frills and really work to reestablish the most fundamental things, like getting a pulse and breathing.  It means a church has come to total system failure.  The kidneys and liver may have to wait a while to be dealt with; we need to get the heart and lungs working first.  Of course, to do that you have to know what's wrong with them.  I've come to think that, no matter how a church may have started out, there are really only a few basic issues that could bring it to this point.

• The most obvious reason is that there was a church scandal.  These take many forms but the general idea is that some event happened (or didn't happen that should have) that caused a lot of people to leave or the church to split.  It could have been anything from a moral failing to a theological argument.  Whatever it was, people fled, the issues were never addressed and now the church is dying.
• The second most obvious reason is bad leadership.  This can be especially tragic because it often happens when a new leader comes into a healthy and growing church and then decides to force his own agenda on the church without compromise.  This almost always kills the church and leaves them distrusting any future leadership that may come along (like a future revitalizer).
• A third reason a church begins to die is that it is simply unwilling to change.  Whenever growth stops in a church there is always a reason.  But if a church becomes so attached to its own traditions that it is unwilling to change then these underlying issues can't be addressed and decline is inevitable.  If this lasts long enough the church dies simply because of this unwillingness to change.
• Finally, the biggest reason a church begins to die is that it has stopped preaching the Gospel.  Without the word of God there can be no spiritual growth.  Any church that stops preaching the Gospel will become a dead church even if the size never changes.

Of course, most churches in the real world are going to be some combination of these reasons.  But if you are hoping to bring revitalization you'll need to figure out how the church got where it is.  This, I think, is one of the first steps in revitalization.