Tag: Revival

Taking a Missional Footing

The commission that Jesus gives His Church demands that she remain on missionary footing “to the very end of the age.” [Mt 28:18-20] The Lord’s command is a cycle of preparation and movement, two ongoing actions: spiritual preparation and the spread of the gospel. When a church experiences the pressures and discouragement of plateau or decline, the missional footing becomes less sure, and the temptation is to retreat from the frontline to regroup. In most cases, this retreat becomes the norm. The revitalization pastor facing this reality has no choice but to nurse the spiritually wounded back to health and lead them once more to their community and the world beyond. A healthy church is consistently missional.

Being missional in ministry and outlook is not an innovation reserved for the younger churches in the family. The term describes the expected qualities of every church as they view their role in the larger Family of God. Every church is a citizen of both a locality and the kingdom, and the way this looks is unique to every context. Mission is not exclusive to foreign fields or underserved communities; the charge given by the Lord starts right where a disciple finds him or herself. [cf. Acts 1:8] Ignoring this local context while sending disciples across the ocean or to distant neighborhoods, the church finds herself out of place, disconnected from her parish while believing that she is playing her part in the kingdom mission.

“The gospel always comes as the testimony of a community which, if it is faithful, is trying to live out the meaning of the gospel in a certain style of life, certain ways of holding property, of maintaining law and order, of carrying on production and consumption, and so on. Every interpretation of the gospel is embodied in some cultural form.”

Lesslie Newbigin ‘Gospel in a Pluralist Society‘

In a church looking toward renewal, mission is often narrowly defined by the support and celebration of foreign missionaries, without equal attention to the neighborhood the church calls home. Revitalization begins with a restored vision of the community, a renewed belief that God was intentional in placing your church where it is. The demographics of the neighborhood may have changed over the years, the economic measure of a place may have shifted in one direction or another, but two things remain consistent: the mission of the Church and the power of the gospel. A fresh vision of what both mean for your community should be a chief topic of prayer among the faithful remnant. Challenging the church’s view of “the other” is a hard conversation that needs to be had. Loving those others must once-again be viewed as a debt [Romans 13:8-10] owed. A firm missional stance is the footing from which the first steps of renewed life in the church can be taken.

In an earlier post [The Inner Shaping of Mission], I emphasized the inseparable nature of discipleship and mission. The Missio Dei cannot be accomplished other than by disciples who are growing in spiritual maturity. [cf. Hebrews 6:1-3; 2 Peter 3:18] The axiom that we cannot give what we do not have applies here. The mission of the church requires vision and action, gospel vision developed through discipleship and action motivated by the same. Revitalization requires discernment to judge the preparation of the faithful in relation to these twin requirements. Renewal may require retreat from the outward expressions of mission for a season while you reengage the discipleship of the saints.

The North American Baptist Conference has four principles that guide ministry throughout their churches. These principles [called End Goals by the NAB] are interconnected and intended to be understood as a whole. Ministry flows through each of the principles to form a holistic, missional philosophy of the Church in the world. The thoughts above are an interaction with End Goal 1: NAB Churches will be trained for missional and formational ministries. In an article written by Executive Director Harry Kelm, the following paragraph appears:

Missionally and formationally multiplying is why the NAB plants churches, which has always been a commitment of the NAB. We plant churches with the intention of reaching people with the Love (of) God in Jesus. Missionally and formationally ministering is embedded in all our End Goals and in who God is calling us to be. Onward Spring 2023

In addition to church planting, these principles should also guide revitalization efforts. As with the church plant, the legacy church has a place in being and proclaiming the gospel to their community. Use the principles to evaluate the alignment of your church’s ministry and leadership with the vision embedded in the Goals. Teach them and shape your efforts to reach your community and the world with the love of Christ and the hope of shalom.

Do You Want Spiritual Vitality?

The Principles New Life in Your Church

Spiritual formation and the Missio Dei often suffer in a church that is plateaued or in decline. The inner life and a Great Commission footing fall prey to the “more pressing” concerns of survival and whether the church will make it to next Sunday. But for the leader with a heart and vision for restoring the vitality of a body, these essentials of congregational life are the seeds and spreading roots of revitalization. Men and women of God who will look clear-eyed at the challenged spiritual condition of a church will not look for hope in process and programs, but in the biblical calls to develop Christlikeness and a servant’s heart. How do we do that? The answers are contextual to a particular church, but working from principles rather than programs can guide and motivate the first steps back to health.

Dry bones can live…

The revitalizationist will probably find that the principles of church health have become secondary concerns of the congregation in stasis or retreat. Where the kinetic energy of events and programs might seem to solve a church’s issues, the immediate blessings of doing something will fade quickly unless they come to rest upon a foundation of spiritual vitality. The pastor or lay leader seeking to renew a declining church should be prepared to set short-term gains aside and devote themselves and those under their leadership to restore spiritual health from the bottom up. Churches in the North American Baptist Conference [NAB] are blessed by a set of guiding principles that invite all member congregations to take them as their own. For the revitalizer, these are four principles that provide an outline for restoring areas of church life that can lead a church back to life. The principles [called End Goals by the NAB] are simple, biblical and direct:

  • Churches will be missional and formational
  • Churches will engage their neighbors cross-culturally
  • Churches will be committed to raising up the next generation of leaders
  • Churches will keep ‘all the nations’ in their ministry scope

Applying these principles as the foundation of a renewal plan addresses the wide variety of causes and symptoms of decline. Consider the church planted decades ago in a neighborhood or borough of the city. Over the years of faithful kingdom service, the church experiences declining membership and attendance. A census of the remaining membership shows most people not living in the immediate area and the makeup of the church no longer aligning with the changing demographics of the surrounding neighborhood. The reasons for these disparities are many and varied, but the underlying principle is much easier to find; the church has not consistently loved their neighbors as themselves. Now, this doesn’t have to be interpreted in a negative sense or assigned any nefarious motive. Every church with a history can identify with slowly changing surroundings, while the congregation carries on in the memory of their more fruitful days.

The temptation of the church is to have an event, intending to connect with their new neighbors. No doubt the Holy Spirit can produce fruit from this occasion. For longer term health and growth, however, the better choice is to put in the work of prayer and teaching to build a missional culture and an attitude of welcome for the church’s neighbors. Over time and with a commitment to the principles of spiritual health, the body of believers can become more naturally missional, not relying on special events to be a part of the life of the neighborhood. Consistently applying the principle of cross-cultural ministry to the church’s teaching and practice can be used by the Spirit to create a new sensitivity to the needs and issues of those who live within the parish of the church, resulting in open hearts and welcoming arms.

We’ll look at each of these principles individually as tools of renewal in the weeks ahead. If you are a part of the NAB family, be encouraged that our leadership has prayerfully given the conference a consistent set of guidelines for our collective ministry. One of the great blessings of these end goals is that they are applicable to all ministry contexts, from the church planter to the missionary and to the legacy churches that are seeking new life.

Measuring Surprise and Delight

One of the great surprises for gardeners is the volunteer, those that blossom in unexpected places. Sometimes delightful, like the beautiful poppies that arise in my tomato beds, and sometimes not; the virtual maple forest that germinated in my backyard one spring required a lot of undesirable labor. The hundreds of little saplings were not all that surprising given the countless seeds that had dropped in the grass beneath the tree the fall before, but the flowers that sprout in the vegetable frames far distant from the flower beds are a welcome wonder. As every gardener knows, the appearance of these plants is not attributed to my work or intention; birds or wind or the coats of the dogs had serendipitously been the sowing agent that brought these joys to my soul.

There’s a similar joy found in the ministry of believers blossoming in unexpected places. What makes these unexpected joys stand out is that they are not where we expected them, and they’re  measures of spiritual movement that a stagnant church easily misses. Many churches measure their health and ‘success’ using a yardstick marked out in segments labeled attendance, budget and programs. When the pews and offering plate are full, and the program schedule grows more and more crowded, we celebrate ministry. When the opposite is true and fewer seats are occupied and the budget constrained, these measures of success move the pointer into the red. A sense of failure rises, soon followed by discouragement. This can lead to an unfortunate blindness to the power of God at work, especially where we least expect it.

Wild abandon is the natural state of the forest and the volunteer doesn’t stand out among its equally random neighbors. The volunteer in our garden is surprising because of its location. The seed that falls to the ground and germinates, even if carried a distance on the wing, is doing what it is designed to do, creating after its own kind [Gen 1:12]. If we as Christ followers are faithful in discipling others, we too will reproduce after our own kind and the fruit they bear (Rom 7:6) will be the natural result. This is the genius of God in making soul shaping a normal part of life and not a program. We teach by living out our beliefs (Dt 6:6-8; Mt 28:19) and shaping hearts as we walk along and when we lie down and when we rise.

We’ve become accustomed to looking for ministry results as an outcome of a program. If we have the right music and preaching style, worshippers will come. We pour into the children and teenagers so that they make it successfully to adulthood. Our discipleship, more often than not, has a start and end date where success is measured by a completed workbook. We need to look deeper though; we need to spy out the volunteers that have been carried by the wind to unexpected places. By the design of the Lord, this is where the measure of a spirit-guided heart is going to be found.

What of the ministry that a transformed heart started that now serves the community? What about the bible study conducted by folks who take their discipled souls south for the winter? Your ministry plan didn’t have a bullet point for either one of those activities. What of the fellowship that surrounds an elderly member who is by themself and refuses to let them be alone? This is the work of the heart surrendered to the Lord. Success is not measured by programs, the Lord measures it by heart and if your discipleship is transforming hearts, you never know where the spirit is going to take them next. Your church is never commanded to be the biggest or have the most programs. It is called to be faithful in shaping the hearts of Jesus’ people and then trusting Him to put them to work in the places we least expect.

3 Signs Your Church Needs Spiritual Renewal

A church may be filled to overflowing week after week, with visitors regularly adding to the attendance and pushing the numbers ever higher. The generous giving of all those people may account for a budget that builds a grand edifice and fills it with the latest technology to stream the pastor’s message around the globe. During the week, there may be programs scheduled every day, enough to fill the family’s wide and varied interests. From the outside, the church gives the appearance of success, and yet, it might be a valley of dry bones on the inside.

Despite the external measures of health that many churches use–attendance, budget and program reach–it may be the case that internally the church is in deep need of spiritual renewal. The same metrics used by a baseball team to judge success are not the same measures that determine the spiritual vitality of a church. We measure her health on a different scale and by a different authority. The Church’s health is measured in the spiritual life of the people of God. Here are three signs that point to a need for renewal within a church.

3. Discipleship Does Not Transform

The outcome of disciple-making is the third measure of spiritual health. Discipleship should transform. To disciple is to affect the obedience of a Christian and shape their spiritual lives as their Christlikeness grows. Influenced by the world, much of discipleship has become knowledge acquisition in programmatic chunks. People, for example, participate in a program on improving marriage, fill out the study guide, have a potluck at completion and put the book on their shelves. Very few marriages are transformed, but, hey, the participants can recite from memory 5 bible verses about relationships. If the discipleship within a church does not transform the lives of Christians, it is not serving the needs of a body on mission.

 2. Worship is Not Inspired

Any worship where there are performers and an audience is most likely not inspired. If no one is convicted of their rebellion while singing choruses of God’s incredible grace, spiritual vitality is diminished. This measure of inspiration requires keen insight because it’s possible to confuse emotion with spiritual practice and they might look a lot alike. Singing 5 prom-songs to Jesus can lead the ‘worshipper’ to a feeling of euphoria without once drawing attention to the lingering sin of a “wretch like me.” Singing praises to God or praying over the congregation or even standing to read the word of God should give a spiritual lift as we see and hear and feel the grace of God. At the same time that we are in awe of His mercy, we should be convicted of our own spiritual condition in His presence. Worship that does not remind us of the undeserved grace that redeems the Christian from destruction is empty.

1. The Church Doesn’t Pray Together

As Leonard Ravenhill said, no man and no church will be greater than their prayer life. Praying together, voicing our praise and petition and penance aloud in the hearing of other Christians is a unique and transformative experience. It’s also an experience most likely to be avoided by church members, and the lack of congregational prayer is usually (but not always) indicative of little individual prayer. If the Lord Jesus relied on prayer to carry Him through life, who are we Christians to say that we don’t need this discipline in our lives? The lack of a vibrant prayer life is the greatest sign that spiritual renewal is needed.

The encouraging news is that none of these traits are fatal. God encourages even the slightest move toward Him, rewarding the Christian with a new sense of spiritual depth. If this spiritual growth is recognized, it has the effect of becoming self-motivating, drawing the whole church into the life-giving practices. As the church is drawn toward a transformative discipleship that includes a vibrant life of prayer and deep, God-glorifying worship, the dry bones of the church click and clack as they come to life. The vine grows and bears fruit. The church is invigorated and returns to the gospel mission. The world is changed. Isn’t this worth it?

Planting Seeds of New Life in Prayer

Matthew Henry wrote, “When God intends great mercy for His people, the first thing He does is to set them praying.” History affirms this maxim, as the great revivals that God has sparked around the world have always been launched by prayer. There may have been grand movements of Christians joined in crying out to God that brought the revival, but it hasn’t always been so. In countless instances, the hearts of just a handful of people united to plead with God for new life in their community, their country or their church were the passion to which God responded. It is not the size of the group praying that matters as much as the depth of that group’s heart. They need this depth for the perseverance in petition that renewal often requires. God does not put a shot-clock on these prayers, and He may respond to them at once, or it’s more likely that revival comes after a season of souls persevering in long hours of communal prayer.

God uses our commitment to prayer to prepare us for receiving the life-giving power of the Spirit, and this preparation is two-fold. He first sets out to prepare our hearts to burn for revival. The Christian must be able to see the dry bones of the church or the distracted hearts of their community and then believe that spiritual life can come to them if God moves. This hope is the second area in which the heart is prepared because these prayers for new life can require extraordinary perseverance. Revival may appear like a single cloud on the horizon, no bigger that a fist, and prayer warriors must be patient in the time it takes to blossom into a drenching storm pouring down torrents of living water. Without preparation, our hearts would often fail to have the vision needed or the strength to carry on when answer is not immediately forthcoming.

“From the day of Pentecost, there has been not one great spiritual awakening, in any land, which has not begun in a union of prayer, if only [among] two or three. No such outward, upward movement has continued after such prayer meetings have declined.”

A.T. Pierson

The prepared heart prays in complete honesty [JAS 5:16]. Christians recognize that the spiritual vitality of their church is not what it should be and the prayers that issue forth confess as much to God. Sin, cold fellowship, poor leadership – whatever the list of known deficits holds is boldly and openly laid before the Lord for his correction. Genuine repentance in revival prayer forges a heart soft and malleable for God to turn and shape, addressing these things so that new life does not germinate in rocky soil where it cannot flourish. When we pray for our community and for salvation to come, we are open with God about those areas in which we have not reached out or cared for. He may take the first step of turning our attention to knowing our neighbors and serving this community before He sends the Spirit with revival for the hearts of the lost. Honesty starts in the humbled heart, and a humbled heart is prepared by God and committed to Him above all other things.

Longing for Revival

I passionately believe in the possibility of renewal in the church, particularly the legacy church where the devotion to the Missio Dei has grown cold in favor of comfort and familiarity. I believe that the best way, but not the only, for revival to come to the church is through a return to first principles, a devotion to prayer and worship.

As a matter of regular meditation, I consider the list of things I believe:

  • The eternal God of the Bible created, sustains, and has a purpose for the universe and my life within it
  • Jesus gave His life to atone for the sins of the world (Mark 10:45) and by vesting belief in Him, people are saved (1 Corinthians 1:21)
  • The Holy Spirit of Christ miraculously indwells redeemed people (1 Corinthians 6:19)
  • The Colorado Rockies will win the World Series (someday, no scripture reference)
  • Many churches need and can have revival

I passionately believe in the possibility of renewal in the church, particularly the legacy church where the devotion to the Missio Dei has grown cold in favor of comfort and familiarity. I believe that the best way, but not the only, for revival to come to the church is through a return to first principles, a devotion to prayer and worship. A renewed sense of the mission of disciple-making results from the first sparks of spiritual life that ignite, giving evidence to my belief. I believe these things are Scripture honoring and God glorifying.

There are doubtless many reasons that churches fall into decline, some beyond their control. As we talk about revival, it’s important to distinguish between spiritual and material poverty as a contributing factor. Geographic factors and demographic shifts can be the reasons that churches find themselves in material decline, making closure a choice that has to be made. We can identify numerous other external factors as reasons for the death of a church, and we need to be clear-eyed in assessing these realities. Conversely, spiritual decline has but a single source, the dimming of the passion of the members of a body for the gospel mission. Jesus spoke of this as forsaking “your first love” (Revelation 2:4).

While external factors may be beyond the control of a local church, the spiritual fire they exhibit is not. I believe that the Lord’s promise to be with His Church always (Matthew 28:20) assures us that any spiritual spark can be fanned into a roaring flame through His power. What does it require? I believe this inferno lies at the juncture of a return to heartfelt worship and the restoration of the Church as a house of prayer. Does this guarantee revival? Perhaps not, but it ensures that any ministry that emanates from a church is glorifying to God.