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February 18 - February 26, 2020
In some communities where the Christian influence has waned, where pews stand empty and churches are in disrepair, we need a church-renewal and replanting movement to “go viral.” We need churches and pastors that are passionate, proactive, and committed to doing whatever it takes to plant new churches, and replant and revitalize existing ones.
Well-meaning members lose sight of their role as servants and become increasingly focused on controlling the very church they are called to serve. When a serving heart is replaced by a controlling heart, division is bound to ensue. And when selfish division lies unchallenged, areas of ministry and service become turfs to be defended, and brother and sisters in Christ become opponents and obstacles to individual accomplishment.
replanting requires pastoral vision that can see beyond all that to recognize that history and tradition can be allies in forging a path toward revitalization.
The mission of God is also more than replanting existing churches, but saving churches from death and decline must be of value to pastors who are passionate about bringing the gospel to communities in need.
Evangelism—declaring the saving gospel of Christ—is and should be the driving force of every Christian and the engine of church growth and church renewal.
If churches are going to multiply and share the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout their communities and around the world, they must have a passion for evangelism and a true love for both planting new churches and replanting established churches in need of renewal. Evangelism is the catalyst for church multiplication and the renewal of the body of Christ worldwide.
Between grief and nothing, I will take grief. William Faulkner
I was transfixed and smitten. Having grown up on the wrong side of the tracks in the Deep South, in the cocoon of a culture—formerly agricultural but now upwardly mobile blue-collar Southern Baptists—I knew that most of those who had worshipped at First Calvary were not “my people,” not “my kind of Baptists.” These had once been uptown Baptists, white-collar professionals, small-business owners, civic leaders, patrons of the arts. Some were bona fide movers and shakers in greater Kansas City.
When churches settle into extended periods of decline, they sometimes adopt a defensive rhetoric that touts spiritual growth or spiritual health over numerical growth. Such false dichotomy often masks a tragic loss of vision, a lapse into spiritual sloth, and even defeat. Numerical growth can never substitute for spiritual health and may even cloak spiritual rot. But true spiritual health always longs to see the body of Christ grow. It longs to see the joy of the gospel shared and to offer more praise to its Lord.
From 2000 to 2007 only four states saw numeric growth in the percentage of the population attending an established church (i.e., one more than forty years old). —Darrin
Only a tiny percentage of churches that sink to a certain depth ever truly recover. In the vast majority of cases, prolonged decline proves terminal.1 Close to 8 percent of all churches in North America have reached a plateau or are declining.2 The vast majority of most churches’ growth comes from people switching chur...
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All contexts—suburban, rural, and urban—need new churches. But there is a special need for new churches in cities. By planting and replanting churches in urban centers, we have a strategic opportunity to influence the entire world, because the entire world is coming to live in, work in, and visit cities. —Darrin
One diagnostic test to determine if your church is a candidate for a replant is to look at the number of pastors who have led it in the last thirty years. Churches in need of a restart have often had short pastoral tenures and a series of interims. —Darrin
Despite the church-growth movement and the proliferation of megachurches, over half the congregations in America are composed of fewer than a hundred worshippers on a given Sunday. —Darrin
Effective leadership of a church typically involves casting a vision for the congregation. By vision I mean a picture of what it might look like for a particular band of believers to live and serve as the people of God here and now. Not a vision conjured out of the musings of the pastor’s head but one received from God.
Rather, vision casting calls for discernment here and now—discernment undergirded, guided, warned, and tested by the authoritative Word of almighty God in Holy Scripture. It asks this question: Given God’s revelation, what is required of us here and now, in this time and place, for the advancement of the gospel and the building up of the body of Christ?
The main reason churches fail is poor leadership. Pastors and lay leaders can fail to lead the church well through their mishandling of the Scriptures, failing to take biblical truth seriously. Pastors and lay leaders can also fail to lead well through mishandling of people, failing to take conflict and cultural change seriously. —Darrin
Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)
At some point, leaders in a declining or plateauing church have to look at themselves in the mirror and say, “Enough is enough.” Leaders need clarity about what the Scripture says the church ought to be and courage to stand against those who refuse to let the Scripture inform their view of the church. —Darrin
One of the harsh realities of declining churches is that well-intentioned people unrighteously begin to see themselves as the controllers of the church instead of servants to the church. These controllers hasten the church’s death. —Darrin
Unless declining, congregationally governed churches rethink knee-jerk resistance to strong pastoral leadership, they can usually kiss hopes of revival and growth good-bye.
The emotional cost of a replant is enormous. The leaders must be ready to take friendly fire masquerading as concern for the church. —Darrin
In order for a replant to succeed, the leaders must be familiar with what the Bible teaches about the church and almost as familiar with the bylaws of the particular church. —Darrin
One of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin, said church discipline, unapologetic preaching of the Word, and faithful administration of the sacraments were all marks of a biblical local church. In a declining church, church discipline is nonexistent. But the clear biblical identification of church discipline as a necessary dimension of healthy congregational life should stand as a warning for communities of faith that neglect its judicious administration. —Darrin
A pattern had emerged, a valuable lesson for church leadership: give the right person the right amount of rope at just the right time, and they might, in undoing their own misguided aims, achieve good things for the people of God.
Urban soil is the most difficult place for any church to grow. Yet the majority of churches that need replanting are in the urban core. This is a tough paradox to work with. —Darrin
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! …And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes (4:9–12)
One of the innovations of the twenty-first–century church is the use of video technology to distribute sermons. While some have thought video preaching was a fad, it is becoming a mainstay in many growing churches. —Darrin
Martyred Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
Life through death is one the most beautiful paradoxes revealed in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. He died that we might live, and because He yet lives, so do we.
In every kingdom endeavor, there is a time and a place for raw faith. A time to risk comfort, security, and all you have known for the reward of seeing God do something unexplainable. —Darrin
International cross-cultural ministry demands special capabilities and training.
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Jesus of Nazareth (John 12:24)
And they all pretend they’re orphans And their memory’s like a train You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away Tom Waits, “Time”
The book of Proverbs says, “Without vision the people are aimless.” The only way for a replant to happen is if people see a preferred future in which the local church is attacking the gates of hell with the glorious light of the gospel. —Darrin
The spiritual myopia plaguing First Calvary was not that they were stuck in the past, not really. It was that they were stuck with a present and a likely future that remained unillumined by the past. They were paralyzed in a present distorted by a false comprehension of the past.
One of the most frequent complaints of God to His people throughout the Scriptures is that they fail to remember. The perspective God expects of us and provides to us brings wideness of vision not only in space but in time, not only future time but also past time.
Evangelical Christians have a tendency to either radically overvalue church history—allowing treasured tradition to trump Scripture instead of letting Scripture have its way with tradition—or radically undervalue church history—believing that what God has done in the past has little to no value in the present. Churches likewise are tempted to misuse their history and fall into “we’ve never done it that way here before” syndrome. Or they neglect to value the past and fall into the “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it” effect. —Darrin
and love are displayed in such a case.
In every church plant and church replant there are setbacks and closed doors. It is as if the Lord allows us to pursue options that, in our mind, seem perfect, only to take those options away in order to work the humility that will be required for leadership in the long haul. —Darrin
In certain respects, the culture will prove inimical to the gospel, in which case resistance and prophetic calls for repentance are the church’s duty.
One of the surprising things I discovered in helping lead Acts 29 was the openness of denominational leaders and established churches to share their facilities with new church plants. I believe God is connecting the generations through humble leaders who want the gospel to progress through the local church for emerging generations. —Darrin
And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD.” So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came
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The timing of these lofty discussions about helping Mark nurse this sick church back to health was unbelievably bad. My entrepreneurial capacity for new opportunities had served The Journey well. Not only had The Journey been able to plant an autonomous church of its own, we had also started training dozens of pastors each quarter from multiple denominations and networks. Acts 29 was growing as well, demanding much travel from me as I was tasked with decentralizing our network into regions all over the country. The Journey itself had grown to seven hundred people in two locations, and we were
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One of our elders, a sales guy by trade, was really concerned about this potential partnership. His argument was that The Journey was doing a terrible job of pastoring and discipling its own people and that adding a new church across the state would not improve this reality. This highlights the counterintuitive fact that it is just as difficult for a growing church to partner with a declining church as vice versa. —Darrin
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. The Author of Hebrews (13:17)
Blunt talk about the radical consequences of such a merger forced the congregation once again to revisit the deepest questions about what it means to be followers of Jesus Christ, to be a local body of believers, and to be stewards of resources that ultimately belong not to us but to God.
Redeemer has adopted underresourced schools in the area, assisting with mentoring, tutoring, and in some cases programming.
