Comeback Churches Quotes

“It's ironic that most evangelical churches are filled with people who live very much like the world but look different from it. It should be exactly the opposite. We should look similar to those in our community but act differently.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“Oswald Chambers puts it all in perspective when he writes, “Remember, no one has time to pray; we have to take time from other things that are valuable in order to understand how necessary prayer is. The things that act like thorns and stings in our personal lives will go away instantly when we pray; we won't feel the smart anymore, because we have God's point of view about them. Prayer means that we get into union with God's view of other people.”9”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“Being missional means moving intentionally beyond our church preferences, making missional decisions rather than preferential decisions.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“you cannot “save” a church without focusing on the important things that make it a church—scriptural authority, biblical leadership, teaching and preaching, ordinances, covenant community, and mission.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“If they do what missionaries do—study and learn language, become part of culture, proclaim the Good News, be the presence of Christ, and contextualize biblical life and church for that culture—they are missional churches.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“90 percent of heart patients who are told to change their lifestyle habits or die, choose death over change.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“A vision must be credible. Since the vision caster is probably you, the church must trust you and its other leaders. The congregation's experience with its leadership helps them have the confidence necessary to follow the leaders' direction. As a leader, you have a “credibility tank.” Every time you have a success, you add to that tank. As you add to the credibility tank, you make it possible to cast an even larger vision. On the other hand, each time you fail, your tank is drained. Then you have to restore that credibility before pressing on to a new task. Build your credibility by casting a progressively larger vision. Begin with small victories. Celebrate what God has done through your people. Whenever possible, throw a party at church to help your people see that growth is occurring and lives are being transformed. Then move to bigger victories!”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“Maybe the first thing we need to pray about is for God to help us see the huge field of people waiting to be harvested and to give us an incredible love for those people.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“A disciple who grows spiritually will have a growing desire to be a witness and reach out to those who are lost.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“become part of culture, proclaim the Good News, be the presence of Christ, and contextualize biblical life and church for that culture—they are missional churches.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“All of us are busy. Life isn't slowing down, it's speeding up, and our Daytimers reflect the fact. Yet that is precisely why we need to take time to pray.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“most evangelical churches are filled with people who live very much like the world but look different from it. It should be exactly the opposite. We should look similar to those in our community but act differently.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“Missional churches act faithfully and intentionally wherever God gives them opportunity.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“We celebrate those comebacks because they inspire us to believe that seemingly impossible things really are possible.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“Almost all comeback churches identified their mood of worship as celebrative and orderly (96% and 95%, respectively) with a significant emphasis on being informal and contemporary (81% and 69%, respectively).”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“Change requires decision making, and decision making requires action. Most churches don't make turnarounds because they never get to the action. Discussion only begets more discussion. Together, and led by the pastor, the church must decide on a course of action.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“Even though most people coming to a church for the first time cannot articulate this verse, they are probably thinking something similar to what James and John said to Jesus, “Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. ‘Teacher, ’ they said, ‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask’” (Mark 10:35 NIV, emphasis added). Each week people show up telling the church, many times, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“In his book Vision America, Aubrey Malphurs asserted that much of the perceived church growth in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s was actually due primarily to the redistribution of believers, not genuine church growth. He stated, “The problems of the church in the 1980s carry over into the 1990s. The church as a whole continues to experience decline and the unchurched increase.”5”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“The central conclusion is that the American church is dying due to lack of strong spiritual leadership. In this time of unprecedented opportunity and plentiful resources, the church is actually losing influence. The primary reason is the lack of leadership. Nothing is more important than leadership.”7”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“Scripture teaches us to contend for the faith (Jude 3) and contextualize to culture (1 Cor. 9:22-23).”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“In his work The Book of Church Growth, Thom Rainer explained, “Prayer is the power behind the principles. There simply is no more important principle in church growth than prayer. The prayers of the early church unleashed the power of God to add thousands to the church. It happened then. It is happening in some churches today. And it can happen in your church.”13”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“Lyle Schaller asserted, “The final thing leaders will need is courage … the willingness to tell the truth, to say what is not politely or politically acceptable. … The most common expression of the courage to tell the truth is to say, ‘It ain't workin'.’”6”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“The church is the chief place for spiritual edification and growth (Acts 20:32; Eph. 4:11-16; 2 Tim. 3:16-17; 1 Pet. 2:1-2; 2 Pet. 3:18).”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“Barna is correct when he writes, “After fifteen years of diligent digging into the world around me, I have reached several conclusions about the future of the Christian church in America. The central conclusion is that the American church is dying due to lack of strong spiritual leadership. In this time of unprecedented opportunity and plentiful resources, the church is actually losing influence. The primary reason is the lack of leadership. Nothing is more important than leadership.”7”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“This leads us to an important spiritual principle for growth: comeback leaders know that our Lord considers commitment to Him and His desires an indispensable ingredient to growing spiritually and numerically.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“When Jesus said, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (John 20:21), the mandate was not for a select group of cross-cultural missionaries. It was a commission to you, to me, and to our churches. We have a sender (Jesus), a message (the gospel), and a people to whom we are sent (those in our culture). It is worth the effort to go beyond personal preferences and attractional methods to proclaim the gospel in our church services and outside the walls.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too

“The cultural distance between our churches and communities continues to widen, making it harder and harder to communicate the gospel. Being missional means moving intentionally beyond our church preferences, making missional decisions rather than preferential decisions. Today, people, churches, and denominations desperately need to apply the lens of intentional missiology to North America, not just international fields. The most effective comeback churches will be those that intentionally think like missionaries in their context.”
― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too