If God can save any person, He can save any church.
No church should die. Ever. Perhaps a church is far gone, deep into a toxic state of disunity. Perhaps a church has decades of decline. Perhaps a church has veered far from doctrinal convictions. Would the death of these churches advance the kingdom? Would their death glorify God?
No.
If God can save any person, then He can save any church. If we believe in redemption for people (anyone!), then we must also believe the same for churches.
This conviction drives the theme of my newest book, The Church Revitalization Checklist.
A brighter tomorrow awaits your church. This book is a tool to help you start fresh. It’s a step-by-step path to a hope-filled future for both you and your church. The seven-point checklist is a practical tool to help you in all the key areas of church revitalization.
God has placed you exactly where He wants you. But let’s be honest, if you’re leading a church, it isn’t easy. Maybe your church has been in the doldrums for years. Maybe you’re hearing a lot of complaints, and you’re simply tired or disheartened. Maybe you’ve been hurt. But you are not alone. Many church leaders have sore backs from carrying a heavy load. This book will lighten that load.
Your church has the opportunity of a lifetime. The world has shifted, and a new, brighter tomorrow awaits. The Church Revitalization Checklist is a tool to help you start fresh, leverage your strengths, and discover hidden opportunities for church growth.
Available now at Tyndale or Amazon.
Posted on January 5, 2022
As President of Church Answers, Sam Rainer wears many hats. From podcast co-host to full-time Pastor at West Bradenton Baptist Church, Sam’s heart for ministry and revitalization are evident in all he does.
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3 Comments
While it may be semantics, sometimes a church (congregation) has to die as it is currently constituted so that it might live more fully into what it is called to be. Because a church is filled with people with all their biases and distortions of mission and ministry, some times what binds a church to it’s temporal past needs to, in a way, die so that it might be reformed closer to what it is called to be. Not death, per se, but death to the processes of corporate worship and life that hold a church to it’s past.
There are issues with the reformation of a church, often which will prevent it from being reconstituted or reformed. That effort takes time. And not just a couple years most of the time, rather decades. Our church, in it’s nearly 400 year existence, has been “dead” at least twice. Once not of it’s doing (the Americans after the Revolution had issues with the Church of England and all that was associated with that) but it took about 20 years to reform. The second took nearly 30 years in the middle 1800s. In both cases, the church had the “luxury” of a building and property that occupied land in a rural area. That and a faithful remnant.
Sadly, most churches today either don’t have the resources to sustain a fallow period where the “faithful remnant” worships and supports a vision. That and the fallacy that “bigger is better” as opposed to “faithful is better than dead.”
Good day, I would like to buy The Church Revitalization Checklist but I am in South Africa. Can I buy it as an eBook to download?
Yes. It is available as an ebook on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Church-Revitalization-Checklist-Practical-Congregation-ebook/dp/B097Q7RH1B/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=1XRWINSJX7K3K&keywords=church+revitalization+checklist&qid=1641401225&sprefix=church+checklist%2Caps%2C77&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzU0VaMVlGRldZR1pLJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwOTkzODE5M0lSREsxRlRRQUFYSCZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNDMwODAxMzY1VzY0QVE5Qkg3RyZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=