Just a note: In 2025 we launched “The Revitalization Playbook.” The “Playbook” is similar to the ones used by football coaches on the sidelines. The coach’s playbook contains all the plays that the coach is confident that his team can run. Conditions on the field determine which play he chooses next.
In my “Playbook,” knowing that every church is unique, we began with five “scripted” plays (appropriate for any church in need of revitalization,) followed by fifteen “optional” plays. I mentioned in the “Playbook” that some of the plays (chapters) were going to get longer in subsequent editions and that completely new plays were going to be added as I worked with pastors in their in-need-of-revitalization churches. It has since been my joy to work with Revitalization Cohorts, as well as individual pastors who are also “deep in the weeds” of revitalization projects.
With that said, here’s the fifth additional plays for the “Playbook.” I am praying that you are blessed and helped.
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I wish we didn’t need this play in the playbook, but I’m afraid we do.
Many churches are limping along, wounded, broken, disheartened, discouraged and confused. In some cases they’ve been through what author Ron Susek calls, a firestorm.1 Other churches have experienced more of a long, drawn-out period of decline or disappointment.
I wrote about coming to grips with your condition as a congregation and accepting responsibility for that condition in Scripted Plays three and four, but I didn’t dive deeply into the subject of helping broken churches to process their pain.
One of the churches I served as interim pastor was deeply divided when we arrived. Through lots of hard work and prayer, we made great progress in bringing our divided congregation back together.
As the interim pastor I was, as usual, serving as the pastoral search committee’s coach. God had touched the hearts of a great group of people to serve on this committee and I was excited. But as we opened the initial meeting, a very astute and godly lady spoke up and said something to the effect that: “I just don’t quite feel ready for this. I’m still not sure what happened here. I feel like I need to know what went wrong before I can get excited about calling a new pastor.”
That was a great moment. We stopped in our tracks and made plans for a good, long, prayerful, careful meeting in which we would dig a little deeper than we had thus far into what had gone wrong with the church. We called the church’s troubled journey “A Northwoods Firestorm.”
The subsequent meeting turned into a couple of sessions, but the delay was well worth it. After sorting some things out and praying about it in some detail, the group was ready to go – onward, upward and forward – and it ultimately “prayed in” a great new pastor.
It’s possible that the congregation you are helping to lead is in that kind of spot. The people are good with God but they may not be good with each other and they’re not good with the past. They’re not creating any additional pain, but they’re still in pain from their old wounds.
With that said, let’s dive right into…
ELEVEN SUGGESTIONS FOR GETTING STARTED:
(1) Conduct listening sessions, either formal or informal. There’s no substitute for simply sitting down in a comfortable room and listening to people talk. You can make them talk fast, in fifty-five minute interview sessions, but if you’re able to let them talk slow, in the comfort and privacy of their own homes, that is far better.
When I do assessments or interventions after church disasters, I like to begin the sessions with the simple question: “In your view, what happened here?” You know you’re not getting the whole picture from any one person and you don’t have to pretend to agree with everything you hear. What you must convey is simply the understanding that the individual’s pain is real, even if there are many things wrong with their thinking or even their behavior. Their pain is real. If you care, it will show, and your empathy will have a real impact on the healing of your people and the trust they place in your leadership.
(2) Do a journey wall. A journey wall is a listening session involving a group of interested persons who map out a church’s history – the good, the bad and the ugly – on a long piece of table paper tacked up on a wall. A journey wall can help clarify what caused the “firestorm,” as well as sorting out lessons, the church’s values, the church’s habits, etc.
In a newer church that hasn’t experienced much drama, a journey wall can be anticlimactic, a “nothing burger.” In an older church which has experienced some “vicissitudes” of church life, a Holy Spirit led journey wall can be very helpful.
Contact me for some help regarding who should lead a journey wall exercise, which churches should do this and how it’s accomplished.
(3) Do a computer-driven church health survey. I confess that I’m harkening back to what I said in Scripted Play #3, Help Your Church To Face The Facts. There are a number of good computer-driven church health surveys available, at various price-points. Your denomination may make one available to you for a reduced cost or even for no cost or they may at least have one which they highly recommend. A good survey will go a long way toward helping you identify the causes of the pain you have in your congregation.
My favorite is called Ministry Mapping, and you can find them at ministrymapping.org. It is very thorough and gives church members multiple opportunities to express their thoughts and feelings. The user of the extensive Ministry Mapping reports has the advantage of being able to show church members what they clearly said about the condition of their own hearts and their congregation’s collective heart.
(4) Better yet, have an outsider do a comprehensive church assessment. Start with a computer-driven church health survey (above) and then allow an experienced consultant or denominational leader to come to your town and do some careful and prayerful interviewing of your people. An assessment will uncover your church’s pain, just as the medical world’s diagnostic procedures enable physicians to see what’s going on inside your body.
It’s one thing to guess at your church’s pain and try to treat it generally; it’s far better to sort out what exactly is causing that pain and treating the issue specifically.
(5) Preach/teach about how good people do bad things. Besides the chapter on this subject in my book, Thriving In A Troubled Church, there are three free posts on this subject on my helpingchurchesthrive.com website.
Simply stated: Good people (God’s regenerated people!) do bad things. All of us. Far too often. Exploring the seven reasons for why good people do bad things helps Christians to give the understanding and forgiveness needed to heal their own pain and their church’s dysfunctions. Make this into a sermon, lesson or a series of sermons or lessons.
(6) Preach/teach about forgiveness, reconciliation, bitterness and resentment. The Bible contains wonderful, heaven-sent instructions on these vital topics. Embittered, resentful people will never soar spiritually into the joy that God wants for them, and having more than a few of these folks in your congregation can have a powerful negative effect on the health of your church body.
(7) Preach/teach about personal responsibility. At the risk of sounding like a commercial, my book, Surviving A Troubled Church, contains a seven-step formula for getting through a turbulent time in a congregation, with a clean conscience.
Here’s the point which someone in your congregation may need to teach: We are not responsible for anyone else’s behavior; we are responsible for our own behavior. We are not responsible for other people’s actions or other people’s hearts; we are responsible for our own hearts and our own actions. Bitter and resentful people don’t have to stay that way forever.
Regarding #’s 5-7 above, far and away my favorite way to teach these truths is from the life of the Old Testament patriarch Joseph. I call him “A Man Without Bitterness.” Over the years, Joseph has helped me immeasurably with my own forgiveness/reconciliation/bitterness/resentment challenges.
(8) Preach/teach about God’s chastening & training of churches. Admittedly, this is deep and mysterious territory, but I think you can handle these truths, and I think your people can as well. Let’s put it very simply, and you – if you’re a teacher or preacher – can flesh it out at some length.
- Just as God allows tough things to happen to individuals to teach them about the consequences of their sin and foolishness, God allows tough things to happen to congregations to teach them about the consequences of their sin and foolishness. My favorite journey wall exercises (see # 2, above) have ended with my telling thirty or forty year-old churches that, just as they (as individuals) are no longer repeating the foolish things they did in their teens and twenties, their church, which did some foolish things in its teens and twenties, can learn from its mistakes and never do these foolish things again.
- Even apart from our sin and folly, God allows many difficult things to happen to us – including bad things done to us by others – to teach us many things and to grow us into mature and godly people. Wouldn’t it only be expected that God would do this with congregations as well? I believe He does, and He does it in perfect love and perfect wisdom.
Since the road to maturity is so bumpy for individuals, we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s also bumpy for churches.
(9) Preach/teach about soul restoration. I can’t go into details here, but I can point you in the right direction: David prayed (in the King James Version, of course), “He restoreth my soul” (Psalm 23:3). And He does! And I am so grateful. If God didn’t heal my body, I would be a terrible wreck, and I hate to think of the mess I would be if God didn’t restore my soul. He uses His Word, His Spirit, His people, His creation (like the woods), music, art, laughter, little children, animals, Christmas cookies, Indian food and a thousand other blessings to restore our beat-up souls. Teach your people that God can and will restore their souls.
(10) Lead in honest but forward-looking prayers. I believe that churches which are in pain are greatly blessed by the godly, mature, faith-filled pastor who takes the time and effort to lead his congregation in sincere, honest, Biblical, Scripture-inspired, faith-filled prayers. Don’t miss the power of this; it will make a difference.
(11) Work on your church’s pain long enough, but not too long. There are two extremes to be avoided in helping your church to process its pain.
- The “tough it out” extreme says, “the past is irrelevant; we’re not going back there; onward and upward!”
- The “therapeutic, overly empathetic” extreme says, “we can’t really expect this wounded congregation to ever really do anything for Christ; we’ll just serve as a support group for wounded victims.”
According to “the preacher” in Ecclesiastes 3:4, “There’s a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.”
1Firestorm, Preventing and Overcoming Church Conflicts, Ron Susek, Baker Books, 1999
