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 sixth additional play for the “Playbook.” I am praying that you are blessed and helped.
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The “pillars” of these churches have given, served, led and prayed for decades. There’s no question that they’ve been faithful. If their churches are inward focused and stagnant, it certainly wasn’t something they ever wanted to happen.
The causes for this situation are numerous and complex and not necessarily germane to the purpose of this chapter. My A Really Great Church! more accurately addresses the spiritual dynamics behind our aging problem, as well as the chapter in this book entitled Optional Play #1, Pursue Missional Realignment.
The remainder of this chapter is going to assume that:
- Your church has an aging problem. A simple survey of the ages of your members and attendees shows that the largest decades in your church – as in, folks in their teens, 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, etc. – are people in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, and an honest look at your trends over the past decade shows that your church is getting older, not younger.
- Your demographic problem, projected into the future, indicates that your church is likely to die within a decade or so (if nothing dramatic happens first).
- You want your congregation to stay afloat, and to not just survive (a very poor goal for those who believe the Scriptures) but to thrive and reach lost people, helping them to become devoted followers of Jesus. Survival is not a mission. Keeping the doors open so that our members have a pastor to do their funerals and a cemetery to be buried in, are not Biblical reasons to continue either.
- You understand that your congregation, in order to stay viable, must begin reaching younger generations for Christ.
- Your leaders are already convinced that change is going to be necessary to keep your church afloat and attract younger people. Without this willingness, undertaking the projects suggested here will be a hopeless battle. On the other hand, waiting until every person who attends your church is ready to change it is not a good strategy either. In short, don’t wait for unanimity among your members but, by all means, wait for at least near unanimity among your leaders. With that said, let’s get right into some…
Suggestions For Getting Started:
(1) Pray like crazy, as in Scripted Play #5 (the most important play in this PLAYBOOK). Pray privately, pray corporately in prayer meetings, pray on your prayer chain, pray in your small groups and Bible studies, pray in your Sunday morning services.
Pray fearlessly and specifically that God will send you the revival that results from having “Jesus Christ, obviously present and actively in charge” (Oliver Price). Pray that God will help your revived church to reach younger families and children. I used the term, “fearlessly,” because it takes some courage to get up in front of a congregation and pray specific prayers for specific needs, the non-answers to which might make us look failed or foolish. “God, please give us worship leaders. God, please give us younger families and children.”
(2) Don’t water down or dumb down your message to try to reach the unreached. Young people want to hear the truth. They want to understand why life is so hard and people are so disappointing. They want to hear fearless – though gracious – preachers. They want to hear about a gospel that is so big and so good that it calls forth the total commitment of their lives. As a young adult, I wanted my life to count. I was intrigued by a Jesus and a message that asked for everything I had; I would not have looked twice at an “add Jesus to your almost perfect life and then it will be truly perfect” version of the gospel.
(3) Don’t try to be “hip” when you’re not. Be honest about your age as church leaders. Love the young people that God brings in your doors, but don’t pretend to be one of them. Be who you are. Enjoy the challenge of preaching to all ages of people in your Sunday sermons – from small children to your most senior seniors. I had a pastor in my high school years who had nothing to say because his theological liberalism had neutered the gospel. He was left trying to be cool by pretending that the lyrics of pop songs had profound meanings (which we knew they didn’t have). He pronounced Bob Dylan’s name, “Bob DiLAN.” My sister and I winced and rolled our eyes.
(4) Do what you can with your building. I’m not going to be unfair and tell you that you have to have a beautiful building that you have no money for. Here in the 2020’s, I’m not sure that young couples are looking for beautiful buildings anyway. They’re definitely looking for truth (#2, above), for authenticity (#3, above) and for love (#5, below), but they’re not necessarily concerned about impressive buildings.
In fact, if you’re going after young singles, the beauty of your building might even be seen as a detriment, especially if you’re wasting vast sums of money (in their view), on a building which was built for a much larger congregation and is now mostly empty.
If you are hoping to reach young families, however, that’s a different story. Young couples have heard so much about what is safe and what is unsafe that they are very fussy about anything and everything touching their children.
Again, assuming that your funds are limited, here are some things which you probably can do:
*Recruit a young mom or two – even if they are daughters of church members who live far away and have only come to visit their parents – to make an honest assessment of the children’s areas of your building, including hallways, flooring, lighting, condition of your nursery toys, etc. Incidentally, if suggestions for changes come from the Johnson’s daughter from Chicago, they will be far better received than if they come from you, the pastor.
*Keep every children’s area spotlessly clean. This can take some time and effort but it doesn’t have to cost much.
*Try to find the volunteer or volunteers who have a burden for reaching young families and an “eye” for what is going to look good. Give them some authority and turn them loose. Prepare to defend them when “stakeholders” criticize: “You can’t throw out that crib, it was donated by my grandfather in 1934.”
*Look at the decorating of your entire building. Again, an honest assessment from the Johnson’s 30 year-old daughter could be very helpful. Pardon my bluntness, but many older church buildings are decorated in styles that appeal primarily to ladies in their 80’s. I love ladies in their 80’s, but you will drive away young people if the decorating of your building strikes them as being in the “Early Alzheimer’s” style. I could tell you stories about church buildings that would make your hair curl – as if you were wearing the tightest curlers your grandmother ever owned, in fact.
*Create an area – separate from the nursery if possible, where adults can flee with their small children and still hear and/or see the worship service. Many of today’s young parents don’t want to leave their children in a nursery, don’t want to disrupt the worship service and are not willing to discipline their children (as were previous generations) to make them sit still and be quiet in services.
(5) Make sure you welcome your new, young attendees all the way into your church family. This is largely a matter of attitude. The attitude must be: “You are welcome here; not just to be our guests on a Sunday morning, but to be workers, friends, leaders, members of the family.” A smile and a handshake on Sunday morning doesn’t cut it. Your guests, of every age, are looking for families, they’re looking for acceptance, they’re looking for love. Too many churches think they are friendly when they are, in fact, friendly only to their friends.
Besides having a welcoming attitude, we must also work on structures and systems which are consistent with that attitude. Make sure newbies know how to become members. Make sure they know how they can volunteer to serve. Give them a clear pathway to being equipped to lead. Don’t allow your older leaders to recruit only the few folks they’ve known and trusted for 20 years to help organize the picnic. When you have new attendees, interview them after a few weeks or months to ask how they are being treated and what they’re confused about.
(6) Make an all-out effort to be prepared for guests who arrive with children. Recruit teachers for at least one children’s class and make sure they are “good to go” on any given Sunday morning. Do not tell your guests that if they come back with their children next week that you’ll be ready for them. You must be ready this week and every week. (This applies to church nursery staffing, as well.)
I know all about the challenge and the cost of this. At my last interim pastorate, I was ready to teach children during our Sunday School hour every Sunday for two months – with no takers. No kidding. Was this hard? Yes, it was. But I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I was ready for the children who never came and I knew that I was modeling a level of commitment to the dear folk in our church whom I kept challenging to demonstrate their interest in reaching young families and young children.
(7) Don’t worry too much about your music. Your younger guests, when they begin to darken the doors, are not necessarily expecting big church excellence from your worship services. You certainly can interview your new guests to find out what kind of music they find inspiring or insipid, but don’t worry about giving unregenerated people music that will please their tastes or – even less likely – cause them to worship God.
I would even venture to say that your brand new, possibly unregenerated guests, are more likely to be impressed by seeing minimally talented people of all generations participating in leading worship – songs, readings, passing offering plates, prayers, etc. – than they would be by watching a highly gifted, sophisticated performance by a contemporary “worship team.”
(8) Don’t be afraid to ask a larger, stronger, like-minded church in your corner of the mission field to put feet to their prayers by “loaning” you a few gifted men, women and teens to help your little church get back on its feet. I am doing my part to challenge and prod healthy, gifted churches to reach out and help the small, struggling churches down the road from them. The churches I most admire are the ones who are not only willing to “loan” some people to hurting churches, but to cross some cultural or denominational barriers in the process. Wouldn’t this qualify as “missions”?
I’m not necessarily talking about giving up your congregation for fostering or adoption by these larger congregations – that’s a more drastic step that you may not be ready for. But the time has definitely come for larger, gifted churches, to reach out in love to help rescue a nearby congregation or two for God’s glory.
For much more on this important subject of welcoming young families, I enthusiastically recommend the following article from our friends at THE MALPHURS GROUP: Growing Younger In An Aging Church. https://malphursgroup.com/how-to-attract-young-families-to-aging-church/
