The HEART of Church Revitalization

A few months back I did a lot of studying and thinking about what church revitalization actually is.

It’s not a “Bible” term of course, but it’s derived from an important Biblical concept: the teaching, quite simply and astonishingly, is that the one and only triune God Himself indwells His people, and in, what we might call, “an additional blessing,” He corporately indwells His churches, the assemblies of Christ-followers who gather in His name.

“For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18:20

Any church of genuinely regenerated (Titus 3:5) people is indwelt with Christ’s own life (Galatians 2:20, Colossians 1:27) by virtue of the Holy Spirit’s presence in its individual members, as well as in this additional, corporate indwelling, which makes disparate groups of Christians into actual bodies of Christ (I Corinthians 12:27).

I hope I never get over my amazement over these truths. Never!

So it is that the new church of new believers is something wondrous: a group of individuals with more rough edges than moon rocks, who are indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, worshipping Christ, becoming like Christ and telling others about Christ when they’re not together.

The brand-new church of new believers needs no revitalization; it is vitalized.  It is throbbing with Divine life!  I hope you don’t think I’m being irreverent to say that it’s “a blast.”

This post isn’t going to go into the dynamics that drag this assembly down from heaven-sent vitality to a state of de-vitalization. We all know that this unfortunate deterioration happens, and that’s where we begin to talk about re-vitalization.

Revitalization assumes that something was once vitalized, full of life.

Fortunately, we can speak of revitalization because churches which were once vitalized, filled to the brim with God’s life, can once again pulsate with God’s life. We don’t have to dismantle every old congregation and replace it with a new one. And while we can’t go back and recreate the past – for life has no reverse gear – we can become new and better and more mature and wiser versions of the congregations which we once were.

From what I’ve said thus far you can anticipate that I’m going to say that revitalization is not so much about technique as it is about life: Christ’s life.

It is not, of course, that He leaves us.

The problem is that we leave Him. Not in any final or fatal sense; we just ignore Him. We replace Him with memories and traditions and “services” and plans and programs and strategies and slogans and, dare I say, visions.

It’s not that we don’t want to serve Him well; we do! But we forget that with all our cleverness, we’re still just branches (John 15:1) and that without Him we can do nothing (John 15:4,5).

More than likely, this is the essence of the promise of Jesus in Revelation 3:19,20, given as the climax of His letters to seven actual churches.

“Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

What the churches of the Roman Province of Asia needed most was neither additional worship services nor improved websites.  What they needed was a new infilling of the Spirit of Christ (Ephesians 5:18 with Acts 4:31), a new sense of the presence of Christ in their midst and a new willingness to let Him dominate their lives and their churches.

These are challenging passages, but in all likelihood, this is also the essence of the Apostle Paul’s prayers for the Ephesian church in Ephesians 1:15-23 and 3:14-21.  Paul longed to see the Ephesian church filled with the Spirit of Christ, empowered by His life and overwhelmed by His love.

Check these out: James 4 and Hebrews 10:19 (through the end of that great letter), may be seen as two more invitations to church revitalization.

Author and Sonlife Ministry founder, Dann Spader changed my life with his observation that churches which obey Matthew 28:19’s command to make disciples can claim the promises of verse 18, “All authority has been given to me” and verse 20, “Look!  I’m with you always, to the very end of the age.” Spader says that Great Commission-focused churches enjoy “the manifest presence and power of Christ.” Think about it. Isn’t that what we want?

Just as exciting is the observation of revivalist Oliver Price, that revival is having “Jesus Christ, obviously present and actively in charge” of our churches.  Again: Isn’t this what we long for?

While none of this eliminates the need to be as wise as serpents in how we seek to make disciples of Jesus – I’m not sorry that I’ve written about 20 “plays” in my Revitalization Playbook – clearly the heart of church revitalization is getting Jesus Christ back into His rightful place as the life, the love, the power and the heart of our churches.

So how do we do that?  This question is worth any amount of prayer and discussion, but I think we can say that the classic formula for heaven-sent revival is probably a great place to start:

• We can repent of anything and everything in our lives which grieves God’s Spirit and our consciences.
• We can, by faith, get serious (again) about living lives of excited discipleship: soaking in the Bible, praying fervently, worshipping wholeheartedly and sharing our faith boldly.
• We can return to having prayer meetings in which we humbly approach the throne of grace for heaven-sent power and Great Commission effectiveness.

This little formula is not the whole story.  We may need to change our strategies to meet the lost where they are, but these three practices are the place to begin our quest.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

1. Do you see your church as being in need of church revitalization? Why or why not?
2. In your church, what have you done to try to experience church revitalization?
3. Can you think of New Testament passages that seem to depict truly VITALIZED churches?
4. Can you think of New Testament passages – besides those Brian mentioned – that seem to depict or promise church revitalization?
5. Do you think that the presence and power of Christ are “manifest” (observable) in your church?
6. Do you think that Jesus is “obviously present and actively in charge” of your church?
7. Brian depicted lives of “excited discipleship” as being lived, “by faith.” Why would that be?  What would faith have to do with lives of “excited discipleship” instead of lives of complacent worldliness?
8. How would you correlate the John 15 concept of “abiding” with those of vitalization, devitalization or revitalization?