Context Matters

Church Revitalization advice devoid of context is worthless

Not long after my first daughter was born, I found myself in the office of our local Director of Missions in the county where I pastored. It was a small and difficult church that had split several times in the recent past, and was know for it’s conflict. I arrived there full of the gusto and ambition that only a 20- something pastor can have, but the church quickly knocked the arrogance out of me.

My church wasn’t just sick, it was dying. I knew it, and everyone there knew it, but it seemed they didn’t want to do anything about it. I sat in the office of that older leader and poured out my heart about the conflict in our church, the aging and dying congregation that was already too small to begin with, and outlined the different things I had tried. We only had 20 or so people on a good day, and more were threatening to leave. What could I do, I asked him?

He listened closely as I poured out my heart, and then rose to get something off his shelf. I began to get encouraged, a book that maybe would have some answers. But as I scanned the title my heart fell as quickly as it rose: “Ten Ways to Grow Your Sunday School.” Of course our Sunday School needed help, every part of the church needed help, but the problem was deeper than that. We were dying, and a quick fix wasn’t going to make it better.

I didn’t have the words for it yet, but I was at a church that needed revitalization. Not just that, it really needed re-starting or replanting. It needed something new, something more that just a re-organization of Sunday School. And there were plenty of people who were happy to tell me what I needed to do to “fix my church.” There has never been a shortage of people willing to tell me what was wrong with any church I’ve been at, and many of them also seem to know exactly what’s needed to fix it.

I’m thankful for eh many people who love the local church and desire to see them healthy and grow, but the problem is that one size does not fit all. Church Revitalization is extremely contextual, each church having it’s own personal history and local challenges that must be addressed. There are many general ideas that will help a church in revitalization, but far fewer methods that will work at any and every church. In other words, the principles are many but the methods are few.

I think this is especially true in church revitalization as compared to church planting. Some methods of church planting have little regard for the place or time they are implemented, an economy that is nameless and faceless. It’s tempting to carry that over to sick churches: Do this, change that, and all will be fixed. The methods that work at a church in the east will work in the west, at a city church as well as a country church. But revitalization is contextual, and at each place the pastor must work to address the challenges of that church, specifically.

Wendell Berry addresses this same idea when talking about the rise of industrialism, and how it sees everything only as machines to be fixed. Repair this part, grease this gear, and all will be well. But church revitalizaiton is inherently agrarian in that each place and time is different. Sure there are principles that work across time and place, but the history and region of churches in need of revitalization must be taken into account.

Imagine a farming consultant who gives the same advice to a man planting crops in Idaho in the spring to a man planting in Arizona in the summer. The places are different, so the advice must be different. Any church revitalization adice that does not take into account the history, context, and culture of the place is nothing more than fortune cookie advice. Nice platitudes, but completely devoid of any ties to reality.

What this means is that the first thing a revitalization pastor must work to understand is the church itself. Know it’s history, understand it’s region, study to see how the church got to the place it’s in, and what the future holds for the place as well. It’s easy to give out advice and tips, but it’s a lot harder to know a place. But only in knowing where a church has been can a pastor help them get to where they need to be going.