April 9, 2025 • 27 mins
Read this week's article at malphursgroup.com/285
his week, hosts Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu dive deep into a topic that might make some church leaders uneasy: the reasons why some churches fail in their revitalization process. They outline three key types of churches that struggle – the poorly pastored church, the timid church, and the lazy church.
Through their candid discussion, Scott and A.J. provide insights into why these barriers arise and how to overcome them. Whether you're a pastor, church leader, or congregation member, this episode offers valuable takeaways for ensuring your revitalization efforts lead to success, not stagnation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Is your church at risk of failing in a revitalization
process? Stick around right now for the Church Revitalization Podcast.
Hello, and welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast
brought to you by the Malphurs Group team, where each week we
tackle important, actionable topics to help churches thrive.
And now, here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ
(00:22):
Mathieu. Welcome to the
Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by my friend and
cohost, AJ Mathieu.
Whoopee. That's the thing. You're excited. I like it. Yeah. We
were in, Europe working with, some
churches over there a few weeks ago. And,
(00:44):
for those of you who are listening to the podcast and don't know, AJ's last
name is spelled m a t h I
e u. And it was fun to hear some people say
AJ Mathieu? Mathieu? Yeah.
Yeah. They get it. They get it over there. They know what's correct. Yeah.
But you're an American, by golly. So it's
(01:07):
Mathieu. Yeah. And probably with a strong Texas accent,
if I'm saying it. So very not French. Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. Exactly. So, alright. Today we're talking about the three types
of churches that fail in a revitalization process.
Cheery topic for you. Yeah. Exactly. But, you
(01:27):
know, not every church that starts a revitalization process is successful
in a revitalization process. And,
that's I would I would contend this
is bonus material. This isn't in the points. If you're working
with someone on the outside to help you, you have an
advantage. And so I would say, you know, when we're working with churches in the
(01:50):
strategic envisioning process, the likelihood of you
failing is much lower just because you've got someone holding
your hand and taking you through. And, you know, we've done it many, many, many,
many times, so we know what we're doing. But even with the churches that we
work with, there are degrees of success. And and,
and so this episode is sort of born out of
(02:13):
seeing the churches that have been not as successful in the process, and there's
some, I would say, three common reasons
when a church doesn't do as well as they could. It's
usually one of these three things. Yep.
And it's not spoiler alert. It's not like it's not there was bad
ideas. It's not that their plan was no good. It's not
(02:35):
like they didn't come up with a creative enough project
or, you know, a cool enough,
mission statement, like or or that the the people
in their church are just, wow, they're really dumb. I mean, it was
or they're too old or they're too small. Like, those
things that you might have in your head, like, I'm not equipped enough or our
(02:56):
church isn't big enough or our church is too old, those are never
the reason. That's true. Yeah. And in fact,
yeah, by the time you get to the end of this episode, you you you
might realize these can all you can be aware of these on the front
end. Yeah. And I guess and maybe you could come to the
decision that we would not we would not succeed
(03:18):
because we don't think we can overcome these things. Yeah. That's
true. You could say that. However, they are
all things that you could know about yourself, proceed,
and succeed. Yeah. Well and I would say at the
risk of sounding click baity, and I don't mean
to, but I did save the most
(03:40):
common reason why churches aren't successful
for number three. And there's three things. So, yeah, you
gotta listen to the end to get to, the the one that's the most
common. Alright. Before we get started, this episode is brought to you by the Healthy
Church's toolkit. So go to Yeah. Which is us.
We own that. Self sponsored. Self sponsored.
(04:03):
We do recommend because there there's there's just tools, there's training
in there that can help your church succeed, whether in the middle of
revitalization or just doing the day to day things in wanting to be
a healthy church, wanting to grow your church, wanting to make disciples. So, go
to healthychurchestoolkit.com. You can get more information there and sign up
for a free seven day all access,
(04:27):
experience in the toolkit. Yep. You got it.
Let's go with, three reasons why a church
may fail in a revitalization process. The first one sorry. Just I mean,
just hold on to your seat because none of these are None of these
sound nice. We're not couching any we're we're not pulling any punches
here. Poor the poorly pastored church may
(04:49):
fail in a revitalization process. And we're gonna break this down. We're not just gonna
drop a bomb on you. But first of all,
you as pastor, if you if you are who who are listening to
this, you've gotta be fully engaged. You've got to want it.
You've gotta wanna participate in it. You've got to support it. You've got to champion
it. You've got to work hard at it. If any of those are
(05:11):
not what you're interested in, you are likely to be a failure point
going forward. So you need to be realistic with yourself. Am I
behind this? Do I want it? Am I willing to change? Am I willing to
step up perhaps into a higher level of leadership
than I normally exercise? Because if you're not,
you will be a failure point. Not saying your church will not succeed at
(05:33):
all, but you are going to be an obstacle to success
moving forward. And so we try to be super clear about this on
the front end, about how difficult or
challenging a revitalization process can be. It's not complicated, but
it's not easy. And and the pastor can
be can be a problem there. This is something we really have to dig into
(05:56):
when we get a call from a church elder or another leader in the
church, perhaps just a non senior pastor contact
that wants to talk about the options for leading their church through a
revitalization process. If the senior pastor unless the senior pastor, you know,
has made it known, it's publicly known, he's retiring, he's gonna be leaving the
church, if he intends to continue to be the senior leader in the church and
(06:18):
he is not a part of the conversation on the front end, that
is going to come up later. That's going to be an issue. And
and we've worked this from a lot of angles, and and we know that. But
the pastor has got to be a positive champion of the
process from the start.
Yeah. I mean, I think, while I stand
(06:40):
by number three being the most common reason why
churches fail, in a revitalization process,
this is maybe the fastest route to sort of
a DOA revitalization process. It
doesn't why I say most number three is most common, and
not this one, though, is usually we're contacted by a
(07:03):
church in the path often by the pastor,
you know, so the pastor is already on board. It's
rare that we are talking with a church where they're trying to win over
the pastor. It it it's not never, but it's
it's more rare. And in those circumstances, it really is
hard. I I can only think of a couple instances
(07:25):
where the pastor was lukewarm at the beginning of the process, and we
won them over, and they champion. In fact, one of the churches
that I think you know, I I can think of
one or two churches where that was the case, and not only did it work,
it was really successful. But Yeah.
Often, if the church is if the pastor is lukewarm,
(07:48):
then he becomes real cold on it. And
if the pastor becomes cold on it, it's just not gonna
work. It it's not. An analogy,
that you all have heard me use before if you're a regular listener to the
podcast, and you'll hear it again now and you'll hear it again in the future,
is I like to say that, you
(08:10):
know, no one gets on a plane without knowing
where the plane is going. You know where the destination is,
and the pilot is the one who is merely
taking you to a shared destination. And and
in the metaphor, the
the pastor is the pilot. So it's not that the
(08:32):
pastor shouldn't be the one who solely is responsible for figuring
out where the plane is going to land.
He might have a lot of control and
influence over the route you take to get there, but everyone on the plane
knows what the destination is. And, you know, if you've got a
pilot who's going, I don't wanna take this plane to
(08:54):
Toronto, that's gonna be a problem. Like, it's gonna be if everyone
on the plane is going, we're going to Toronto, and the and the pilot's like,
no. It doesn't work. And so
the pilot has to kinda get with the program or the pilot has
to get off the plane. The other way that the poorly pastored church expresses itself,
(09:14):
and I'm and I think this is maybe slightly more common,
is that the pastor doesn't know how to
stand up to,
objections Mhmm. And pushback. And
so he's on board with the process and on board with the decisions,
But the second that there's any sort of tension or pushback from
(09:38):
people in the congregation, he folds. Yeah. And,
that's that's also a recipe for disaster. I I don't know if you
wanna talk about that. Yeah. The conflict averse
pastor is is often not a good revitalization
leader for the reason you just said, Scott, but also and we've seen
this as well, The ambivalent pastor on the front end. Like, it's okay.
(10:01):
I'm fine with it. You go ahead. I'm not I don't necessarily wanna lead it,
but go ahead. Other other people, you guys can do that. Well, you can't
you can't do a church revitalization process without him becoming
involved. And, again, you know, referring to my previous points, he's gonna
have to really lead it. And so he may be
he probably doesn't want it, but he said go ahead. You
(10:23):
guys can do it because he's conflict averse, and it's gonna come back. And
it's it's gonna it's gonna become an issue at some point because he's
not gonna be on board with the changes. And, you're gonna have
to deal with that somehow, and that could go several different ways.
But, yeah. The the poorly pastored church,
is is one that fails and it requires a fully engaged
(10:46):
pastor, wants to see positive change happen in the church, and is
willing to lead through difficult situations as a
part of the implementation of it. It. You know, I had a situation with,
this is wasn't church related. It was something
not related to church at all, actually. Trying to be nonspecific.
(11:06):
But, there's a person that I
had, was trying to get their help on
something, on an issue. And to my face
and they were a person who could do something about it. And to my face,
they were like, yeah. This is a problem. Totally. I get it. Like,
every time I talk to this person, he was agreeing with me and
(11:28):
saying, yeah. This isn't good. And then when time
came for him to make a decision about, you
know, in a in a meeting that he was going to, he totally
went the other direction on it. And that was so disorienting to me.
I thought, why how come every time I talk to you, you
said you you understand and you get it? And and
(11:51):
then when it came time for you to sit in a meeting where you could
have influence over it, you went you took the other position.
So were you were you lying to me, or were
you just trying to make me feel better? Like,
what what was the point of that?
And and I think that this is what happens a lot of times in churches
(12:12):
when you have a pastor who's conflict averse. You
you think you're dealing some with something pastorally. You're
having a conversation with someone, and you're telling them, I hear what you're saying.
Yeah. I totally agree. This is a challenge. And then when you
turn around and but then you still sort of follow through on what the plan
said, it's good that you followed through on what the plan said, but now you've
(12:34):
got someone who kind of hates you. Those are like, you you looked at me
in the eye and you told me you understood and that you agreed with me
that this was a problem. And then you went into a meeting and you did
something different. And so
you you can't like, when you encounter opposition,
you should handle it pastorally. You shouldn't be aggressive, but you should
(12:55):
speak clearly and transparently and truthfully. Yeah.
And say, hey. I do hear what you're saying. I understand your
frustration, but we are going to be going in this direction. And let
me let me share with you why we're doing it. Mhmm. That is something
that so many pastors are afraid to do, and it and it's a
killer for a revitalization process. Yeah. Yeah.
(13:17):
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, perhaps with good intentions on the
on the front end of, you know, wanting to maintain the relationship.
Yeah. But it was sort of a disingenuous desire to maintain the relationship
by saying one thing, doing something different later. So relationship killer.
I wasn't particularly close to this person anyway. You know, it was more of an
acquaintance than a friend. But that that killed even that.
(13:39):
Yeah. It's like I I can't trust you. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Alright. Well, let's let's move into our second point, Scott,
and that is the timid church. The timid church
could become the failure point in a revitalization process. It's almost sort of the
church version of what we just talked about, The the poorly pastored
church, the timid church. This is the timid congregation. This is kind of everybody
(14:02):
except the pastor perhaps, although he might might be part of it as well.
Not having the fortitude to make positive
changes going forward. Yeah. It might it might be lip service on the
front end, but when the rubber meets the road, they're not really ready to put
that effort in and have the stick to itiveness to
move through the difficult components that come up along the
(14:24):
way when you're trying to revitalize a church. It requires
change. There's no way around having a
church move from an area of dis health into an area of health
without something being different. You have to you have to make some kind of
changes. You gotta make a good plan. You gotta start executing on that plan. You
know, pieces and pieces all stacking, one on the
(14:45):
next. And, and that just requires the church to
be or the majority of the church to be positively
moving together on that. And so the timid church that
that backs away from it you know, I mean, think Israelites in the desert.
They come up they came up against the barriers of the promised land, the
giants in the land. The timidity of the Israelites
(15:08):
led them to, you know, spend another forty years before they reach the
promised land. Your church might not have forty years left in it. Yeah. You cannot
be timid when you come up against the giants. You've gotta be ready to slay
them. And, and that's what church revitalization is.
I think that this manifests itself in one of two ways depending on the size
of the church. So and, again, I'm speaking in generalities for smaller
(15:30):
churches. This is typically
an unwillingness to to cut or streamline or change a
program that isn't working. You know, there are a lot of
churches that they used to be 200 people, and now they're 50
people, but they have the same number of committees. And they don't have enough people
to staff them all, so you have, you know, some people who are serving on
(15:52):
three or four different committees or some committees that are just
technically defunct, but they're not they haven't officially been cut.
You know? So there's all this extraneous excess
bureaucracy in the church, which is a killer. Or you
have, you know, ministries have scaled back out of necessities,
especially during the pandemic, but the things that
(16:15):
stuck around are not the things that are fruitful. And so,
you you know, you have these few things that are left and there's an unwillingness
to change them or cut them or do them differently,
even though they're not they're not spiritually fruitful.
That that's what that looks like in a small church. In a larger church,
(16:35):
we may maybe aren't calling it revitalization. Maybe we're calling it optimization
or something like that. But it's the the
same problem exists, but those, entrenched
politics, church politics are usually at the staff level.
I don't want you to touch my program. I don't want you to touch my
budget. I don't want you to touch my thing. And it's just rooted in
(16:58):
fear. If you cut my program, does that mean I'm
gonna lose my job? You know, what would my job look
like? You know, are people gonna think I'm not any good at my job if
we change my program? Is that a is that a reflection on me
personally? You know? And and I I get it. But,
the mission has to be bigger. The strategy has to be bigger than any one
(17:21):
person, whether it's a small church and it's a group of
people who, you know, are intransigent
against change or whatever, or if if it's a larger church and you're talking about
a staff that's kind of entrenched as well. In any case,
you have to get people to think about the bigger picture. Yeah. Absolutely.
Well and then our third point, Scott, is I mean, it's the big one. It's
(17:44):
related to our second point. I mean, it's it's more of kind of
an all church attitude. And we're saying we're
calling it the lazy church. So what's the
difference between timid and lazy? Well, timidity is, you know,
kinda recognizing the obstacles and sort of having an unwillingness,
to to take it, to even start. But the
(18:07):
lazy church comes up against even the just
the basics of the work, and they're just not willing to commit to
it, put the time into it. They're they just kinda
they don't even maybe begin with very much momentum. They it
was all sort of lip service on the front end. We can we can all
suffer through a couple of meetings, and, you know,
(18:29):
maybe make some plans. But when it comes time to actually do the
work, we're just comfortable continuing to do
what we've always done. We just don't really wanna put in the
effort. And, unfortunately, yeah, this
this is not uncommon in churches that are
attempting revitalization. And I don't think it's necessarily even a
(18:51):
particular size. Like, the smallest of churches are the most lazy. You
can't say that. Mhmm. It it kinda happens across the board.
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I
I think so in the strategic envisioning process that
we take churches through, we have a
very prescriptive implementation process. We've talked about
(19:14):
this quite a bit on the podcast, but, we have a way in
which we ask you to do things. And churches that follow through
and and take our instruction are
universally successful. You know? I mean, they're sure. There's there's still varying
degrees. And how would you define success? All of that.
Fine. I I understand. But they all see
(19:37):
progress towards their goals. That's that's maybe the
simplest way of defining them. Significant progress and real success and
things that they that they hang their hat on, and they go, wow. I never
would have thought a year ago that we would be doing fill in
the blank. So, I mean, real progress.
But the churches that don't follow the implementation
(19:59):
process that we lay out. I don't wanna say that nothing positive
happens from the process because it's really I mean, I don't even know
that I can think of a church that didn't have something positive as a
result of the process. But they they
don't reach their full potential, not even close.
And it's because for whatever reason I mean,
(20:21):
I think they don't believe us when we say, hey. Please follow
this exactly. They go, well,
maybe I don't know. Maybe we'll do this our way. Mhmm.
Okay. I'm alright. And,
and and it's really about consistent. There's no it's not like our
implementation process is rocket science, AJ. It's really not.
(20:45):
But, it does require high degree
of commitment to doing things in a particular way. And there are a lot of
churches that just aren't willing to do that because they don't want to pick the
date, because they don't want to hold people accountable to showing up to meetings,
because they because they get distracted by things that are more
urgent, because for all of these reasons they're like, you
(21:06):
know, and I'm telling you, this is why this is so
important. If you lose momentum, momentum is real. And
if you lose momentum, it's incredibly difficult, if not
outright impossible, to regain it. Yeah. So if you're working with us,
with someone on our team, you know, AJ or I or one of our certified
guides, and you and you get through the training and
(21:28):
you get through the plan session, you get through the on-site phase of
this, and you move into the implementation phase, and there's
a gap of time and you don't start that implementation phase pretty
quickly within within four to six weeks. People start to lose
they forget. They lose interest or you or you
have one implementation meeting, but then you don't you're you're not meeting every
(21:50):
month the way that we outlined. It's just what are you gonna do? You can't
you're not gonna have us come back again. I mean, we're not gonna make different
decisions than we did, and you're not gonna wanna invest in that, the
time and the energy and the resources in that. It
it's so hard to get people excited again, you know, when
so I don't know. For all of those reasons, like,
(22:14):
if you lose that momentum, it's it's very hard for the process to be as
successful as it could be. Yeah. And I think It's not impossible. I mean, we
we you and I have both had churches that go, oh, man. We slacked off
for three months. Yeah. And we don't wanna get, you know, and then they
they kick it in. But Yeah. That didn't that's not an
easy thing to do, and and I, you know, I dare say there is
(22:36):
a loss of success. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It's it's not impossible to overcome. But, you know, I'd tell you what, I
mean, I know you and I are biased, but I really believe our
process as we have it laid out gives you the
greatest chance of success because we get
that training and planning work done really quickly on the road.
(22:59):
Not spending months and months of meetings and decisions and debates and
all this stuff because it's that so feels like something
and it truly turns out to be nothing. You know, you can go months and
months of of discussions and feel like you've accomplished a lot when you
haven't started doing anything real in implementation.
So we get you to implementation really fast on the front end,
(23:22):
and so that we don't burn you out early. You know? I mean, we wanna
get you into action early. Try to try to
build that momentum, get some some muscle memory
going, in a rhythm of meeting together and making small
progress. So, yeah, I mean, I I really think we've
got a well laid out process. And I know we're biased, and we we
(23:43):
are biased, but the number of churches that talk to us and say we did,
and I won't mention names, we did x process. We worked
with x program, and we and and
the content was good, and the conversations were helpful, but we
didn't really change. We didn't really do anything.
And, and they'll say, you know, on the
(24:06):
back end of our process, this is the first time our church has
actually executed. And, you know, again,
it's not rocket science. What the what we what we teach is
not revolutionary in terms of its complexity
or or something. It just it just flat out works. But,
we've had a number of enough churches now not follow our instructions
(24:29):
that we can tell you with 100% certainty,
you must follow the process if you want to
maximize your results. It's
just that it's just that simple. The the the
the projects themselves vary, Mhmm. Obviously, from church to church, what you're
working on. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the manner in which you
(24:51):
execute them. Yeah. It's pretty prescriptive. But, I mean,
let you know, let's leave you with some encouragement, though. This is all possible. Revitalization
is possible in your church. Take these things to heart. You know? I mean, do
an introspective look, and be prepared to overcome these
if you think any of these three. Either either you as a as a leader
or the leader in your church, your senior pastor, not being one that
(25:14):
you think would be willing to lead through it, that you gotta look at that.
Is your church gonna be timid? When when you come up against the giants, are
you gonna run back to Egypt, or be stuck in the wilderness?
And then finally, are you willing to put in the effort and not
not be the lazy church that that fails to succeed because you
failed to work? So be introspective about these things because if
(25:37):
you can overcome these, if you have these elements and you choose to
overcome them, you can find success. If these aren't, anything in your
church, then you're probably feeling pretty good about yourself right now. And you're like, maybe
we really could do this. And we certainly believe you could.
We believe it. Yeah. And and, you know, the toolkit is a great place to
start because there's a lot of content in there. But the
(25:58):
the pitch I wanna make here at the end is to contact us
about working with a guide. You know, go to
malphursgroup.com and see
kind of what our process is. It's right there on the home page. You can
kind of get a sense of what we do and contact us because
there is a real difference between trying to do this on your own and having
(26:18):
someone come alongside you and help you. We're a nonprofit organization. If
you're outside of North America, we we essentially do the
work at what you can afford to pay. We we have to
fundraise a little bit maybe to get out to you. But,
you know and if you're in North America, our fees are extremely low. They're they're
lower than any other organization at our level, and you're not gonna
(26:40):
find another group that does the quality of work that we do, at
the at the fees that we offer. And so,
yeah, we don't I don't often say that on here because this
podcast is not a sales pitch. But I'm
I'm sincere. If you listen to this and then go, those are things that we
could make sure that we don't do, then then you should then you should partner
(27:02):
with us and let us take you through. That'd be good. Thanks for being with
us this week on the Church Revitalization Podcast. Today's show notes are
linked below in your podcast app or in the YouTube description if that's
where you're, consuming the podcast today. We are sure glad
you're with us. We're here to support your church. Wanna see you succeed, and we'll
see you again next week.
Is your church at risk of failing in a revitalization
process? Stick around right now for the Church Revitalization Podcast.
Hello, and welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast
brought to you by the Malphurs Group team, where each week we
tackle important, actionable topics to help churches thrive.
And now, here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ
(00:22):
Mathieu. Welcome to the
Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by my friend and
cohost, AJ Mathieu.
Whoopee. That's the thing. You're excited. I like it. Yeah. We
were in, Europe working with, some
churches over there a few weeks ago. And,
(00:44):
for those of you who are listening to the podcast and don't know, AJ's last
name is spelled m a t h I
e u. And it was fun to hear some people say
AJ Mathieu? Mathieu? Yeah.
Yeah. They get it. They get it over there. They know what's correct. Yeah.
But you're an American, by golly. So it's
(01:07):
Mathieu. Yeah. And probably with a strong Texas accent,
if I'm saying it. So very not French. Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. Exactly. So, alright. Today we're talking about the three types
of churches that fail in a revitalization process.
Cheery topic for you. Yeah. Exactly. But, you
(01:27):
know, not every church that starts a revitalization process is successful
in a revitalization process. And,
that's I would I would contend this
is bonus material. This isn't in the points. If you're working
with someone on the outside to help you, you have an
advantage. And so I would say, you know, when we're working with churches in the
(01:50):
strategic envisioning process, the likelihood of you
failing is much lower just because you've got someone holding
your hand and taking you through. And, you know, we've done it many, many, many,
many times, so we know what we're doing. But even with the churches that we
work with, there are degrees of success. And and,
and so this episode is sort of born out of
(02:13):
seeing the churches that have been not as successful in the process, and there's
some, I would say, three common reasons
when a church doesn't do as well as they could. It's
usually one of these three things. Yep.
And it's not spoiler alert. It's not like it's not there was bad
ideas. It's not that their plan was no good. It's not
(02:35):
like they didn't come up with a creative enough project
or, you know, a cool enough,
mission statement, like or or that the the people
in their church are just, wow, they're really dumb. I mean, it was
or they're too old or they're too small. Like, those
things that you might have in your head, like, I'm not equipped enough or our
(02:56):
church isn't big enough or our church is too old, those are never
the reason. That's true. Yeah. And in fact,
yeah, by the time you get to the end of this episode, you you you
might realize these can all you can be aware of these on the front
end. Yeah. And I guess and maybe you could come to the
decision that we would not we would not succeed
(03:18):
because we don't think we can overcome these things. Yeah. That's
true. You could say that. However, they are
all things that you could know about yourself, proceed,
and succeed. Yeah. Well and I would say at the
risk of sounding click baity, and I don't mean
to, but I did save the most
(03:40):
common reason why churches aren't successful
for number three. And there's three things. So, yeah, you
gotta listen to the end to get to, the the one that's the most
common. Alright. Before we get started, this episode is brought to you by the Healthy
Church's toolkit. So go to Yeah. Which is us.
We own that. Self sponsored. Self sponsored.
(04:03):
We do recommend because there there's there's just tools, there's training
in there that can help your church succeed, whether in the middle of
revitalization or just doing the day to day things in wanting to be
a healthy church, wanting to grow your church, wanting to make disciples. So, go
to healthychurchestoolkit.com. You can get more information there and sign up
for a free seven day all access,
(04:27):
experience in the toolkit. Yep. You got it.
Let's go with, three reasons why a church
may fail in a revitalization process. The first one sorry. Just I mean,
just hold on to your seat because none of these are None of these
sound nice. We're not couching any we're we're not pulling any punches
here. Poor the poorly pastored church may
(04:49):
fail in a revitalization process. And we're gonna break this down. We're not just gonna
drop a bomb on you. But first of all,
you as pastor, if you if you are who who are listening to
this, you've gotta be fully engaged. You've got to want it.
You've gotta wanna participate in it. You've got to support it. You've got to champion
it. You've got to work hard at it. If any of those are
(05:11):
not what you're interested in, you are likely to be a failure point
going forward. So you need to be realistic with yourself. Am I
behind this? Do I want it? Am I willing to change? Am I willing to
step up perhaps into a higher level of leadership
than I normally exercise? Because if you're not,
you will be a failure point. Not saying your church will not succeed at
(05:33):
all, but you are going to be an obstacle to success
moving forward. And so we try to be super clear about this on
the front end, about how difficult or
challenging a revitalization process can be. It's not complicated, but
it's not easy. And and the pastor can
be can be a problem there. This is something we really have to dig into
(05:56):
when we get a call from a church elder or another leader in the
church, perhaps just a non senior pastor contact
that wants to talk about the options for leading their church through a
revitalization process. If the senior pastor unless the senior pastor, you know,
has made it known, it's publicly known, he's retiring, he's gonna be leaving the
church, if he intends to continue to be the senior leader in the church and
(06:18):
he is not a part of the conversation on the front end, that
is going to come up later. That's going to be an issue. And
and we've worked this from a lot of angles, and and we know that. But
the pastor has got to be a positive champion of the
process from the start.
Yeah. I mean, I think, while I stand
(06:40):
by number three being the most common reason why
churches fail, in a revitalization process,
this is maybe the fastest route to sort of
a DOA revitalization process. It
doesn't why I say most number three is most common, and
not this one, though, is usually we're contacted by a
(07:03):
church in the path often by the pastor,
you know, so the pastor is already on board. It's
rare that we are talking with a church where they're trying to win over
the pastor. It it it's not never, but it's
it's more rare. And in those circumstances, it really is
hard. I I can only think of a couple instances
(07:25):
where the pastor was lukewarm at the beginning of the process, and we
won them over, and they champion. In fact, one of the churches
that I think you know, I I can think of
one or two churches where that was the case, and not only did it work,
it was really successful. But Yeah.
Often, if the church is if the pastor is lukewarm,
(07:48):
then he becomes real cold on it. And
if the pastor becomes cold on it, it's just not gonna
work. It it's not. An analogy,
that you all have heard me use before if you're a regular listener to the
podcast, and you'll hear it again now and you'll hear it again in the future,
is I like to say that, you
(08:10):
know, no one gets on a plane without knowing
where the plane is going. You know where the destination is,
and the pilot is the one who is merely
taking you to a shared destination. And and
in the metaphor, the
the pastor is the pilot. So it's not that the
(08:32):
pastor shouldn't be the one who solely is responsible for figuring
out where the plane is going to land.
He might have a lot of control and
influence over the route you take to get there, but everyone on the plane
knows what the destination is. And, you know, if you've got a
pilot who's going, I don't wanna take this plane to
(08:54):
Toronto, that's gonna be a problem. Like, it's gonna be if everyone
on the plane is going, we're going to Toronto, and the and the pilot's like,
no. It doesn't work. And so
the pilot has to kinda get with the program or the pilot has
to get off the plane. The other way that the poorly pastored church expresses itself,
(09:14):
and I'm and I think this is maybe slightly more common,
is that the pastor doesn't know how to
stand up to,
objections Mhmm. And pushback. And
so he's on board with the process and on board with the decisions,
But the second that there's any sort of tension or pushback from
(09:38):
people in the congregation, he folds. Yeah. And,
that's that's also a recipe for disaster. I I don't know if you
wanna talk about that. Yeah. The conflict averse
pastor is is often not a good revitalization
leader for the reason you just said, Scott, but also and we've seen
this as well, The ambivalent pastor on the front end. Like, it's okay.
(10:01):
I'm fine with it. You go ahead. I'm not I don't necessarily wanna lead it,
but go ahead. Other other people, you guys can do that. Well, you can't
you can't do a church revitalization process without him becoming
involved. And, again, you know, referring to my previous points, he's gonna
have to really lead it. And so he may be
he probably doesn't want it, but he said go ahead. You
(10:23):
guys can do it because he's conflict averse, and it's gonna come back. And
it's it's gonna it's gonna become an issue at some point because he's
not gonna be on board with the changes. And, you're gonna have
to deal with that somehow, and that could go several different ways.
But, yeah. The the poorly pastored church,
is is one that fails and it requires a fully engaged
(10:46):
pastor, wants to see positive change happen in the church, and is
willing to lead through difficult situations as a
part of the implementation of it. It. You know, I had a situation with,
this is wasn't church related. It was something
not related to church at all, actually. Trying to be nonspecific.
(11:06):
But, there's a person that I
had, was trying to get their help on
something, on an issue. And to my face
and they were a person who could do something about it. And to my face,
they were like, yeah. This is a problem. Totally. I get it. Like,
every time I talk to this person, he was agreeing with me and
(11:28):
saying, yeah. This isn't good. And then when time
came for him to make a decision about, you
know, in a in a meeting that he was going to, he totally
went the other direction on it. And that was so disorienting to me.
I thought, why how come every time I talk to you, you
said you you understand and you get it? And and
(11:51):
then when it came time for you to sit in a meeting where you could
have influence over it, you went you took the other position.
So were you were you lying to me, or were
you just trying to make me feel better? Like,
what what was the point of that?
And and I think that this is what happens a lot of times in churches
(12:12):
when you have a pastor who's conflict averse. You
you think you're dealing some with something pastorally. You're
having a conversation with someone, and you're telling them, I hear what you're saying.
Yeah. I totally agree. This is a challenge. And then when you
turn around and but then you still sort of follow through on what the plan
said, it's good that you followed through on what the plan said, but now you've
(12:34):
got someone who kind of hates you. Those are like, you you looked at me
in the eye and you told me you understood and that you agreed with me
that this was a problem. And then you went into a meeting and you did
something different. And so
you you can't like, when you encounter opposition,
you should handle it pastorally. You shouldn't be aggressive, but you should
(12:55):
speak clearly and transparently and truthfully. Yeah.
And say, hey. I do hear what you're saying. I understand your
frustration, but we are going to be going in this direction. And let
me let me share with you why we're doing it. Mhmm. That is something
that so many pastors are afraid to do, and it and it's a
killer for a revitalization process. Yeah. Yeah.
(13:17):
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, perhaps with good intentions on the
on the front end of, you know, wanting to maintain the relationship.
Yeah. But it was sort of a disingenuous desire to maintain the relationship
by saying one thing, doing something different later. So relationship killer.
I wasn't particularly close to this person anyway. You know, it was more of an
acquaintance than a friend. But that that killed even that.
(13:39):
Yeah. It's like I I can't trust you. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Alright. Well, let's let's move into our second point, Scott,
and that is the timid church. The timid church
could become the failure point in a revitalization process. It's almost sort of the
church version of what we just talked about, The the poorly pastored
church, the timid church. This is the timid congregation. This is kind of everybody
(14:02):
except the pastor perhaps, although he might might be part of it as well.
Not having the fortitude to make positive
changes going forward. Yeah. It might it might be lip service on the
front end, but when the rubber meets the road, they're not really ready to put
that effort in and have the stick to itiveness to
move through the difficult components that come up along the
(14:24):
way when you're trying to revitalize a church. It requires
change. There's no way around having a
church move from an area of dis health into an area of health
without something being different. You have to you have to make some kind of
changes. You gotta make a good plan. You gotta start executing on that plan. You
know, pieces and pieces all stacking, one on the
(14:45):
next. And, and that just requires the church to
be or the majority of the church to be positively
moving together on that. And so the timid church that
that backs away from it you know, I mean, think Israelites in the desert.
They come up they came up against the barriers of the promised land, the
giants in the land. The timidity of the Israelites
(15:08):
led them to, you know, spend another forty years before they reach the
promised land. Your church might not have forty years left in it. Yeah. You cannot
be timid when you come up against the giants. You've gotta be ready to slay
them. And, and that's what church revitalization is.
I think that this manifests itself in one of two ways depending on the size
of the church. So and, again, I'm speaking in generalities for smaller
(15:30):
churches. This is typically
an unwillingness to to cut or streamline or change a
program that isn't working. You know, there are a lot of
churches that they used to be 200 people, and now they're 50
people, but they have the same number of committees. And they don't have enough people
to staff them all, so you have, you know, some people who are serving on
(15:52):
three or four different committees or some committees that are just
technically defunct, but they're not they haven't officially been cut.
You know? So there's all this extraneous excess
bureaucracy in the church, which is a killer. Or you
have, you know, ministries have scaled back out of necessities,
especially during the pandemic, but the things that
(16:15):
stuck around are not the things that are fruitful. And so,
you you know, you have these few things that are left and there's an unwillingness
to change them or cut them or do them differently,
even though they're not they're not spiritually fruitful.
That that's what that looks like in a small church. In a larger church,
(16:35):
we may maybe aren't calling it revitalization. Maybe we're calling it optimization
or something like that. But it's the the
same problem exists, but those, entrenched
politics, church politics are usually at the staff level.
I don't want you to touch my program. I don't want you to touch my
budget. I don't want you to touch my thing. And it's just rooted in
(16:58):
fear. If you cut my program, does that mean I'm
gonna lose my job? You know, what would my job look
like? You know, are people gonna think I'm not any good at my job if
we change my program? Is that a is that a reflection on me
personally? You know? And and I I get it. But,
the mission has to be bigger. The strategy has to be bigger than any one
(17:21):
person, whether it's a small church and it's a group of
people who, you know, are intransigent
against change or whatever, or if if it's a larger church and you're talking about
a staff that's kind of entrenched as well. In any case,
you have to get people to think about the bigger picture. Yeah. Absolutely.
Well and then our third point, Scott, is I mean, it's the big one. It's
(17:44):
related to our second point. I mean, it's it's more of kind of
an all church attitude. And we're saying we're
calling it the lazy church. So what's the
difference between timid and lazy? Well, timidity is, you know,
kinda recognizing the obstacles and sort of having an unwillingness,
to to take it, to even start. But the
(18:07):
lazy church comes up against even the just
the basics of the work, and they're just not willing to commit to
it, put the time into it. They're they just kinda
they don't even maybe begin with very much momentum. They it
was all sort of lip service on the front end. We can we can all
suffer through a couple of meetings, and, you know,
(18:29):
maybe make some plans. But when it comes time to actually do the
work, we're just comfortable continuing to do
what we've always done. We just don't really wanna put in the
effort. And, unfortunately, yeah, this
this is not uncommon in churches that are
attempting revitalization. And I don't think it's necessarily even a
(18:51):
particular size. Like, the smallest of churches are the most lazy. You
can't say that. Mhmm. It it kinda happens across the board.
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I
I think so in the strategic envisioning process that
we take churches through, we have a
very prescriptive implementation process. We've talked about
(19:14):
this quite a bit on the podcast, but, we have a way in
which we ask you to do things. And churches that follow through
and and take our instruction are
universally successful. You know? I mean, they're sure. There's there's still varying
degrees. And how would you define success? All of that.
Fine. I I understand. But they all see
(19:37):
progress towards their goals. That's that's maybe the
simplest way of defining them. Significant progress and real success and
things that they that they hang their hat on, and they go, wow. I never
would have thought a year ago that we would be doing fill in
the blank. So, I mean, real progress.
But the churches that don't follow the implementation
(19:59):
process that we lay out. I don't wanna say that nothing positive
happens from the process because it's really I mean, I don't even know
that I can think of a church that didn't have something positive as a
result of the process. But they they
don't reach their full potential, not even close.
And it's because for whatever reason I mean,
(20:21):
I think they don't believe us when we say, hey. Please follow
this exactly. They go, well,
maybe I don't know. Maybe we'll do this our way. Mhmm.
Okay. I'm alright. And,
and and it's really about consistent. There's no it's not like our
implementation process is rocket science, AJ. It's really not.
(20:45):
But, it does require high degree
of commitment to doing things in a particular way. And there are a lot of
churches that just aren't willing to do that because they don't want to pick the
date, because they don't want to hold people accountable to showing up to meetings,
because they because they get distracted by things that are more
urgent, because for all of these reasons they're like, you
(21:06):
know, and I'm telling you, this is why this is so
important. If you lose momentum, momentum is real. And
if you lose momentum, it's incredibly difficult, if not
outright impossible, to regain it. Yeah. So if you're working with us,
with someone on our team, you know, AJ or I or one of our certified
guides, and you and you get through the training and
(21:28):
you get through the plan session, you get through the on-site phase of
this, and you move into the implementation phase, and there's
a gap of time and you don't start that implementation phase pretty
quickly within within four to six weeks. People start to lose
they forget. They lose interest or you or you
have one implementation meeting, but then you don't you're you're not meeting every
(21:50):
month the way that we outlined. It's just what are you gonna do? You can't
you're not gonna have us come back again. I mean, we're not gonna make different
decisions than we did, and you're not gonna wanna invest in that, the
time and the energy and the resources in that. It
it's so hard to get people excited again, you know, when
so I don't know. For all of those reasons, like,
(22:14):
if you lose that momentum, it's it's very hard for the process to be as
successful as it could be. Yeah. And I think It's not impossible. I mean, we
we you and I have both had churches that go, oh, man. We slacked off
for three months. Yeah. And we don't wanna get, you know, and then they
they kick it in. But Yeah. That didn't that's not an
easy thing to do, and and I, you know, I dare say there is
(22:36):
a loss of success. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It's it's not impossible to overcome. But, you know, I'd tell you what, I
mean, I know you and I are biased, but I really believe our
process as we have it laid out gives you the
greatest chance of success because we get
that training and planning work done really quickly on the road.
(22:59):
Not spending months and months of meetings and decisions and debates and
all this stuff because it's that so feels like something
and it truly turns out to be nothing. You know, you can go months and
months of of discussions and feel like you've accomplished a lot when you
haven't started doing anything real in implementation.
So we get you to implementation really fast on the front end,
(23:22):
and so that we don't burn you out early. You know? I mean, we wanna
get you into action early. Try to try to
build that momentum, get some some muscle memory
going, in a rhythm of meeting together and making small
progress. So, yeah, I mean, I I really think we've
got a well laid out process. And I know we're biased, and we we
(23:43):
are biased, but the number of churches that talk to us and say we did,
and I won't mention names, we did x process. We worked
with x program, and we and and
the content was good, and the conversations were helpful, but we
didn't really change. We didn't really do anything.
And, and they'll say, you know, on the
(24:06):
back end of our process, this is the first time our church has
actually executed. And, you know, again,
it's not rocket science. What the what we what we teach is
not revolutionary in terms of its complexity
or or something. It just it just flat out works. But,
we've had a number of enough churches now not follow our instructions
(24:29):
that we can tell you with 100% certainty,
you must follow the process if you want to
maximize your results. It's
just that it's just that simple. The the the
the projects themselves vary, Mhmm. Obviously, from church to church, what you're
working on. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the manner in which you
(24:51):
execute them. Yeah. It's pretty prescriptive. But, I mean,
let you know, let's leave you with some encouragement, though. This is all possible. Revitalization
is possible in your church. Take these things to heart. You know? I mean, do
an introspective look, and be prepared to overcome these
if you think any of these three. Either either you as a as a leader
or the leader in your church, your senior pastor, not being one that
(25:14):
you think would be willing to lead through it, that you gotta look at that.
Is your church gonna be timid? When when you come up against the giants, are
you gonna run back to Egypt, or be stuck in the wilderness?
And then finally, are you willing to put in the effort and not
not be the lazy church that that fails to succeed because you
failed to work? So be introspective about these things because if
(25:37):
you can overcome these, if you have these elements and you choose to
overcome them, you can find success. If these aren't, anything in your
church, then you're probably feeling pretty good about yourself right now. And you're like, maybe
we really could do this. And we certainly believe you could.
We believe it. Yeah. And and, you know, the toolkit is a great place to
start because there's a lot of content in there. But the
(25:58):
the pitch I wanna make here at the end is to contact us
about working with a guide. You know, go to
malphursgroup.com and see
kind of what our process is. It's right there on the home page. You can
kind of get a sense of what we do and contact us because
there is a real difference between trying to do this on your own and having
(26:18):
someone come alongside you and help you. We're a nonprofit organization. If
you're outside of North America, we we essentially do the
work at what you can afford to pay. We we have to
fundraise a little bit maybe to get out to you. But,
you know and if you're in North America, our fees are extremely low. They're they're
lower than any other organization at our level, and you're not gonna
(26:40):
find another group that does the quality of work that we do, at
the at the fees that we offer. And so,
yeah, we don't I don't often say that on here because this
podcast is not a sales pitch. But I'm
I'm sincere. If you listen to this and then go, those are things that we
could make sure that we don't do, then then you should then you should partner
(27:02):
with us and let us take you through. That'd be good. Thanks for being with
us this week on the Church Revitalization Podcast. Today's show notes are
linked below in your podcast app or in the YouTube description if that's
where you're, consuming the podcast today. We are sure glad
you're with us. We're here to support your church. Wanna see you succeed, and we'll
see you again next week.
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