First person: Six lessons from the work of church revitalization

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First person: Six lessons from the work of church revitalization

Six years ago, I was called to First Baptist Church of Talladega, Alabama as pastor. During the interview process, the committee was clear with me that FBC was a church in need of revitalization, and I was clear with them that the burden of my heart was to serve as a revitalization pastor.

We talked during those interviews about what had gone wrong at FBC, what changes were needed, and what it would take to implement those changes. In the six years that I have served FBC so far, we have seen God do an amazing work of revitalization.

The work is still ongoing, but FBC is already a different church than it was six years ago because of what God has done.

I want to share with you six lessons that I have learned in these six years of revitalization work. I pray that they may be an encouragement to you, whether you are a member of a church in need of revitalization or whether you are a pastor seeking to be used of God in revitalization work.

Prayer as a priority

Prayer is too often a neglected afterthought. We pray when we either don’t know what else to do or we say we are praying “as we’re doing everything else,” but in truth we never truly focus on it.

At FBC, we spent time in dedicated prayer, especially during the first year of revitalization.

We set aside the first Sunday night service of each month as a night of prayer and fasting. In place of our Sunday evening service that week, we encouraged people to forgo their evening meal and come together to pray for FBC. These times of prayer knit our church together, created a sense of unity around a common purpose and set the tone from the start that genuine revitalization would need to be a work of God among us, not a gimmick for us to try.

Primacy of preaching

I often tell people that in revitalization churches, preaching is the “Band-Aid we have to rip off.” It is through preaching that the church hears God’s directives for His church from His Word. From the beginning, this will mean that the church has a clear understanding that the various changes that come with healthy revitalization are called for not by the pastor’s “wild ideas” but by the authority of God’s Word. 

But the primacy of preaching, I think, goes even deeper than this.

If we are painfully honest, I believe that much of the reason so many churches in our denomination, and across the landscape of American Evangelicalism are in need of revitalization in the first place is the neglect of biblical preaching. We have settled for funny stories, clever points and a good moral lesson that gets us out in time for lunch rather than hungering for the clear and careful exposition of God’s Word; and it has starved our churches of their spiritual food.

God’s people hunger for God’s Word, and a pastor is called to feed them. When he does, it will radically transform the life and spiritual vitality of the church. This is the “Band-Aid we have to rip off,” because people will be resistant to this change, but it needs to be made right away, without hesitation or gradual transition.

There will be complaints and jokes, but it is so critical to their spiritual well-being that the people of God be properly fed, that we must implement this change immediately and with resolve.

A commitment to longevity

Pastors who go to churches in need of revitalization may follow pastors with short tenures. This may be the fault of the pastors who came before who did not dedicate themselves to that local church with a long-term commitment. Or it may be the fault of a congregation that is prone to “running preachers off.”

But if anything is going to change and if those changes are going to last, a pastor must commit himself to stay. He must stay for a long time to earn the people’s trust. He must stay through difficult seasons to maintain a steady hand of leadership. And he must demonstrate by his own longevity that the changes implemented are not the “flavor of the month” but necessary long-term transformation.

Needed repentance

Churches that need revitalization need to repent of sin.

Churches decline for a reason, and in every case, in one way or another, sin is involved. This may be bitterness, broken relationships, spiritual complacency, resistance to godly leadership, disregard for the lost or some other issue; but whatever the sin issue is, the church needs to repent. Like the seed that fell among thorns, a church cannot experience revitalization if it does not turn from the sin that caused its decline in the first place.

Biblical church membership

Southern Baptists have not taken church membership as seriously as we should. Membership rolls are bloated. Pastors and deacons alike have a difficult time caring for members who have no intention of being part of the church but insist on staying on the church roll. I am not necessarily advocating for a membership roll purge. These can be messy and can lead a pastor into avoidable conflict, and we chose not to take that step at FBC. I am advocating for a membership class. Membership classes help incoming members better understand your identity as a church and what you will expect of them as members, addressing the problem “on the front end.”

Beginning about three years into my tenure at FBC, we installed a mandatory prerequisite membership class. Some of our existing members were skeptical, and others became angry. The process of making that membership class a requirement for membership caused a bigger controversy than I expected. But it was worth the struggle. The members who have been added at FBC through that class – and there have been many – all have a much more clear understanding of who we are as a local church, how they can be a valuable part of the local body at FBC, and what we as a church expect of one another as members.

New Testament polity

The New Testament offers both prescriptive and descriptive passages concerning church polity. At FBC, we believe that New Testament churches are to be Christ-ruled, elder-led, deacon-served and congregationally governed. The specifics and nuances of this polity are more detailed than space in this article allows.

The most recent matter through which FBC walked together was how to best understand and implement biblical church polity. Again, this was a complicated journey, but we began by walking through the pastoral epistles together in an in-depth Bible study on Wednesday nights, keeping this question ever before us: “Why do we do what we do?”

We also asked ourselves the important follow-up question: “If the answer to the first question is anything other than, ‘because the Bible says so,’ is there something that needs to change?”

These guiding questions helped us better understand what we were doing within our polity and organizational structure that was biblical and what was not. 

The decisions made in the area of church polity over the past year have also been transformative for FBC. There is a clear sense of spiritual leadership among the pastors/elders who shepherd FBC; deacons are better able to serve and meet the needs of the congregation, thereby facilitating the kingdom work of the church; and the congregation has a more clear understanding of the spiritual significance of congregational governance.

Conclusion

One trend I hope you will note in these observations is that all of the significant changes at FBC have been spiritual ones.

Church revitalization is not about changing paint colors, implementing new worship styles, or trading the pulpit for a coffee table. We haven’t done any of this. You will have to make these kinds of superficial decisions based on your context and what best fits, and that may look different in different contexts.

But the spiritual principles are the same, and it is these spiritual changes that have absolutely transformed FBC Talladega, by the grace of God, for the glory of God.


EDITOR’S NOTE — This article was written by Robert A. Klotz, pastor of First Baptist Church Talladega, Alabama. Klotz holds a doctor of ministry in church revitalization from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.