Church Revitalization: The necessary pain of ongoing evaluation

I have led the same revitalizing church for 18 years, and in that time, I have realized time and again the importance of regularly reviewing the mission (i.e., the biblical purpose to make more and better disciples of Jesus) and vision (i.e., the strategic plan for realizing that mission in our ministry context) of the church. Over the years, some of these reviews have resulted in major changes to our strategies, while others have led to relatively minor tweaks. This was to be expected: why else review such things? There was, however, something that I did not expect. Initially, these reviews were easy, but they grew more difficult – and painful – over time.

The initial ease of the reviews was predictable for at least two reasons. First, after 45 years of spiraling decline, everyone knew that drastic changes were needed if the church was going to survive. Both the need for changes and the specific changes needed were obvious to everyone. And second, I had a degree of objectivity in it all. I was not emotionally invested in any of the status quo, and perhaps more importantly, I was not responsible for any of it. I was, after all, the new pastor who just walked into the mess that others created.

Subsequent reviews, however, became increasingly difficult. Again, there were at least two reasons for this. First, the changes grew less drastic. Just as one turns the wheel back toward straight as the turning car approaches the desired course, the changes needed have grown less drastic as we approach health. Eventually, like a car traveling down a straight stretch of road, the majority of the changes needed became minor course corrections that were virtually imperceptible to many in the congregation.

The second reason why our reviews have grown increasingly difficult is that I lost my objectivity. Over time, I became emotionally invested in the way things were, compelling me to deliberately step back in order to gain a more objective perspective. Worse, there inevitably came the moment when I realized that something I had envisioned and implemented was not working as well as it should. I was responsible.

In Revelation 2:1-7, the glorified Jesus dictated to St. John the first of seven letters that he wanted to address to the churches of Asia Minor. More specifically, the first letter was addressed to the church at Ephesus. It made perfect sense. Not only was the Ephesian church a major congregation in its own right, but historians are almost unanimously convinced that this one church served as the hub for church planting throughout western Asia Minor. Put another way, the Ephesian church was the mother congregation, and the other six churches that Jesus addressed were her daughters.

What I sometimes forget is that John served as the bishop of Ephesus. That is, the church at Ephesus was his home church, and all of the other congregations followed his leadership. The words of Revelation 2:4, then, must have come as a punch to the gut: “But I have this against you: You have abandoned the love you had at first.” In short, Jesus pointed out a major course deviation.

As leader, John thought everything was going well. Otherwise, he surely would have addressed this matter, and there would have been no need for Jesus to appear to him in a vision to dictate this letter. Moreover, the problem occurred under John’s watch. He was responsible.

How did John miss the need for this crucial course correction? Perhaps he simply forgot to periodically review the church’s mission and vision. Perhaps he stopped reviewing these things as it grew more difficult. Regardless of how it happened, the ultimate answer is that he stopped looking.

The fact is, leading any church, and especially a revitalizing one, is not an exact science. There are all sorts of internal and external factors making it absolutely essential to conduct periodic reviews of mission and vision. In fact, I would suggest that these reviews should be scheduled at regular intervals every three or four years. Sometimes, these reviews will reveal that the church is essentially on course, en route to realizing the vision and accomplishing the mission with only minor adjustments needed. Other times, it will discover that the vision needs major changes because the context has changed and/or the strategy is not effective. By scheduling these reviews at regular intervals and giving each the due diligence that it requires, however, we make it far more likely that we will catch problems early and so make the course corrections as slight as possible.

Even so, these periodic reviews inevitably become more difficult for the revitalizing pastor as his/her emotional investment and responsibility increase, and sooner or later, it becomes tempting to simply skip them. Indeed, a 2018 article by Karl Vaters rightly identified the single greatest danger to long-term pastors as getting stuck in a rut. (Actually, Vaters said the top five dangers of a long-term pastorate are all getting stuck in a rut.) That is, long-term pastors stop changing and growing, and the chicken to that egg is that they stop reviewing themselves and their churches to see what parts of the vision need to be changed to accomplish the mission. We can argue which of these comes first, but you can be assured that if you see one, the other is close at hand.

Moreover, failing to conduct regular reviews of mission and vision will eventually cause profound problems. In fact, consider Jesus’ warning to John and the Ephesian church in Revelation 2:5: “I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” In Revelation 1, at the beginning of the vision, John saw Jesus walking amongst seven lampstands, each representing a church. To say that he would remove the lampstand from Ephesus was to say that, if they failed to conduct these reviews and periodically adjust course, the church there would cease to be the church even if the people continued to meet.

It is imperative that revitalizing churches and leaders conduct regular reviews of their biblical mission and specific vision, stepping back to consider the state of the church from a relatively objective viewpoint despite the emotional cost or the responsibility we may discover that we bear. If we fail to do this, it will destroy the church.