Church Revitalization Models

What are pastors doing to revitalize churches?

Jul 23, 2024

I have a pretty diverse background in local church leadership. Because of the various places I had the opportunity to lead, it can be honestly said that I have been a pastor in rural, urban, and suburban places in small, medium, and large churches. But one kind of church I have never been a part of in my whole life is a church revitalization.

So I begin this article with a confession that I don’t really know what I’m talking about. (Perhaps my critics would say this is true of most things I talk about.) However, because of my translocal roles, including my current one, I’ve spoken with hundreds of pastors seeking to revitalize their struggling church. What follows are observations and categories that may help from hearing what they are going through, what they are trying, and what works or not.

If you’re not in a revitalizing church you might wonder what one is. So let’s define it:

Church revitalization is the process of a congregation working together to become more sustainably healthy, internally independent, and increasingly impactful.

Most often you’ll find a church revitalization at an older, declining congregation that had it’s last “hey day” many decades ago. They are usually, although not always, smaller churches that mirror the aging communities around them that are declining in population as well. More often than not, the church is worried that they would have to close if things continue on their current trajectory for another decade.

You might think this describes a lot of churches and you’d be right. 7 in 10 churches in the United States have an attendance of 100 or less (1) and, notably, the average age of senior pastors is now 60 years old (2). Churches are increasingly smaller these days. 20 years ago, the median attendance of a church was 137 people. Now it is 65. And more than half of congregations were growing 20 years ago, while now only a third are growing. (3)

One thing I should say before exploring models I’ve seen, is that this kind of church leadership is very hard. Almost every pastor of a revitalizing church is facing a number of tensions that are unique to that challenge, and on top of it they are usually underpaid, over-stressed, and unappreciated. None of this is an easy task, and regardless of the model one employs success is not likely, much less guaranteed. What’s more, every church revitalization is unique. Even two churches engaging the very same model in similar communities might be dramatically different in most every other way.

However, thinking in terms of models might help us have hope that others are doing it in a similar way, and perhaps find others in a similar boat to learn from and connect with for encouragement. So, here are a few church revitalization models I’ve seen deployed:

The Restart Model

These churches determine that they have a compelling heart for their surrounding community and at least a small core of the church wants to undergo radical transformation to treat the church much like a church plant, utilizing some of the soft and hard assets of the church to support the birth of a mostly new congregation. The church may or may not meet in the current facility, or even keep the same name or other factors, but overall this is a massive change and one that Thom Rainer calls “covenantal revitalization” for a reason: everyone involved really needs to covenant together to leave behind the old way and start over.

The Chapel Model

These churches aren’t ready for a restart and have determined the best way forward is to just try and sustain their current ministry. In some ways they are the inversion of the restart model, in that they don’t choose change and they don’t leave behind the old way, instead embracing the old way and just trying to find a way to make it stay afloat. Many of these churches have to move to either a circuit model (where the pastor serves multiple churches) or to some kind of forced (as opposed to strategic) bi-vocational leadership model in order to keep the doors open. The only way this tends to work is with a pretty dramatic change in expectations for the pastor, and then it can potentially sustain a church for another 10-20 years if costs are low enough.

The Own Who We Are Model

Not to be confused with the Chapel Model above, these churches are ones that take a look at who they are and turn perceived weaknesses into strengths. They determine that while their church is not like other cooler churches, they do have some things that some people and demographics looking for a church might be interested in. So they leverage those as strengths. They might have an old-school “revival hymn-sing” style worship, and they just say: “Ok, we’re going to do that super well and not try to do something different, and those who like that might worship with us.” This can be a fools gold option for some church who think they are doing this model when really they are just on the fast track to closure. It only really works if the people in the church are super-intentional about inviting people like them to the church. That means that if the church is largely full of 60-80 year old people, then they are reaching out and bringing in those peers to the church all the time.

The Stage-First Model

These churches don’t change everything, but they do change most everything they can on the stage of the church. They revamp the worship, preaching, and sometimes even the physical space “up front” to ensure the presentation of the gospel is on point. This approach is highly dependent on the professional minister leading the church and the volunteers he or she can recruit to transform the worship of the church. If that minister is a gifted worship leader this is sometimes a more viable model, as people really come for the worship service feel and that can be influenced more dramatically by one person than in other facets of church life. The leadership in this situation understands that there are other parts of the church that aren’t yet up to par, but the hope is that “if you build it, they will come.” The “it” in this case is the worship on the stage, and other problems are solved after by new people who come.

The Both/And Model

These churches attempt a radical but very interesting model where what is called the “inherited church” stays almost entirely the same at first, and just supports very innovative and “outside the box” church ministries, microchurches, and outreach work in all kinds of spaces and missional communities in the surrounding area. A church like this might have a fairly traditional old-school worship service happening at 10am in their 1960s era architecture building. But at the same time they also have a small group meeting in the local tattoo shop, a few house churches led by people in their 20s, and a microchurch that meets after playing volleyball at a local beach bar on Wednesdays. Best described in Michael Adam Beck’s book Deep Roots, Wild Branches, these churches start to become two churches in one, but just the new church is a network of new outreach among the unchurched that are unlikely to ever enter the doors of the traditional church.

The Merger Model

These churches find each other and merge, joining forces and ensuring more long-term viability. In retrospect they often report gratefulness that one church had strengths that were the weakness of the other, and vice-versa. The first might have a good facility while the second’s facility was poor, but the second had a pastor when the first did not. Or one had a good children’s ministry, and the other had a worship leader that helped blend the service styles well. In these cases the theory is that 1+1 = 3… and they become stronger together than apart. This can lead to some strength, although of course everyone not only adds but also subtracts some things they liked about their old church. But in the best case scenarios this doesn’t just prolong the ministries, it can lead to a new identity and vision for the future.

The Campus/Adoption Model

These churches develop a relationship with a larger church in their area or region and either officially merge in with that church, becoming, functionally, a campus of the “main” congregation, or in other cases have a more informal relationship where some of the resources of the adopting church go to supporting the adopted church. In some cases the larger church supplies preaching via video, and some of their rotating teams of worship leadership at the “campus.” In others, the connection is more about leadership development and the revitalizing church retains more independence but is a part of a network of churches the larger church is building. The key factors here come down to the ownership of the facility, the membership of the revitalizing church, and how everyone feels losing some sense of their independence, as they become dependent on the larger church.

The Reinvestment Model

Some churches look at models like the above and don’t find anything they either feel compelled to choose, or they just don’t think they have the will or abilities to make them happen. So they determine that they will have an intentional season of celebrating the history of the church, and then close their doors. They choose to reinvest the assets of the church (primarily the facility and land assets), into the future ministry of their network of churches in their district or conference (if they are in a denomination.) In these cases sometimes the older saints of the church feel they can “own” the new church or churches that were planted with those resources. It is likely many of the members of the declining church didn’t want this end result, and so an oversight board or leader may have taken the decision out of their hands as the church declined (in my own denomination there are levels of participation and financial health that make such decisions possible translocally.) For this reason, some churches choose the above revitalization strategies while they still have the independence and authority to do so.

That’s my starter list of what I’ve seen. But I should say there is additional good news for churches engaging any of these models. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research studied the commonalities of revitalized churches that succeeded in their aims. They found that congregations that grow and show spiritual vitality are more likely to have the following qualities which I’ve adapted here:

Strong leadership aligned with congregation needs.
Established a compelling mission.
Embraced change and open to innovation.
Local engagement that supported the community.
Vibrant thought-provoking worship services.
Increased ethnic diversity.
Newcomers were welcomed well.
Lay involvement increased.
Members lived out their faith in everyday life. (4)

I would venture to say that being a small church does not equate to a particular disadvantage in most any of these qualities. In fact, some of them may be easier to accomplish in a smaller congregation. Perhaps once a culture change is underway in a small church aiming to revitalize, then a corresponding shift in momentum could propel them to make changes faster. A large church can feel like an aircraft carrier to steer, whereas a small church can, sometimes, turn like a small sailboat.

So, what’s your experience with revitalization? Do any of the above categories apply to you? Would you come up with a new category that would better describe your church? Leave a comment to let us know—we’d love to learn from your story.

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