SBTC offers resources, pastoral training for church revitalization

DALLAS—Good news and bad news accompany the latest statistics that show about 75 percent of churches landing in the plateaued or declining bracket among Southern Baptists congregations.

The bad news—more churches land in this category than do not, indicating a need for significant revival and revitalization throughout the nation. The good news—pastors of churches in this category need not feel alone. They are surrounded by about three-fourths of their fellow pastors. 

For those churches that do find themselves in the plateaued or declining category, the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention offers help. Through the support of the Cooperative Program, the convention has tools and training available to churches, some of which it offered to Texas pastors during two recent events—the SEND North America Church Growth and Revitalization Conference held Nov. 14 in North Richland Hills, and a Church Revitalization Orientation held Dec. 2 at Criswell College in Dallas. The events, held just before the end of the year, were offered in time to assist pastors and churches looking to begin revitalization efforts in January.

Kenneth Priest, director of convention strategies for the SBTC, spoke at both events and guided pastors and leaders in devising strategies to revive their churches. The Church Revitalization Orientation at Criswell College was the first of its kind and debuted a new strategy that focuses the renewal effort on the pulpit and pastoral leadership.

Priest said the SBTC has five different tracks of resources to help churches at different stages of stagnant or declining growth—a renewal track, a revitalization track, a re-engineering track, a re-starting track and a network track.

One of the tools available, Priest said, is the Ezekiel Project, which focuses on renewal. Another is the sermon-based small group approach debuted Dec. 2 which addresses revitalization.

“You go through, in your Sunday school hour, a video series as well as a Bible study that’s a 40-day study related to personal spiritual renewal,” Priest said in explaining the Ezekiel Project.

“The sermon-based small group track impacts the pastor’s preaching,” he said, outlining the series that helps the congregation focus on revitalization. “You have teaching you do with a lead team to help them understand what’s happening in the life of the church and how to make some transitions in the life of the church.”

Both the Ezekiel Project and sermon-based small group approach are centered around processes that the church is going through, Priest said.

A third option—the re-engineering track—is a consultation process.

“This is a total makeover in the life of the church,” Priest said. “We send in a number of different consultants, we conduct a number of different church ministry analyses in the life of the church and we figure out what’s going on here, and then we help you develop a strategy for what needs to go on here.”

Dubbed re-engineering, the church will not look the same when the process is completed. “It has to look different in order to have an impact in the community, because what you’ve been doing hasn’t been working. Therefore, a shift has to be made.”

The re-starting track involves looking at the church as a new church plant.

“When we get to the point of looking at a true re-start, that’s when we involve our church planters,” Priest said. “We talk about putting a planter-pastor there and re-starting that church as if it were a brand new church. That normally requires changing the name; it definitely requires changing the leadership and everything that’s taking place.”

The final track is the network track, in which the SBTC partners with other churches that are willing to step in and assist a church that is on the verge of closing its doors. The partner church takes on financial responsibility for the dying church and agrees to basically take it over as its own—a vitally important part of the track since no Cooperative Program funds are available for this type of revitalization, Priest said.

“We have churches … all over the state of Texas that are part of our church revitalization network,” Priest said. “What these pastors have said is that if you have a church in the state of Texas that is just at the point that they can no longer keep the doors open, and they want to do something differently, we will come in” to help revitalize  ministry in that location.

Priest said the transition can take shape as a satellite, another campus or even a re-start, where the church sends leadership and resources to give the church an entirely fresh start. The shape, he said, is between the network church and the church receiving the assistance.

In presenting the new sermon-based small group approach Dec. 2 to leadership from about 14 churches at Criswell College and others via online streaming, Priest said pastors’ leadership styles play a large role in how they are currently guiding their churches and how they should be leading them. The SBTC, he said, can help pastors pinpoint their “core” style and learn the positives and negatives of that, then help them discover what their “adjusted” style should be.

Describing the varying approaches of diplomats, analysts, directors and inspirationals, Priest said, “As a pastor, you actually need to function in all four of these leadership styles. Jesus did it and we need to try to do it.”

Priest also said that church revitalization requires “tribal leadership.”

“You have to become a part of the tribe in order for them to give you the right to lead them,” Priest said, adding that it will likely take between three and seven years to become fully integrated into the church or “tribe.”