J.D. Greear has a good series going at Resurgence on revitalizing a church.
He is drawing the distinction between planting a new church and entering an existing church that is stagnant or dying and leading it into new life. Good stuff.
The material coincides a bit with Greear's Advance09 Conference talk called Church Planting is for Wimps: Revitalizing a Church Around the Gospel.
I think an awful lot -- not all, and probably not most -- of church plants are the result of pastors who don't have the patience or fortitude to stay in an existing church and work for change and reform. Flag-planters are the worst sort of church planters.
I am a fan of church planting and church planters, but I'm an even bigger fan of pastors and leaders who undertake the challenge of reforming and revitalizing existing local church cultures. (I'm drawing a distinction between that and a larger church subsuming a smaller church or a church becoming a franchise or satellite campus of a larger multisite church. I'm not knocking those things -- at least, not in this post, I'm not :-) -- but I have huge respect for the guys and the churches that hire them that engage in the difficult work of gospel-centered revitalization.)
Blessings on new starts, but Godspeed the reformers.
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