If the challenge before us is the revitalization of the local church, then the first place renewal must take root is in the leader. Churches do not move toward health by strategy alone. They move when leaders are transformed deeply enough to lead differently.

Many revitalizers discover early on that the skills which sustained a church in the past are insufficient for leading it out of decline. A traditional model of pastoral leadership—focused primarily on care, preaching, and maintenance—will not by itself produce the spiritual depth, resilience, and adaptive capacity required for renewal.

Church revitalization demands a different kind of leader, and that leader must be intentionally formed.

Information alone will not shape you for this work. Courses, books, and downloads are helpful, but they are not enough. Renewal leadership requires personal transformation—spiritual, relational, experiential, and proclaiming.

1. Spiritual Growth: From Private Devotion to Missional Presence

As a church revitalizer, your first growth challenge is spiritual.

Revitalization is sustained not by technique but by experiential union with Christ. You must learn to encounter Christ not only in study and prayer, but in the lived realities of mission. Growth happens when you move beyond the safety of the sanctuary and into the streets of your community—listening, serving, and bearing witness.

If your spirituality remains inward and private, your leadership will lack the missional authority needed for renewal. Your people will not follow you where you have not first gone.

2. Relational Growth: Allowing Yourself to Be Formed by Others

Revitalizers are often strong, driven, and independent leaders—but renewal requires relational humility.

You cannot grow into a revitalization leader alone. You need trusted mentors, peers, and spiritual guides—leaders who walk with you through ordinary ministry life. You need spiritual “Pauls” who can encourage you, confront you, pray with you, and hold you accountable.

In these relationships, your character is shaped, your marriage is strengthened, and your spiritual life is sustained. Isolation weakens leaders. Proximity forms them.

3. Experiential Growth: Learning Under Pressure

Church revitalizers grow most through experience, not instruction.

This work will stretch you. You will face resistance, fatigue, conflict, and uncertainty. These pressures are not obstacles to your formation—they are the means by which God develops you.

If you try to lead revitalization without allowing yourself to be stretched, you will default to maintenance. Growth happens when you accept challenging assignments, take responsibility for difficult decisions, and learn to rely on God rather than control outcomes.

Revitalizers are shaped in the crucible of real ministry.

4. Proclamational Growth: Learning to Speak the Word into Real Life

Revitalization also requires growth in how you teach and proclaim Scripture.

You must learn to communicate the Word of God in ways that connect deeply with people’s everyday realities—family pressures, cultural shifts, vocational stress, and spiritual confusion. Preaching and teaching must be biblically faithful, culturally aware, and pastorally grounded.

As you grow in this area, your preaching moves from explanation to formation, from information to transformation.

Becoming the Kind of Leader Renewal Requires

These four growth areas—spiritual, relational, experiential, and proclamational—must develop together. When one is neglected, your leadership becomes imbalanced and renewal stalls.

Church revitalization does not begin with fixing structures or programs. It begins with the ongoing formation of the leader. As you grow, your capacity to lead others through change expands.

Revitalization is not about returning to what once was. It is about becoming the kind of leader God can use to bring new life where decline once reigned.

Renewal starts with you.