Five Personal Habits Every Church Revitalizer Must Cultivate to Succeed

Church revitalization is sustained less by techniques and more by the daily habits of the leader. While poor habits can quietly sabotage progress, healthy habits create trust, momentum, and credibility over time. Revitalization is fundamentally relational work, and the habits you practice will shape how others experience your leadership.

Here are five personal habits every church revitalizer should intentionally cultivate.

1. Make Time for the Hard Conversations

Effective revitalizers do not wait for a “better time” to engage difficult people or topics. They understand that progress depends on honest, timely conversations—especially with lay leaders who are uncertain or resistant.

Cultivate the habit of leaning in rather than postponing. Schedule conversations you would rather avoid. Listen carefully. Clarify why change is necessary. Often, resistance softens simply because people feel heard.

As a practical step, list the conversations you have been putting off. Each week, intentionally address a few. Revitalization rarely stalls because of a lack of activity; it stalls because of avoided conversations.

2. Practice Disciplined, Active Listening

People do not follow leaders who merely speak well; they follow leaders who listen well.

Many revitalizers are visionary and creative, which can make focused listening difficult. Ideas spark mid-conversation, and attention drifts. Cultivating disciplined listening means staying present—maintaining eye contact, resisting distractions, and asking thoughtful follow-up questions.

When people feel heard, validated, and valued, trust grows. And trust is the relational currency of revitalization.

3. Remain Open to Counsel and New Ideas

Successful church revitalizers cultivate teachability.

Revitalization is complex work, and no leader sees everything clearly. Counsel and ideas—especially those that challenge your assumptions—are not threats to your leadership; they are gifts that refine it.

Before dismissing an idea, give it thoughtful consideration. Pray through it. Reflect honestly. Ask whether discomfort stems from poor fit or personal fear. Often, the insights we are most tempted to ignore are the ones we most need to hear.

4. Empower Others Instead of Doing Everything Yourself

Healthy revitalizers resist the temptation to micromanage.

Cultivate the habit of developing others rather than doing the work for them. Offer clarity and feedback, then release responsibility back to leaders and ministry teams. What feels obvious to you may not be obvious to others—but growth comes through coaching, not control.

Revitalization accelerates when leadership is shared and multiplied. Your role is not to be indispensable, but to make others effective.

5. Care Intentionally for Your Body

Revitalization places sustained pressure on a leader’s emotional, spiritual, and physical health. Ignoring your body will eventually undermine your effectiveness.

Cultivate rhythms of sleep, nutrition, exercise, and rest. Set boundaries that prevent ministry stress from consuming every evening and every night. Pay attention to fatigue, irritability, and physical warning signs—they often signal deeper imbalance.

Caring for your body is not self-indulgence; it is stewardship for long-term faithfulness.

Habits Shape Leaders—and Leaders Shape Churches

Church revitalization is not built on momentary bursts of energy but on consistent, practiced habits. The habits you cultivate determine how you lead under pressure, how others experience you, and how long you can sustain the work.

Cultivate these five habits, and you create the conditions for trust, resilience, and renewal—both in the church and in your own life.

Before You Talk About Revitalization, Ask These Five Questions

Church revitalization has become a popular conversation in recent years. Conferences, books, consultants, and denominational initiatives all promise pathways to renewed health and growth. But before you ever talk about how to revitalize a church, there are deeper, more foundational questions that must be asked.

In my experience, skipping these questions almost guarantees frustration—for pastors, leaders, and congregations alike. Revitalization is not a technique problem; it is a discernment problem.

Here are five questions I believe must be answered before attempting to help revitalize a church.

1. Can This Church Be Saved?

There is an even harder question behind this one: Is the church worth saving?

I realize how uncomfortable—and even arrogant—that may sound. But the reality is that some churches are deeply toxic. I have known congregations that have never kept a pastor longer than two years. They are brutal to leaders. They are not looking for renewal or growth; they want a caretaker who will maintain the status quo, fill the pulpit multiple times a week, and provide pastoral care—without leading change.

When anyone attempts to lead differently, the message is clear: We were here before you came, and we’ll be here after you’re gone.

Even if such a church avoids eventual closure, what is the realistic outcome? Will a pastor actually be able to lead? Can meaningful change be made? Organizationally speaking—and spiritually as well—nothing of value happens without change. The gospel does not change, but methods, structures, and cultures must.

A church unwilling to confront these realities may survive on paper, but it will not thrive in mission.

2. Is This the Right Location?

Location matters—not because the message changes, but because communities do.

Demographics shift over time. People move out. New people move in. Neighborhoods age, gentrify, diversify, or decline. A church must honestly ask whether it reflects—or is willing to represent—the community around it.

If a congregation is surrounded by a changing mission field but remains committed to serving only the people it once reached, revitalization becomes nearly impossible. The question is not whether the community needs the church; it is whether the church is willing to engage the community it actually has.

And here is the hard follow-up: if the church is unwilling to adapt to its context, is there a more receptive area where the gospel resources invested here could bear greater fruit?

3. Is This the Best Use of Resources?

This may be the most difficult question of all.

Would Kingdom dollars, leadership energy, and time be stewarded more wisely elsewhere? The longer a church has been plateaued or declining, the longer—and harder—the revitalization process will be. In some cases, the resources required to sustain one struggling congregation could plant multiple new churches.

To be clear, I believe deeply in revitalization. Established churches play a vital role in the Kingdom: theological depth, historical presence, community trust, and generational continuity matter. But believing in revitalization does not mean avoiding hard stewardship questions.

If leaders are unwilling to ask whether this is the wisest use of Kingdom resources, the likelihood of meaningful progress is slim.

4. Is Everyone Willing to Pay the Price?

Revitalization is hard. In many ways, it is harder than church planting.

Change will be painful. Some people will resist. Some will leave. The work will take longer than expected, cost more than anticipated, and feel heavier than imagined. Leaders must ask: Will change be accepted—or merely tolerated until conflict erupts?

Can you take the hits that inevitably come with leading change? Will the board and key leaders stand with you when resistance grows? Is your family fully supportive and prepared for the emotional and relational strain?

Revitalization demands resilience, unity, and sacrifice. Without them, even the best strategy will collapse.

5. Are You the Right Leader?

Finally, this question brings everything into focus.

Do your experience, passions, and skill sets align with the realities of revitalization? Would you be more effective in another context—planting, leading a growing church, serving in a different ministry role? And beneath all of that lies the most important question: Is God calling you to this?

I believe God often gives us wide latitude in where we serve. The harvest is plentiful, and workers are needed everywhere—church planters, missionaries, healthy leaders, faithful believers in secular vocations, and revitalizers. But there are also moments when God calls a leader to a specific place for a specific season.

When that call is clear, everything else becomes secondary. If God is calling you to this work, obedience matters more than comfort, success, or certainty.

Ask These Questions First

Answer these five questions honestly. Wrestle with them prayerfully. Invite trusted voices into the conversation. Only then does it make sense to talk about strategies, models, and action plans.

Get the why and the who right first—and then we can talk about the how.