Most pastors I know don’t need another reminder that things have changed. They can see it on Sunday morning.

There are fewer people in the pews than there used to be. The congregation is getting older. Finding volunteers takes more effort. Ministries that once seemed to run themselves now depend on the same small group of people. Buildings that were once filled every week can feel surprisingly large on a Sunday morning, and the cost of maintaining them continues to rise.

And somewhere along the way, the pastor starts wondering, What are we going to do?

It is a fair question. It is also an important one. When a church is declining, our first instinct is often to look for something that will bring people back. Maybe we need a new program. Maybe we need to change our worship. Maybe we need to reach younger families. Maybe we need a better website or stronger social media presence. Maybe we need to become more relevant.

Some of those things may be necessary. But I wonder if we are starting in the wrong place.

Maybe the question isn’t, “How do we get people back to church?”

Maybe the better question is, “What is God calling this church to be in the community where he has placed us?”

Those are very different questions.

Canada Has Changed

For much of Canada’s history, Christianity was part of the cultural landscape. You didn’t necessarily have to be a committed Christian to know what the church was, what Christians believed or why the church was part of the community. Church buildings were familiar landmarks, Christian holidays were part of the rhythm of the year, and many families attended church because that was simply what families did.

That Canada has changed.

The 2021 Canadian census found that just over half of Canadians identified as Christian, while more than one-third reported having no religion or a secular perspective. But even those numbers don’t tell the whole story. There is an increasingly significant difference between identifying as Christian and actually participating in the life of a Christian community.

For many Canadians, Christianity is now something they know about rather than something they practise. Some grew up in the church but haven’t been back for years. Some have inherited a Christian identity from their parents or grandparents but have little connection with Christian faith. Others are curious about spirituality but would never think of looking for answers in a church. Still others have had experiences with the church that have left them disappointed or wounded.

At the same time, Canada is becoming increasingly religiously diverse. Immigration is reshaping many of our communities, and younger Canadians are growing up in a very different cultural environment from the one that shaped many of today’s church leaders. The neighbourhood surrounding our church may look very different from the neighbourhood that surrounded it twenty or thirty years ago.

That presents a challenge, but it also presents an opportunity.

The church has been given a mission in this Canada, not in the Canada we remember.

We Can’t Keep Waiting for People to Come

For generations, churches benefited from a certain amount of cultural momentum. People came because their parents came. Families brought their children because that was simply what families did. When someone moved into the community, attending the local church was often one of the natural ways of becoming connected.

We can’t assume that anymore.

Someone can live across the street from a church for ten years and never once consider walking through the doors. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are hostile to Christianity. They may simply have no reason to think the church has anything to do with their life.

That changes the way we need to think about mission.

We can’t simply sit inside our buildings and hope the community discovers us. We need to discover our community.

One of the ideas I have been encouraging churches to consider is the need to exegete our communities. We spend years learning how to exegete Scripture. We learn how to understand its context, its audience and its message. We should do the same kind of careful listening with the communities God has entrusted to us.

Who lives around us? What has changed? Who is moving into the neighbourhood? What are people experiencing? Where are they finding community? What are they celebrating? What are they struggling with? What do they believe about God? What do they think about the church? What questions are they asking?

And perhaps most importantly, where might God already be at work?

Before we decide what ministry our church should do, we need to understand the people we are trying to serve.

Revitalization Is Not the Same as Maintenance

There is a difference between church maintenance and church revitalization.

Maintenance asks, “How do we keep what we have going?”

Revitalization asks, “What does faithfulness require of us now?”

Maintenance is necessary. Every church needs to pay its bills, recruit volunteers, maintain its building and organize its ministries. The problem comes when maintenance becomes the mission.

A church can spend so much energy keeping things running that it has very little energy left for reaching people who aren’t there.

This is one of the reasons revitalization can be so difficult. We are often asking people who are already tired to change the way they do church. We are asking people who have spent years faithfully serving to consider that some of the things they have been doing may no longer be helping the church accomplish its mission.

That doesn’t mean those people were wrong.

In many cases, they were exactly right for their time.

The programs, structures and traditions that helped a church thrive twenty or thirty years ago may have been good responses to the community that existed then. The challenge is that the community has changed.

The question is not whether what we did in the past was wrong.

The question is whether it is still faithful now.

We Don’t Need to Get the Old Church Back

I think this is one of the problems with the way we sometimes talk about revitalization. We define success as getting back what we once had.

We want the attendance back.

We want the children back.

We want the volunteers back.

We want the energy back.

We want the budget back.

We want the church we remember.

I understand that. Most of us have memories of churches that meant a great deal to us. We remember people who came to faith, children who grew up in the church, ministries that made a difference and Sundays when the building was full.

Those memories matter.

But we have to be careful not to confuse the church’s history with its mission.

The goal of revitalization isn’t to recreate 1985, 1995 or 2015. It is to help a congregation faithfully follow Jesus where it is now.

That may mean keeping some things. It may mean changing some things. It may even mean letting some things go.

Sometimes revitalization will mean changing a ministry. Sometimes it will mean changing the way leadership works. Sometimes it will mean partnering with another congregation. Sometimes it will mean finding a new use for a building. Sometimes it will mean starting something nobody in the church has ever tried before.

And sometimes it will mean admitting that the thing standing in the way of revitalization isn’t the culture outside the church.

It’s the culture inside the church.

A Busy Church Isn’t Necessarily a Healthy Church

I have been around enough churches to know that declining churches are not necessarily inactive churches. In fact, some of the busiest churches I know are struggling churches. The calendar is full. There are meetings, committees, Bible studies, fundraisers, special services and ministry events. People are working hard, and the pastor is often exhausted.

But activity and mission are not the same thing.

A church can be incredibly busy and still be moving in the wrong direction. It can have a full calendar and a shrinking sense of purpose. It can have excellent programs and make very few disciples. It can have a beautiful building and almost no meaningful connection with the people living around it.

That is why one of the most important questions we can ask is not, “What else should we be doing?” It is, “Why are we doing what we are already doing?”

The question is whether all of that activity is actually helping us make disciples, grow people in their relationship with Jesus, engage our community and participate in God’s mission. If it isn’t, then adding another program probably isn’t the answer.

Sometimes the most important revitalization decision a church can make is to stop doing something.

Tell the Truth About Your Church

If you’re reading this as a pastor of a struggling church, I don’t want you to hear me saying that everything you’ve been doing is wrong. It probably isn’t.

You may have spent years faithfully serving people. You may have inherited circumstances you didn’t create. You may be trying to lead a congregation through changes that began long before you arrived. And you may simply be tired.

Revitalization isn’t about blaming the pastor or blaming the previous generation. It is about honestly asking what faithfulness looks like now.

That begins with telling the truth about the church.

Look honestly at attendance, finances, demographics, leadership, discipleship, volunteer capacity and community connections. Pay attention to what is healthy as well as what is struggling. Identify the ministries that are producing fruit and the ones that are being maintained simply because nobody knows how to stop them.

Then look beyond the church.

Who actually lives in your community? What has changed? Who isn’t being reached? What needs do you see? Where are people gathering? What relationships already exist between your church and the community? Where might God already be at work?

These questions can be uncomfortable, but they move us from simply managing decline to discerning God’s mission.

Eventually, we have to ask the harder question: What needs to change?

Not everything needs to change. But something probably does.

Every church that begins a genuine revitalization journey eventually has to make decisions about what it will stop doing, what it will start doing and what it will do differently.

That is where leadership becomes important. It is also where courage becomes important.

We Don’t Need to Be Afraid of the Future

I don’t want to minimize the challenges facing Canadian churches. Some congregations will close. Some buildings will be sold. Some ministries will end. Some churches will have to make difficult decisions about their future.

But I don’t believe the answer is despair.

The church has survived cultural upheaval before. The gospel has never depended on favourable cultural conditions. Jesus did not promise that the church would always be popular, well attended or financially comfortable. He promised that he would build his church.

That gives us reason to hope.

Perhaps the mistake we make is thinking that the future of the church depends on getting Canada back to where it was. It doesn’t.

Canada has changed. Our communities have changed. People have changed. The questions people are asking have changed.

So perhaps the church needs to change too.

Not the gospel. Not our commitment to Jesus. But the way we embody that gospel in the communities where God has placed us.

The Question Before Us

I don’t think our goal should be to get the old church back. I don’t think we need to recreate the church of my childhood or the church of the 1980s or even the church of the early 2000s. Those churches existed in a particular time and place, and we are living in a different time and place.

The question before us is not, “How do we get back to the way things used to be?”

It is, “What kind of church does God want us to become now?”

That question is more difficult, but I think it is also more hopeful.

It means we have to listen to our communities. We have to learn to see where God is already at work. We have to make disciples rather than simply maintain programs. We have to develop leaders who can lead through change. We have to be willing to let go of some things we love, while having the courage to try things we have never done before.

It won’t be easy. It won’t happen quickly. And there will be people who don’t like every decision we make.

But perhaps that is part of what it means to lead a church through renewal.

We don’t need to get the old church back.

We need to become the church God has placed us here to be.

And perhaps the most important question for every Canadian congregation in 2026 isn’t, “How do we get back to where we were?”

It is simply this:

“What is God calling us to do next?”