How Church Revitalizers Must Grow to Lead Renewal

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.

From Survival to Sustainability: Developing Revitalizers in the Local Church

One of the most urgent challenges facing the church today is not simply declining attendance or aging congregations—it is the shortage of leaders equipped to guide churches through renewal and revitalization.

Biblically and historically, the primary place for developing new church revitalizers has always been the local church, or a close network of local churches. This conviction is why I continue to believe deeply in the importance of local church associations and regional partnerships. Renewal leaders are not best formed in isolation or abstraction, but in real congregations facing real challenges.

Just as church revitalizers must personally embrace their God-given responsibility to raise up other leaders, healthy local churches must embrace their responsibility to develop their own future ministers and revitalizers. Renewal cannot be outsourced indefinitely. It must be cultivated.

When churches commit to building revitalizers from within, several critical benefits emerge.

1. Multiplication Solves the Leadership Crisis

A church-based approach to revitalizer development creates a model that can be multiplied almost endlessly. Every local church—or cluster of churches—becomes a learning environment for new leaders.

If every church intentionally developed even one or two leaders for church renewal, the leadership shortage we currently face would quickly diminish. Multiplication, not centralization, is the biblical solution.

2. Holistic Formation Happens Best in the Local Church

Revitalization is not merely a technical skill—it is spiritual, relational, and deeply practical. Development is far more effective when it takes place inside the life of a congregation, where theology, leadership, conflict, mission, and faith intersect daily.

The local church provides the context needed to form leaders who are spiritually grounded, emotionally resilient, and practically competent.

3. The Right People Get the Right Training

The leaders who most need revitalization training are not those watching from the sidelines—they are those already engaged in renewal work.

When training is rooted in the local church, we move away from preparing the wrong people and toward equipping those already carrying the weight of leadership. Training becomes timely, relevant, and immediately applicable.

4. Flexibility Meets a Changing World

Church revitalization does not follow a single template. One size does not fit all.

Across cultures, denominations, education levels, and ministry contexts, revitalizers emerge with different strengths and needs. A church-based model allows for flexibility, customization, and responsiveness to rapidly changing ministry environments.

Rigid systems struggle to keep pace. Local churches adapt naturally.

5. Sustainable Development Requires Local Ownership

When the local church supports the development of its own leaders, it maintains responsibility for—and ownership of—the process. This creates systems that are self-supporting, self-sustaining, and self-propagating.

A church that equips future revitalizers ensures continuity of mission, long-term health, and the ongoing work of renewal in its own context.

6. Leaders Are Built Over a Lifetime

Revitalizer development is not a short-term program—it is a lifelong journey. The most effective training does not end after a course or credential but continues throughout a leader’s ministry.

Healthy churches create cultures of ongoing learning, reflection, and growth.

7. Evaluation Is Strongest in Community

Those best equipped to help shape and evaluate emerging revitalizers are the people who know them best—local leaders, mentors, and congregants who work with them regularly.

Local evaluation fosters clarity, accountability, and meaningful progress toward well-defined goals.

A Final Word

The future of church revitalization will not be secured by distant institutions alone. It will be secured when local churches reclaim their role as leadership incubators, intentionally raising up men and women called to guide congregations toward renewal.

Churches that build revitalizers are not only renewing themselves—they are investing in the future mission of the Church.