The other day, I shared some questions that I would ask churches when they are looking for help with revitalisation. So, what next once you’ve answered those questions together. Well, what I find helpful is to talk through the full range of options that may be open to the church. Hypothetically at least these include:… Continue reading Revitalisation questions – looking to the future, what are the options?
Tag: Revitalisation
Revitalisation and the traumatised church
I’ve mentioned a few times now that sometimes a church acts and feels as though it has been through a form of corporate or collective trauma and is suffering corporate PTSD. There may have been a number of factors leading up to this including specific events within the life of the church such as the… Continue reading Revitalisation and the traumatised church
PTSD and church revitalisation
A little while back I wrote about how churches can experience a form of PTSD or complex PTSD. You see, a church can experience trauma leading to experiences and responses that affect the life of the church. Trauma for a church might include: A split where members of the church fall out, argue publicly and… Continue reading PTSD and church revitalisation
Discerning a calling to the urban West Midlands
My desire is to see gospel communities planted into our urban inner city and council estate neighbourhoods in the West Midlands. I believe that if this is going to happen then we’ll need two things. First of all, we’ll need indigenous church leaders from working class estate contexts and multi-ethnic contexts to be raised up,… Continue reading Discerning a calling to the urban West Midlands
Church buildings close because churches die
It has been reported that 400 Church of England parish churches have closed in the last decade and 1000 in the last 30 years. This has prompted concern, not just, or so much from practicing Christians but non-believers too. See for example this by Michael Deacon in the Daily Telegraph. The primary concern of those… Continue reading Church buildings close because churches die
West Smethwick Replant
It’s about three years ago that I had a call from a chap called Steve Horton from Sheffield. He wanted to meet up with me to talk about the local church situation in the West Midlands. He’d just been asked to start looking after evangelical Congregational Churches in the area (Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches)… Continue reading West Smethwick Replant
Thoughts on re-planting as a form of church revitalisation
Replanting is a little different to church revitalisation. There is a sense in which any church of any size could need and probably at some point will need a form of revitalisation to breath fresh life in. That might involve changes to personnel, culture and to teaching to enable renewal and/or reformation depending where the… Continue reading Thoughts on re-planting as a form of church revitalisation
The Rule of Ten
One of the little thought experiments Chris Green encouraged his leadership students at Oak Hill to do was to think in terms of the rule of ten. Think in terms of ten times less and ten times more. So, if you had a church of 100, then stop and think about what it would be… Continue reading The Rule of Ten
If you are going to revitalise you need to be good pastors to the existing congregation
Something struck me the other day as I was talking with a friend who is involved in supporting church revitalisation. His love and care for existing church members shone through. He saw them as showing evidence of being baby Christians even though they were old in years and had been in the church for a… Continue reading If you are going to revitalise you need to be good pastors to the existing congregation
Coming out of lockdown may require a re-plant mindset
One of the responsibilities of leaders is to see and prepare for what may lie ahead. That’s a double challenge because we are not given infallible foreknowledge, we are dealing for possibilities and probabilities. That means we have to be ready for multiple scenarios. It also means that we will need to be ready to… Continue reading Coming out of lockdown may require a re-plant mindset
Faithroots 