5 Reasons Church Revitalization Efforts Fail

Why might revitalization fail? Five reasons coming up now on the Church Revitalization Podcast. Hello and welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the Malfurscrup team, where each week we tackle important actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ Matthew. Welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast, my name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by my friend and co-host, AJ Matthew. AJ, today we are both rocking the Maroon shirts. I was also, yeah, I was wearing a blue sweater a second ago. I took it off. It was too much matching. But if you happen to be wearing a Maroon shirt like us and you're watching on YouTube, snap a photo, a selfie of you, of you in your Maroon shirt watching us in our Maroon shirts, email it to [email protected] and we'll give you one month of access to the Healthy Church's Toolkit, which you should check out. I know you can get it a week for free anytime you want at healthychurchestoolkit.com. So this is four times more free access. Four times more free access if you're watching this in Maroon shirt. So go check that out, healthychurchestoolkit.com. Incredible resources there to help your church thrive. And today we're talking about a topic that will help your church thrive as well. Five reasons why Revitalizations fail or Revitalization efforts fail in a church. We have seen all five of these things and looking forward to diving into all of them. Oh, do you don't want to chat? Well, you know what? You know, it's for listeners. Okay, we we chitchat all the time. Matt, we do. It doesn't need to be recorded. Our first our first reason that Revitalization may fail is confusing activity with progress. So busyness, lots of things happening and maybe even targeted things happening, but not not things that would progress your Revitalization process. This could be either during your planning work or if you make it into an implementation phase, that can do it as well. A lot of a lot of Revitalization planning takes too long. It's got people spend months and months and months planning. And I think the reason for that now sometimes churches might take this on, you know, they might read some books and that's good and do that. I mean, we've got kids just off camera. We've got a bunch of Revitalization books. A lot of them are our founder, Aubrey Malphers. And then a church says, all right, we read some books. Let's do this. But they haven't necessarily put together a plan for how we're going to go about it. Like, what are the topics we're going to cover? How are we going to make decisions on things? And so it just extends and extends and extends. And sometimes they think it should take a long time. Therefore, it does take a long time. Yeah. And then everybody is like, oh my gosh, we're so tired. We've done a lot of stuff. But you haven't really done anything. You've just talked a lot. And so sometimes it fails because you never even get to implementation. Sometimes you get to implementation. But then the meetings are just repetitive without targeted goals. And we never get any traction. Yeah. Totally. This is very common. I think sometimes churches are surprised at the speed at which we move through things when we're working with them in our strategic conditioning process. But we've we have fine tuned this thing over a number of years. Because we know there's a difference between talking about something and doing something. And it's way easier to make adjustments to plans as you are executing them. Then it is to get stuck talking about things in the abstract or at the conceptual level for a long time. So there's a lot of diminishing returns on how good a plan is going to be the longer you talk about it just by talking about it. You know, if we if we work on our mission statement for three months, is it really going to be that much better? The answer is no, it's not. It's there's not going to be a value on that. But people will have felt like, wow, we really sunk a lot of time into that. But your church isn't any healthier because you spent three months instead of three hours, refining your mission statement. One of the things that we I mentioned this already, but we emphasize with churches is that just because we move through planning quickly doesn't mean every decision has been made. You are constantly revising plans and making decisions as you go. And that's really important. And I think that this is not just unique to revitalization or to church strategic planning. It's a difference in kind. I think that's a lot like the tech world, for example, does this all the time. They're constantly like, let's bait a test this. Let's implement this change. Oops, we hit a bug. We'll fix it. You know, they don't wait until the thing is perfected before they release it. They release a version that works. And then when they hit things that don't work, they make changes. And take that same attitude. It's like, don't think you have to have every detail figured out before you hit go. You know, you're going to hit mistakes, then just fix them as you move along. Because you the one thing you have when you do that, AJ, is you have you have wisdom. When you when you are executing on something or I'm sorry, when you're just in the talking about something in the abstract, you don't know all of the variables because it hasn't hit real life yet. Once it gets exposed to real life, now you've got variables that you couldn't have known if you spent any eternity planning. So I think that this this is a very common thing. Churches want to take a year and a half to plan their revitalization. And we work very hard to try to get that planning phase down to three months. And then we're by month three, we're executing. And that's important. Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of beta testing, if you are in the healthy churches toolkit, yeah, as a subscriber, this month, this month, that's right. That's right. We've got we've got new version of the toolkit coming out early in 2026. And you'll be able to beta test a lot of new features now. So do that. All right. Our second revitalization failed potential is in demographic mismatch of the church. So in many of you will you're going to feel this one for sure that the location that your church is in the surrounding community neighborhoods part of the city, you know, however big that might be, isn't what it was 30, 40, 50, 100 years ago. And so the church hasn't moved, but the community has changed. And so this is a pretty this is a big topic. This is a big thing. But if you're going through a revitalization process and you're not taking that into account, and you're trying to come up with some way of making old things work again, like that's more of your goal, how do we come up with a way of doing what we've always done slightly differently and getting different results and not accounting for your community being different. Your revitalization process is going to fail. So this has to be a part of the context by which you engage in these conversations and, you know, brainstorm ideas. We've got to have demographic information. We've got to be living in reality so that we can plan for the future based on facts and reality. And not trying to generate something that is probably impossible because the situation has changed. Yeah. And I think another I guess similar to this mistake, I think some churches recognize the demographics have changed. And so they'll say like, oh, we need to do some things that will impact our neighbors. But they do it almost in a trying to be kind here, but almost like in a paternalistic way where they I want to do good things for these neighbors in my community, but I don't actually want them to go to church here. Like I want them to come to an outreach event at the church, but I don't want them here on a Sunday morning. I don't want them in my Sunday school class. I don't want them in my small group. I don't want to see them on staff. I don't want to see them on a board. Those are different things to try to just do good things before our neighbors who look different than us, you know, who are an associate economic stratus status different than us. I guess that's good if you want to do good things for them. But what's required in revitalization is it's going to transform the demographics of Sunday morning. It's going to change the demographics of your Sunday school class. It's going to change the demographics of the staff. And it's the church that's refusing to accept that reality is the one that will fail at revitalization. If you're really going to reach your or move, I mean, that's alternative is shut down that campus and move somewhere that looks more like you, I guess. But if you really want to grow where you're planted, where you're at, it's not just doing good things in the neighborhood for those people. It's genuinely wanting everything about your church to look different to include those people. And that's that's the gap often. Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's a conversation that has to be had in a lot of churches so that we're all actually working together, you know, towards the same goals and with the same heart. So yeah, I just want to be clear. I'm not calling anybody racist or something like that. I'm just saying that everybody feels more comfortable with people who have shared life experiences to them, right? So like I get that. That doesn't make you racist. But what it does mean is if you're going to, if the church is going to grow, it means there are going to be people who have different life experiences than you in there. And we can take on the attitude of Jesus whose experience was completely different than us prior to his incarnation. He comes and he becomes like us and experiences life the way that we do, though different than us. There's limitations to that analogy. You're not Jesus in this situation. I'm simply saying that there's humility. Like you're just going to take some humility to incarnationally live with people who are different from from you. Yeah. And invite them in your church. Yeah. And we've seen this time and time again of the church that has just continued to shrink. And this is why it's because the people that were going to that church don't live there anymore. They left. And then eventually they're like, that's a long drive to church. You know, there's we're passing 10 other churches. So yeah, that's that is it. That's a tough conversation that needs to be had. Have it sooner than later. Don't do that when you're when there's 25 people left in the church. You know, I mean, yeah, has to be done. All right. Our third one Scott is there's there's no accountability structure built in for the implementation process. So we've done some planning. We got some ideas. Then we're like, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah, we should do that. We should. We have to take the we shoulds out of the implementation conversation and put some specificity to that. Who is going to do what? Who is we? And by and by when? When is this going to be done? Who's responsible for it? What exactly is the task that will be delivered? Yeah, we made we made a joke a couple of weeks ago, AJ. I think yeah, our collective. Yeah, yeah, there's there are some ways that are just Scott. There are some ways that are AJ. Yeah, that's right. And then there are the ways that don't get done because we we do we do the same thing where we go, we should do that. And we don't say who we don't say when that's right. Everybody knows this. I mean, you're you're giggling right now because that happens in your in your church, you know, on your staff or at home, you know, I mean, who's doing that? I mean, you're my spouse. But yeah, so yeah, we all know this. We all know this. But in in implementation, put the specificity in it. That's how, you know, I mean, once you do the planning work of revitalization, you are in project management after that. These are project management things. And it has to happen very much like it would in any other organization or group of people that, you know, is not a church. Now, how we relate to one another should look differently because because we're Christ followers. And we know how we're supposed to relate and what we're called to as believers. But that does not remove the necessity of who exactly is going to do this. Yeah. When are they supposed to get that done? This is just how things get done. And churches want to be too soft about that sometimes. And that's why revitalization fails. Totally. Yeah. I mean, we are our implementation process in in strategic envisioning is one of the very few areas where we are extremely prescriptive. Not in the what you are implementing, but how you do it, we give very specific instructions. And it's the key to success. The churches that follow it to a T succeed. The ones that follow it to some degree. See some success. And the ones that don't follow it all don't don't succeed as well. They see, I mean, there's the planning alone generates some benefit because at least you have some unity around direction. Like you have this sort of I give feels like we're kind of on the same page. So there is benefit from that. But the maximum benefit is when you follow the implementation process precisely. And yeah. So if you're curious on how to do this, reach out to us. But we have a very prescriptive implementation process that we've honed over the years and it works extremely well for the churches that follow it. Yeah. Well, you know what? Scott, if you're a toolkit subscriber, if you have a plus account, we have we've got a course. We have a course built in strategic envisioning, which includes the implementation phase. That is true. You could learn a lot over there. So you could do. Okay. Our last two are related. They're both around decision making. And the fourth one is our fourth revitalization fail today is in your board structure preventing change or severely delaying change where you lose momentum. Quality issues in the church can can hinder decision making. And so I know a bunch of you guys are amenning that right now because you're having to live with it. You know, you know, ideas come and they fizzle because they can't get through the red tape. And that's a problem. So, you know, there's various ways that you can work around this or deal with it or change it. Perhaps one of the simplest because, you know, an entire polity change may not be something you can take on right now, updating the constitution, the bylaws, is it going to be something that you can do at the moment? But you can work around it by on the front end of your planning process, getting everybody on the same page. We can agree how decisions for this kind of scope of work can be made so that when you get into that decision-making facing implementation, we've already agreed on how we're going to make decisions. So that's a way that you can work around it. The others may be more long-term solutions that you can take on later. Yeah, this is a huge issue. And I think that there's also sometimes a difference or a gap between even what the bylaws say and what has been the case in practice. You know, I've just been working through this challenge with a church in the last 10 full of months. And they have pretty clear quality on what these different try to be vague. Different committees and boards can do, but in the past they've been given more latitude and more control than the bylaws prescribed. And as they've grown, that's created more problems because now people expect to be able to speak into every decision, even if it's a relatively minute decision. But in a growing church, that's impossible. You can't run everything through that kind of a structure. You can't have that many people who've got, you know, hands in the pot, so to speak, trying to too many cooks in the kitchen. And it just doesn't work. And so it's a problem when you're growing and it's a problem when you're wanting to grow. It's a problem at all sizes, actually, when you've got too many cooks in the kitchen. And that's different from transparency. That's different from accountability. And that's sometimes hard for for boards to accept that I can have a supervisory or an advisory or a transparency kind of role, but not a decision-making one. And because I think everyone feels entitled, if I've got a title, I'm entitled to decision-making authority. And that's not always true. I don't know. I think it's important for us to learn to be okay with that. It's okay to not have to be the decision-maker on a lot of things. Yeah. Okay. Well, our fifth one, as I said, Scott is related to decision-making as well. That's true. And it is the consensus trap. So we're speaking a little bit. This could be, and most commonly would happen maybe in two different forms. If you put together a revitalization team, hopefully not a committee, maybe you put together a revitalization team, which we would recommend if you're following our process. That's exactly what you would do. You need to define your decision-making process for that team. If you're a congregational, policy church, and you have to have the congregation vote on things, this consensus trap can completely derail the process if not delay it. And so requiring a hundred percent agreement on everything is a slow process. And you need to hopefully be able to define some parameters before you start on this as to what types of decision-making would need that level of consensus. This hundred percent, you know, either a hundred percent consensus or unanimity that just we all agree on every detail or we can't move forward. That is going to severely delay or cause failure in your revitalization process, which failure ends up being the default outcome when delay is so long. You really at that point, or you haven't done anything, you're unable to move forward. That equals failure. We operate under a specific definition of consensus within our revitalization team that we have churches put together. And it works. We define consensus as everybody on the team feels 80% good with the decision, the idea that has been put forth. And so, you know, yeah, you just maybe every detail isn't exactly what you would like, but it is close enough. And, you know, that means this goes into that humility aspect that you just talked about to Scott. We want people to enter into the process with it hard of humility and compromise to some extent. Knowing that on there's some things that are really big deals and there's some things that aren't, they're just kind of our personal preferences. And we need to be able to compartmentalize those and have discussion that can lead us to a decision so that we can actually do something. And I think most people would agree. Getting my church to move forward and begin to see positive revitalization change with in areas that I'm 80% feeling good about is hugely more beneficial than not doing anything because I wasn't 100% in it. And so we have to frame the conversation that way. We have to have an open dialogue about that. We have to agree on how we're going to make decisions before we start. Yeah, I think this is maybe one of the most common traps. And it isn't even that the bylaws require unanimity on issues, especially at the congregational level. But, but sometimes pastors operate under a sense that, wow, if we don't have, if not 100% just like very widespread agreement on decisions, we just can't act. We can't change Sunday school. We can't add this ministry. We can't sunset this ministry. We can't change this terminology. We know unless we've got basically everyone on board, we can't make this change. And what tends to happen is if you go long enough, you lose momentum. Once you've lost momentum, you've lost respect. Now people don't believe in the process of the people who were on board with you feel like, why did we waste all this time and energy making plans when we are at the Beckham call of not the lowest common denominator, but the slowest common denominator. And so I'm not suggesting that everything has to be all gas all the time. Sometimes breaks are appropriate, but you cannot operate in a revitalization situation. You have to have a sort of 70, 30 preference for gas over breaks. And that doesn't mean run over people. Doesn't mean you don't look for consensus, especially on big, really big decisions, but you have to at least maintain momentum or moving forward, moving forward. Otherwise, you'll lose the respect of the people who invested so much into the process. And they're like, I'm out. I don't even know what we're doing. And even the people who are in the back, who haven't been participating, they don't believe that the process is effective because they're like, why haven't seen anything? Well, I was in you as the pastor, you might be going, well, you haven't seen anything because I was afraid you weren't going to be on board. And so I didn't do anything. But you've lost everybody. So we've talked about this a ton on the podcast, but this is the challenge. If you are an S type on the disc, this will be the trap that buries you. The getting stuck in, I don't know, this might hurt this person's feelings. This group might leave. Guess what? They might. You're right. Their feelings might get hurt and this person might leave. What the alternatives we're talking about are your church continuing to decline and close. So what's your choice here? That doesn't mean we run over people. I don't hear that. There's an extreme on the other end. I'm not advocating for either. I'm just saying you need to have a bias for moving forward. Most of the time. Yeah. It's funny how these people that are unwilling to accept something different within the church, oftentimes end up being people that will get mad and leave and go place themselves into another. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So all right. Well, hey, there you go. Five reasons that revitalization may fail in your church. Scott, I'm going to add a bonus sixth reason that it could fail. Okay. And that is not having somebody with you walking alongside you to help you through these challenges on the front end through the middle and on the back side and working through implementation. And that's why we've got a team of guides that can come alongside you and walk you through this entire process. So and we've got people all over the country with different backgrounds in church leadership, in different denominational histories. But the thing that they have in common, they're all highly qualified. They're all well trained in this process. And they've got the benefit of all of the rest of us together and the wisdom that we all share. So I would definitely recommend working with the over-script guide through Revivalization process. To ensure that your church does. You can find out more about that at valferscript.com or reach out to us. We would love to have a conversation. Totally. Thank you guys so much for joining us today on the Church Revivalization Podcast. We will see you next week.