Revitalization

Perhaps the easiest pillar to address, some observers of church revitalization and renewal argue that the era of small churches is over and that the future belongs to the arising mega churches across North America. Granted mega is an amazing phenomenon of the past thirty years which seems to have arisen with the concept of the massive campus church. But to ignore the 340,000 plus churches in North America that average less than 100 weekly in church attendance would be ill advised! Those who serve and those who attend theses churches are an enormously significant network of Christian influence. Even the mega church finds itself struggling to avoid plateau and decline.

 A church in need of Revitalization is described as one where: there is the plateauing or declining after a phase of recent or initial expansion; then the Church experiences the beginning of a high turn-over of lay leaders; there becomes a shorter duration of stay of fully assimilated people within the work; the church morale and momentum level drops; the church coasts for a brief time and then drops again, only to see the cycle of decline repeated again and again. The result is the church hits a new low! This new normal is the first sign of a church in need.