Built to Nurture: The Quiet Power of a Faithful Influence

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by Bart Denny Mother’s Day can land differently for each of us. For some, it brings warmth and gratitude. For others, it brings grief, regret, longing, or pain. So before we say anything else, we should say this clearly: we don’t need to pretend every family looks like a greeting card. We don’t need to pretend every home has always felt safe, healthy, or whole. That’s not real life. And it’s not the Bible either. The Bible gives us families with beauty and brokenness, promise and pain. And right there, in the middle of real life, God works. God doesn’t build faith in perfect homes. He builds faith by grace. He builds faith through ordinary people who show up, pray, teach, forgive, encourage, correct, comfort, and keep loving. Most of us can look back and see that our faith didn’t appear all at once. For many of us, faith came slowly. Maybe it came through a mother or grandmother. Maybe through a teacher, mentor, neighbor, pastor, or someone in the church who cared enough ...
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Successful Revitalization of Small Evangelical Churches Hinges on Leadership Development

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My doctoral dissertation, focused on how successful church revitalization pastors act to develop and empower next-generation leaders.

A Phenomenological Study of Pastoral Leadership Development Behaviors in the Revitalization of Small Evangelical Churches

Available at https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/4002

Abstract

Church revitalization has received renewed interest in the last several years. Rainer (2014) says that a congregation’s failure to develop and empower next-generation leaders is one of the leading contributors to church closure. Likewise, Clifton (2016) and Stetzer (2007) highlight the importance of developing next-generation leaders during church revitalization. 

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the leadership development behaviors of senior or solo pastors who successfully led revitalization in a small evangelical church. This study defined a small church as one averaging 65 or fewer in attendance at the beginning of the pastor participant’s tenure (Rainer, 2022). Leadership development behaviors were defined as those intentional practices the pastor undertook to develop male leaders from within the congregation. The theories guiding this study were transformational leadership (Bass & Riggio, 2006), authentic leadership (George, 2003), and servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1977), which encourage empowering and developing leaders and comport well with a biblical view of leadership. Further, a view of leadership development as discipleship espoused by Geiger and Peck (2016) informed the study. 

This study involved semi-structured interviews with eleven small church revitalization pastors, developing overarching themes in revitalization leadership development for small evangelical churches. This study found that developing male next-generation leaders was critical to successfully revitalizing small, evangelical churches. In the early years of revitalization, pastors should be prepared to serve as the sole leader developer, undertaking development through deep and authentic personal relationships. Further, revitalization pastors must empower next-generation leaders to act in substantive roles.

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All comments are moderated. I welcome respectful disagreement with my posts. Such discussions can cause me to consider perspectives I hadn't examined before. However, I also reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason. Why? Simple enough, this is MY blog, with MY thoughts, and I want to have a civil conversation that is, at all times, God-honoring in nature.

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