When Church Feels Like Family…Until It Doesn’t

-
Image
  Finding Peace and Unity in a World of Conflict (Philemon 1-7) By Bart Denny Imagine walking into church for the first time. You’re new to faith. A friend kept talking about Jesus, and eventually, the message pierced your heart. You realized your need for forgiveness, and for the first time, you felt right with God. That same friend invites you to church, and you nervously show up—unsure of what to expect. But then—you’re greeted with warmth, someone offers you coffee, people smile, shake your hand, invite you to sit with them. The sermon speaks to your heart. You think, “I never knew church could feel like this. This feels like home.” That’s a beautiful moment. But somewhere in the back row, an old-timer mutters under their breath, “Just wait. Give it a year. Two. You’ll see.” Because here’s the hard truth: churches are full of people—and people, even forgiven ones, are still very much in progress. What Happens When Church Hurts? Eventually, the shine wears off. Someone ...
Post a Comment

Successful Revitalization of Small Evangelical Churches Hinges on Leadership Development

-

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

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.

Popular posts from this blog

Leadership Development in Local Church Revitalization: A Review of the Literature and Suggestions for Further Research

-
by Bart L. Denny This article identifies a gap in the existing literature concerning leadership development in the context of local church revitalization. The article further suggests how existing leadership and leadership development theories could be applied to church revitalization and proposes further investigation and research areas. Observers and practitioners in the field of church revitalization unequivocally make the case that for a local church to reverse its decline, the pastor must develop a new generation of leaders (Clifton, 2016; Davis, 2017; Henard, 2021; Rainer, 2020; Stetzer & Dodson, 2021). The extant literature links the decline of churches to a lack of leadership and identifies renewed leadership as a vital component of church revitalization. However, little has been written, theoretically or practically, about the process of leadership development as it applies to local church revitalization. Moreover, little empirical verification supports church revitalizat...
Read more

A modern disciple's doubts

-
  The eleven disciples traveled to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had directed them.   17  When they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted. (Matthew 28:16-17) I try to be faithful to the Scriptures when I write or preach. I aim to draw out the lessons I can and apply them to today’s daily walk of faith without saying more than the biblical witness. I want to get everything I can from the diligent study of the Bible and share that with others without putting words in God’s mouth. I can’t help but wonder, though; I don’t recall that I’ve heard anyone focus—I mean really focus—on that doubt. That’s what I hope to do in this essay, and I hope what follows does not stretch the biblical sense far beyond what Matthew ever intended. “But some doubted.” The disciples were moved to worship in the presence of the risen Christ. Yet, even in this profound moment, some still wrestled with doubt.  We hear it said that “seeing is believing.” Yet even as the discip...
Read more

What’s more important in ministry: Faithfulness or fruitfulness?

-
Image
by Bart L. Denny, Ph.D., Th.M. I’ve often heard it said (harped upon, at times) that Christian ministry is about more than faithfulness—it’s about fruitfulness. I just don’t buy that. Not in the way it seemed to have been meant when I heard it said, anyway. Yes, sometimes ministries have been unfruitful when they lack no resources to help them yield a bountiful spiritual harvest. But this sort of fruitlessness may actually be the result of un faithfulness. What is faithfulness anyway? All Christians are called to ministry. However, I do write primarily from the perspective of a church leader. As ministry leaders, we ought to be willing to take a long, hard look at ourselves in the mirror, having the fortitude to eliminate ineffective practices in our given context. We should gladly attempt to find and implement those biblically informed ministry methods that have proven fruitful for others ministering in similar circumstances. We should humbly seek coaching and mentorship from th...
Read more