Video Transcript: Lesson 4 The Vitality Paradigm
Hello, and welcome to this series of lectures from Christian leaders Institute as we are just diving into this wonderful subject of revitalization, church revitalization ministry revitalization. And so in this series of three lectures, we've got some, I think, some really good things to talk about in really just starting some initial steps. Where do you even begin with this really challenging, yet incredibly rewarding journey of revitalization. But I want to start off with this idea of taking a visit to a doctor. So imagine, this shouldn't be too hard to imagine you're, you're not feeling well, you you've got a headache, you have fevers, muscle hurt, you don't have energy, and you just haven't been feeling well for a week or two weeks, and you go to the doctor's office, and they invite you to sit down in his office, and you're sitting there and, and then the door opens up, the doctor walks in, and he tells you your diagnosis, he tells you what you have. Now, he didn't ask you what was wrong. He didn't take any vital signs. He didn't ask anything about your medical history. He didn't even ask how you were feeling. He didn't even ask what brought you in today. But yet he told you just what was wrong and what you needed to do. My question for you is how? How would you feel about that? How, how confident would you be in their diagnosis? I don't know about you, I wouldn't feel like how do you know you don't even know what? You don't even know what brought me here. You just walked in and just started telling me right away what was wrong? And how much would you trust their prescription for recovery? I, I don't think I'd be really inclined to do what they told me I had to do because they haven't even you know, they didn't even they don't even know what I have. How can they tell me what to do? Like, I'm not going to take the medicine they they're prescribing because I think there's a really good chance that they're going to be wrong. Now, as as as ridiculous as this sounds of the scenario of going into a doctor's office and having him or her pronounce a diagnosis for you sight unseen, as ridiculous as that sounds. I think that's exactly the kind of thing we do when it comes to church revitalization. And, and I would say I was that doctor, this. This is my story. The church that I pastor, when I got there, it was 156 years old, really long history. I had never lived in that town. I had never lived in that state. I didn't know anybody at all from the church. I'd only met them a couple of times. When I interviewed. And I had a couple page report about the church. Before I came to the church, I knew a little bit of the history and some of the struggles. And so for the couple months I had when I knew I was coming to the church, but before I moved there, I spent time planning all the things I wanted to do with the church and, and messages that I was going to deliver. And I came in on day one, as if I had all the answers like I knew what the church needed, I was ready to take them to the Promised Land, we're going to be revitalized, we're going to grow, we're going to do all this great stuff. I was that foolish doctor, who didn't even know what was going on. Now, in my defense, as the new pastor of a church coming in, that was struggling and in decline. That's exactly what they were
expecting me to do, that I would come in with the answers and lead them and everything would go great kind of this idea of like, well, now that you're here, you can fix it. And that really, that really is setting me up and the church up for failure. So I think we need to just take a step back to the most basic level here of saying if we're going to have any chance, any chance to succeed in revitalization. We need to understand what is going on in In the local a body of Christ, just like that doctor who walks into a room, or who walks into a room, you have to spend some time getting to know what's going on with that patient, before you can really help them. Okay. And so we talk about understanding what's going on in the local body of Christ. I don't mean just general, generally, we as we take on this great task of revitalization, we need to become experts, subject matter experts in the revitalization, and in what's going on in our ministry. Now, throughout these many lectures, we're going to go to together, we are going to discuss a number of universal principles, things that apply to, to whoever you are, wherever you are, kind of whenever you are a lot of universal principles we'll share. But we're always going to be looking at kind of what is the unique expression in your ministry, what does it look like for you and your location and in your generation? So we'll just come up with a scenario. Very common one, people might say, like, we need to, we need to evangelize more. That's our problem we need. We don't do enough evangelism. And that's true. And it was true when I got to my church, and it's likely true of where you're at. But what we don't realize is that there could be 200 different reasons why we're not doing evangelism. And the reasons why we're not doing it at my church might be different than why we're not you're not doing it at your church, your people aren't doing it there. And so what works for me may not necessarily work for you. Now, there's this universal principle, we are to go out and share the gospel. But we're not doing it. But why we're not doing it? Well, it's very different. And so what I experienced at one church, I just can't say, Well, this is going to definitely work here. So we're always going to be pushing into like, more the unique expressions of, of these universal principles, okay? And to understand what makes us different, right? So somebody comes in, in the doctor's office, and they have a cough and a fever. You know, the guy who's in the office, a half hour later, he might have a cough and a fever, but he might have a different reason why he has that. So we're gonna really try to become a, you know, kind of a church doctors and an experts in understanding and diagnosing what's going on in our churches. So that is a task beyond your ability. And it's certainly a test on my abilities, beyond all our ability, we need the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us in this. Proverbs 2:6 is from the Lord comes wisdom, and from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. And so we just need to pray for this. We're going to start and end every lecture with the time of prayer. I'm praying for you praying for your success in this and I'm praying for the effectiveness of these lectures and the wisdom for you to apply it. So let's pray
over this. Okay. Lord, we just ask that you give us wisdom and understanding God, we ask that you might reveal truth to us to help see things as you do, to penetrate beyond the surface and know what's really going on. beneath the skin of our ministry in your churches, Lord, to have the mind and the eyes of just a doctor or to diagnose and to see, and to be able to ward them bring hope and healing and renewal. God, I pray this in Your name. Amen. Well, before a doctor can see patients, you know, your first day in medical school, they don't let you just walk in and you know, start seeing patients and diagnosing and prescribing medicine, you've got to go through quite a bit of training to understand how does the human body work? How does it all function together? You've been to medical school for years to learn that. And so what what I want to do for us in a much more abbreviated timeline, is to help us understand how does this church work? A doctor understands how the body works. pastors and ministry leaders, we ought to understand how does the church work? And to do that? I'm gonna share, share a picture up here with you. That's a very simple way of expressing this. Now we have to realize, though, that churches are very complex systems with lots of history. And there's culture and stories and unique ministry context. There's different gifting and abilities in your church, different hurts and wounds from the past. So it's very complex, it's very complex. So I'm gonna just try to like kind of, I guess, simplify it down to say, how does a church really work? Okay, so we're gonna talk about this on a number of lectures, called the vitality paradigm. And it's from my friend and mentor in ministry, Harry Reeder, who is the pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama. And Harry is authored book, embers to a flame, a book on revitalization, which I highly recommend. Harry has a revitalization ministry called embers to a flame. And as I went through my doctorate, Harry was also a faculty advisor. So I know Harry's thoughts quite well. And he's a man who just honors scripture and tries to be faithful to the Lord. So anytime Harry says something, I always take notice of what he has to say. And, and one of the things Harry also does is he has conferences, embers to a flame conferences, where he teaches revitalization kind of the core core concepts of revitalization. And this picture of this this model, this vitality pirate paradigm is from one of Harry's embers to a flame conferences, one of the sessions he teaches, and this is basically how he, he understands how churches function and churches work. It's like a tree, where there's a root, and then then a trunk. And then there's, there's fruit. And the way that Harry teaches it is that the root is the gospel, it's our relationship with Jesus Christ. It's like, it's what fills us, it's how we intake kind of spiritual, nurturing, and food. So just as a tree sucks up, you know, water and nutrients. We suck we take that in our intake is is prayer, its word it is worship, those sorts of things, any kind of spiritual discipline, where we're building our relationship with the Lord, that it's, it's our communion with Christ. And then there is a functional effectiveness, how is it structured, how are things organized, how the things
relate within the church, to, to provide some support and some structures because it's not just everybody kind of running around doing their own things, but we're, we're trying to do something kind of together in common and, you know, for example, we, we meet weekly at the same time for worship in the same place, we, we have committees we have, you know, goals, we have a budget, all that type of stuff. So there's a thing that kind of a church together, that holds us together, that helps us operate together. And then out of that, out of like, our ministries and out of our own relationship with Christ, then there is a statistical growth or, or fruit. Now it can be statistical growth, it could also be life transformation. It could be, you know, you know, transformation, personally, it could be out in the community, it could be renewed marriages, or it could be a bunch of things, you know, but it's, it's like, the full expression of like, the Holy Spirit being made manifest through our ministry, okay, that's really kind of the fruit. And so what Harry teaches and what I agree with, totally is that everybody is wants to see like, more fruit like deal with like, we want more people, we want more, whatever, we want to see the fruit. But the fruit is really just a byproduct of the roots and the structure or the trunk, right? So our focus is going to be is if we can understand where the roots are at and how the structure is. And we can work on those and develop that we should naturally see more fruit, right? Because if you have an orange tree, and it's not producing oranges, or the oranges are small, or they're just not very good, but the problem isn't with the oranges, right? This problem is either with something in the tree or the roots or it's not getting enough water or it's not getting enough or nutrition, or the the, you know, there might be a disease or insects or something that's prohibiting the fruit from appearing, right? So the problem isn't the fruit The problem is the rest of the tree that's not producing the fruit. Okay, so we think of that with churches. So there's a reason why, if you're in a place where you're struggling or declining, there's a reason why that is. It's so we don't want to just say, kind of address a surface thing, like we need more fruit. Well, we need to talk about our own relationship with the Lord, we need to talk about areas where where we need to repent, we need to talk about the place of the gospel in our life, we need to talk about being organized and having a clear mission and a clear vision and all these kinds of things. That that will set us up well to experience the fruit that we want to see. Right. I mean, that's why you're interested in this class right revitalization because you want to see more fruit. And so what I want to do in this whole class, is really what we're going to be doing. lecture after lecture after lecture is, is really trying to what are the underlying issues? There's a lack of the fruit is, is the symptom? It's not the cause? So do you like going to a doctor, and again, you have aches and pains, and you've got a fever, and you just feel miserable, and you haven't, you've been feeling that way for a couple of weeks. And the doctor gives you Tylenol. And well, it might help you feel better, it might, you know, make the aches and pains go away a little bit, it'll reduce your fever,
but But it hasn't solved anything, like what was causing you to have that whether you have some kind of virus or infection or whatever, like the Tylenol didn't treat that like, and what we want to do in this whole series of lectures, is treat that like we'll deal we want to deal with the underlying thing. We don't want just to like,
put a band-aid on it and give you Tylenol, we want to deal with a much deeper thing. So we see this, I think in the revitalization world a lot because the church is struggling. And people say, well, we need a new worship service. You know,
that'll turn everything around. Or if we do this outreach event, you know, more people would come in? I don't know, maybe. And maybe you do need a new worship service, or to rethink that or, or maybe it'd be good if he did some kind of outreach. But like, that's not like the real problem, right? I mean, like, there's more going on, than, we just don't have the best singers in the world. Or if we just didn't do this kind of song, or if we just did, whatever, I don't care if our messages were just 10 minutes shorter or 10 minutes longer. You know, we're always looking for some kind of a superficial thing. Like if, if we dress maybe more casually, then everybody would come? No, they won't. It's like, there's, again, there's complex structures. Churches are very complex. And there's a million things and, and there's a reason why your church is the way it is, like your reasoning and your, your values and, and how you understand the purpose of the church and, and what's most important and why you exist. These are all things that are contributing to why your church is the way it is, right now. So just by putting a band-aid of like, Oh, if we just put, you know, new paint in the youth room, that'll change everything? Well, no, I mean, the youths might be like, incredibly undervalued. And people aren't taking the time to know them or understand them or communicate with them to get, you know, $8 a year for the budget. Nobody's investing relationally in them. They don't have a place in worship, they're having a hard time being discipled they don't fit into the community. Okay, so we'll look at something like that and say, you know, you could put 800 coats of paint on a wall. It's not, you know, the fact that you just do that it's a very surface kind of a thing. So as we talked about your, your church and my church, broadly, we really want to talk about the overall things that contribute to health. Now, that is a huge statement. We're going to talk about this a ton, that our objective, when we're talking about revitalization is a healthy church, church health, not necessarily growth, because fruit doesn't always mean bigger numbers. You may Be in a rural area, you could be in a farm in the middle of Kansas, a farm town in the middle of Kansas. And there's only 100 People who live within 50 miles of you. Well, it doesn't matter what you do, you're not going to have 200 people coming to your your ministry, right, you're not gonna be coming in your service. The idea is becoming a healthy church, a church that is faithful to what Jesus Christ has called the church to be, and faithful to what he's called the church to do. So the idea is we are healthy, we have good roots, we have strong system, and we are a faithful expression of the
Body of Christ in our location in our generation, in our time, and in our place. And so that if we're doing all the things that we're supposed to be doing, and we're faithful to Jesus, we're going to be healthy. Another natural byproduct of a healthy organism, organism or organization as it grows. It's, there's fruit, like a healthy trees gonna have fruit and not healthy trees, not so much fruits. And we'll talk at different times about what this fruit can be. But again, it could be, it could be anything, it could be family staying together, it could be people just maturing in their faith being more generous in stewardship, it could be people, more people going to small groups and being discipled. It could be starting of new ministries, it can be an outreach that impacts your community, it could be evangelism and numerical growth, it could be a number of things. But our idea here is not just going to be saying, our goal is more numbers, and we're going to talk about that in down the road, that our goal isn't just big numbers, more numbers, bigger is better. It's really better is better. Okay. And so that's kind of our mindset going into this. A healthy tree produces fruit, okay. And so, what we're going to do in our next lecture is we're going to begin to diagnose what some of the kinds of things that are going on in your ministry context, that would be contributing to the trip to the doctor, right? This kind of this lecture series is, this is your trip to the doctor. And we're going to start getting into that we're going to start, I'm going to, hopefully equip you to be the doctor for your congregation so that you can begin to see what is going on? And what are some steps that you can take to help them become more healthy. Okay. And just the question I have for you, and I want you to keep this in mind as we go through this process. It's just who was praying for you during this process, you're really going to need that prayer. You're really You really do. This is more than you can handle on your own. I don't care how smart you are, I don't care how gifted you are, how committed you are, how talented you are, how hard you're willing to work. This is a ministry of the Lord, and apart from the Lord, we know from the Gospel of John, I am the vine, you are the branches apart from me, you can do nothing. So just in your own personal relationship with the Lord and having other people pray for you. This is a work of resurrection wouldn't so who was praying for you get those people on board, tell them what you're trying to do. And get them praying for you. And in with you. Okay. With that, let me close out by praying for you. Lord, thank you so much for the gift to your church. Thank you for brothers and sisters who are who care so much about it, they they, they they can't stand to see it unhealthy Lord. It bothers them and they are moved to do something about a God I thank you because that prompting is from your spirit. It's your heart. It's your love at work in them. And God I pray that as they begin this very challenging task, we would remember the words that you spoke to the church in Philadelphia that the door that you open Lord cannot be shut and God I pray that you would open doors for everyone. Listening to these lectures, God opened the doors for new life for vitality, renewal, revitalization. That Lord Your
Holy Spirit would blow in and through them their lives, their ministries, their families, and God, great things would be done in and through them. Lord, we love you and we praise You for your gifts and your trust in us to lead your church. We pray this in Your name, amen.