A Leadership Special Report

Disastrous conflict, moral failure, spiritual depression, or simply long, slow decline. Churches do come back from debilitating trauma. How?

The statistic is quoted often: 85 percent of churches in the United States have plateaued or declining attendance. That’s approximately 340,000 churches. In other words, 340,000 churches need a turnaround. How can they do it? And what skills are required?

That’s what we wanted to know. So we invited churches that have witnessed a turnaround in attendance, finances, purpose, and/or spirit to participate. From the hundreds that responded, we chose 31 churches to study in depth. We then surveyed their pastors, lay leaders, and a sampling of members—761 respondents in all. We asked how it happened. And most important, If their churches could be renewed, can mine?

In this section, you’ll read one of the accounts of five churches that exemplify “turnaround.”

No More Pastor-Driven Church
Calvary Bible Church
Rutland, Vermont

When David Lind and his wife returned to their home state of Vermont in 1991, it seemed like the family’s dream had come true.

Lind joined the staff of Calvary Bible Church in Rutland, serving as co-pastor with the man who had founded the church. Six years later the founding pastor retired, and Lind became the sole pastor, and became aware of a dichotomy within his congregation.

“We had two churches within one church,” Lind explained. “One church grew up under the founding pastor’s philosophy of ministry, where the pastor does the ministry and takes care of everything, and the other church grew up under my philosophy, where the people are trained to be leaders and do the work. The church was being pulled in two directions, and I didn’t know what to do.

“I had read The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren, and cried when I read it. It was a powerful thing for me. Rather than being pastor-centered, I was purpose-centered. I realized I could not lead both churches at the same time.”

Lind reached a crisis point in 1999, as the burden of caring for a church of 350 by himself caught up with him.

“I crashed and burned,” he said. “I finally told the church, ‘I need to take some timeoff. I don’t know if I’m coming back, but I need to regroup.’” The dream had become a nightmare.

During the next six weeks, a broken Lind cried a lot and spent time shoring up his marriage. Meanwhile, the elders begged Lind to return to the church. He considered other ministry options. “But God would not open a door for us,” Lind said. “He wouldn’t release us, so we came back.”

On his return, Lind gave the elders a choice: Either develop a ministry with heavy lay involvement, in which the pastor equips the members for service, or go the old way without him.

“They said, ‘We’re with you, pastor,’” Lind recalled. “At least in theory they were.”

Lind initiated a “Team 2000″ Bible study to write a new purpose statement for Calvary. At first, there were widely varying views on the purpose of the church. But over the course of several months, Lind was pleased that the Team 2000—without reading Warren’s book—came up with the same five purposes.

The next step was helping the congregation take ownership of those purposes. That’s when the change got difficult.

“When people realized the pastor wasn’t going to do it all, they started to grumble,” Lind recalled.

Part of the problem was that Calvary didn’t seem to need fixing. “We weren’t in decline,” Lind said. “Calvary was the largest church in the area. But the church was still looking at me to do everything, and I couldn’t.”

When Lind returned after his six-week sabbatical, Calvary had four elders, allpresumably on board with the new direction. But as the changes proved difficult, three of those elders left. “That led to personal attacks on my leadership style and a second exodus,” Lind recalled. “We struggled financially.” Attendance dipped to 150.

Lind preached the parishioner-equipped philosophy from the pulpit and in small groups and leadership training. It was an uphill struggle. “I thought that the people would quickly embrace these biblical concepts,” Lind said. “I was naive.”

But he stayed with it, and slowly Calvary started to embrace the new approach. The transformation over the last six years, according to Lind, has been remarkable.

“This is a totally different church,” he says. “The change in philosophy was the key issue for us. We have emphasized finding seekers, and a year ago we had 50 people come to know Christ in a six-month period, but I led only a couple of those to Christ. The rest were the result of moms, dads, Sunday school teachers, and co-workers who had caught the vision of sharing Christ.”

In addition, giving is over budget and attendance has returned to its pre-crisis high.

“Our new challenge is training more leaders and starting small groups,” Lind said. “Our church has also launched a lot of people to do ministry in other parts of the country. We’ve become Kingdom-focused.”

—Angie Ward
Leadership Journal
Fall 2005