The North American church is plateaued and dying. The last decade has seen many attempts to revitalize established churches, with nebulous results at best. Many pastors feel discouraged and hopeless, even to the point of questioning their call. Further exacerbating the issue, the popular writers on church leadership are founding pastors, not pastors who have led established churches through the revitalization process. Many mainline denominations have responded to this crisis by strengthening their emphasis on church planting. However, the Church will experience limited Kingdom impact without a rigorous effort to revitalize established churches.

My project created a model that included a Relaunch Cohort and personal consultations with seven pastors of established churches in suburban communities with three precise goals: (1) Clarify the direction of their churches, (2) lead their churches in a well-defined and time-bound strategic initiatives, and (3) learn proficiencies to lead their churches through revitalization.

All seven pastors reported an increase in their own personal clarity and confidence and described tangible ministry results. Collectively, the pastors reported significant quantitative and qualitative results. The greatest improvement in scale score occurred for clarity, which increased on average by M = 7.4 points from the pretest. The pastors conveyed an increase of hope for the future of their congregations and a sense that God used this project as a catalyst or tipping point to revitalize their congregations.