The Toughest Ministry You'll Ever Love

By John Mark Clifton

I grew up near the tiny town of Spickard, Missouri—population 487. If you spread out a printed map of the Show Me State on a table, you’d have a tough time picking out Spickard. You won’t find a grocery store, a gas station, or even a stoplight in the town.

Yet for decades there was a small Baptist church, where my father served as pastor starting in 1947. Spickard may not have had a fancy department store or a professional baseball team, but it had a faithful gospel witness.

A few years ago, I got a call from the local director of missions. First Baptist Church was closing down. He wondered if I might want some of the leftover heirlooms from my dad’s era in the church.

That day, as I drove the two hours from my home to Spickard, I grieved for the town’s lost gospel witness—and for the loss of hundreds of other churches each year.

Unfortunately, the same story is playing out in small towns across America. Among Southern Baptists alone, over 900 churches will close their doors this year— and over 77% of them are not in places declining in population, but are in fact growing. Just since 2000, the median worship attendance in a Southern Baptist church has plummeted from 137 to 67. Thousands of churches are on the brink of death even as America desperately needs the gospel.

Reclaiming God's Glory

I spent the first several decades of my ministry planting new churches. I rarely gave a second thought to the dying churches next door. But in 2005, as I was serving as an associate director of missions in Kansas City, I was approached by a group of older women from a once prominent inner-city church whose congregation had dwindled as the surrounding neighborhood changed over the decades. They asked me to help prevent the church from dying.

But I knew that wasn’t enough. In my associational role, I had seen so many other churches in a similar spot. I knew a dying church—or even a barely surviving church—didn’t bring God glory. Above all else, everything we do should bring glory to God (1 Corinthians 10:31, Romans 11:36).

So instead of helping Wornall Road Baptist Church survive, I went there to help it reclaim the glory of God in that neighborhood. About a decade later, I handed the pastorate of the church over to another leader. The church had grown from 18 members to around 150.

But what really mattered wasn’t the numbers of people in the pews each week. What was once dead was now alive. Wornall Road was a picture of the gospel at work in our Kansas City neighborhood.

Wornall Road’s story wasn’t my story. It wasn’t even the story of those precious saints in the pews. It was Jesus’ story of resurrection.

It’s a story I’ve read in the Bible over and over again ever since.

It’s God taking Ezekiel to the valley of dry bones and telling him to preach to spiritually dry people who appeared to be well-past their heyday—and making the audacious claim that one day these dry bones would live again.

It’s Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus boldly declaring: “Lazarus, come out!”

But I wish I could say revitalizing a declining church was as simple as a conference, book, or weekend seminar. Only Jesus Himself by His Spirit through the gospel can bring new life to His bride.

Practically speaking, replanting a church requires preaching Christ-centered truth in the power of the Spirit, ceaseless prayer, compassion for the church and community, and commitment for the long haul.

Let me briefly unpack these four critical elements.

Preach The Gospel

I know when you come to a dying church you want to take the silk plants off the stage because they have dust all over them. You want to take down the bulletin board that still has stuff from 1986 on it. Maybe if you’re really brave, you want to change the name. But none of that will change a heart.

None of our plans for revitalizing a church will ever get off the ground in our own power. Even the best-prepared and the most eloquently preached sermon won’t bring a church back from the dead.

Paul told the church in Corinth that he didn’t come to them with fancy words or great wisdom. Instead, Paul writes, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power” (1 Corinthians 2:2-5).

Standing before dying congregations, pretty words won’t do much—they won't resurrect that church. Our single goal must be to see cold hearts ignited again by the convicting work of the Holy Spirit through the gospel. Only the resurrected Christ preached in God’s power has the ability to breathe new life into dry bones. This Spirit-empowered gospel proclamation changes everything.

When the gospel takes hold of the hearts of God’s people, cherished traditions fade in the light of God’s glory.

Pray Constantly

The work of revitalization is war. As John Piper says, “Prayer is wartime communication.” You won’t revitalize a church without constant, unceasing prayer.

In our day, church culture focuses on programs. We often relegate prayer to a rushed agenda item instead of being the crucial wartime communication it’s designed to be. But the New Testament church understood that only God’s power unleashed through prayer enables bold ministry. Without persistent prayer, our words will be powerless to pierce hearts. But on our knees, crying out for God’s Spirit to move, miracles can happen.

We need two kinds of prayers as we’re revitalizing churches. Yes, we need to pray for the sick and the shut-ins. Those are important prayers. But don’t stop there.

Look at who the early church prayed for most fervently—themselves! They begged God to embolden them in their gospel witness. Paul didn’t just pray for the lost by name. He pleaded for God to empower his own preaching of the gospel message (Colossians 4:3-4).

When we’re replanting churches, we need to beg God to unclog our ears and open our eyes, to remove the spiritual scales that blind us. Only through prayer will we hear God’s message and accomplish His glory-filled purpose in replanting.

We must not cease pleading for Him to revive dying churches through the convicting work of His Spirit until their hearts are ablaze once more.

Love the Congregation, Love the Lost

Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 gives us a great picture of what this looks like. Think of what set the Samaritan apart from the priest and the Levite. It wasn’t what they wore, what they believed, how they knew Scripture, or how many times a day they worshiped. It was compassion.

The Samaritan had compassion for someone who was nothing like him. You only get compassion like that through Jesus. The more time you spend at the cross, immersing yourself in the gospel, the more compassion you’ll have for your congregation and your lost neighbors.

Notice how the Good Samaritan cared for the man. He bent down and tended to the man’s needs. He was willing to get dirty. He paid the costs out of his own pocket.

That’s what it looks like for us to care for people in a replanting situation. We need to be willing to get dirty and put everything on the line to love people unselfishly.

We can’t love like that in our own power. I’m an introvert. Most days, I want nothing more than to stay in my basement and read history books. I crave solitude. I can only love people the way Jesus does because I’m in a love relationship with Him. The more I love Jesus, the more I love the congregation, the lost around me, and my family.

The priest and the Levite walked past the Samaritan because they knew caring for the man would interrupt their lives. That’s why dying churches are in the position they are in. They’re unwilling to interrupt their lives to care for lost people.

In church revitalization, people often worry about expenses. Certainly, there is a financial cost to caring for your neighbors. But, as Henry Blackaby has said, “God is under no obligation to resource your plans for His church, but He’ll spare nothing from heaven to resource His plan for His church.”

Stay For The Long Haul

Remember what Paul told Timothy when he wanted to leave Ephesus, “As I urged you when I went to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus” (1 Timothy 1:3). You must refuse to leave your post when it gets tough. I promise you that it will get difficult.

Replanting a church is hard. On your own, you’ll be like Timothy. You’ll say, “This isn’t going the way I thought it would. I’m not having the results I thought I would. I better go somewhere else.”

Almost weekly, I get an email from a pastor who says his work is done. I listen and engage, but here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t think it matters whether you think you’re done. Most days I think my work is done, too. But Jesus has other ideas.

God can work in many ways in a replanting situation. He could turn around a church in a split second if He wanted. But God seems to prefer to work through His servants over a long, difficult period.

Notice why Paul tells Timothy to stay, “so that you may instruct certain people not to teach false doctrine or to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies” (1 Timothy 1:3).

Many New Testament scholars aren’t sure what Paul is talking about here. But as someone who has served in many tough places, I can tell you what it is. Those endless genealogies are questions like, “Should we bring coffees into the sanctuary? Should we have pews? Should we not have Sunday night?”

The reality is those questions have no answers and are of little consequence to the work of replanting, but we argue about them all the time.

Our charge, instead, is love. Paul describes this in the next verse: “Now the goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 3:5).

Replanting a church is hard in the first year or two. It’ll get harder in years three and four. Then, when you don’t think you can handle anything more, it’ll get even harder. But our charge is to love and stay when every bone in our body wants to leave.

Don't Waste Your Life

God has given us only a short time on this earth. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to waste a second of it. That’s why I urge you, go to the hard places. Go to the places you can make a difference. Go to a place where 20 or 30 elderly saints return to their first love.

Come back to the genuine joy of seeing the church begin to reach people in their own community.

And watch that church come back to life.

That’s a living testimony.

Churches all over the country are dying. I can’t think of anything better to do with the rest of my life than to watch Jesus do the impossible in them.

Will you join me?

JOHN MARK CLIFTON | Senior Director of Replanting and Director of Rural Strategy, North American Mission Board