Last week I was traveling to Denver and happened to connect through Phoenix. As I walked to Gate A26 at PHX, I had to walked through a concourse that boasted a view both to the south and to the north. I looked to the south and saw South Mountain and then to the north and saw Camelback Mountain. This took me back in time as I ministered in Phoenix for seven years in a community called Ahwatukee, nestled in the foothills behind South Mountain.
I realized that June 2013 was a landmark time, the twentieth anniversary of numerous events. In May 1993, I graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, FL, with a Master of Divinity degree. In June 1993, I completely my tenure on staff with, then church plant, River Oaks Presbyterian Church. On July 1, 1993, I began my seven years as senior pastor at Bridgeway Community Church. It was at this church that my understanding of church revitalization began, laying the foundation for my current ministry of training and consulting in church vitality.
Bridgeway was the rebirth of an eighty-seven year old church that had declined to thirteen members. As a church planter, I knew how to grow a church from nothing, but I knew nothing about growing a church from decline. Suffice it to say that, by God’s grace, I learned a great deal over that seven years from both the school of hard knocks and from my doctoral studies at RTS that included a dissertation focused on the biblical, theological, social, philosophical and cultural dynamics of a church’s falling into decline and getting out of decline.
It’s a bit overwhelming to take a look back at all that has happened in the past twenty years that has brought me to where I am in life and ministry today. I continue to be saddened by the state of the American Evangelical church today, with the prevalence of plateau and decline, and yet I continue to marvel at how God turns churches around once they seriously redirect their ministries through the Great Commission.
As I was flying back from Denver just two days ago, the man next to me on the plane, having discovered my line of work in conversation, asked me a question that I get asked all the time. He asked, “What is the main reason that so many churches are in trouble today?” Simple: churches are in trouble today because they are self-focused, absorbed in ministry to themselves rather than God-focused, driven by the mandate to go and make disciples. I gave him one of my standard lines, “The question we should be asking is not, ‘How do we minister to our congregation,’ but, ‘How do we minister through our congregation to reach a lost community.'”
God has called me to a very specific ministry with a narrow focus and essentially one message – Get back to the Great Commission. I have followed this path for the past twenty years and I pray, by the grace of God, that I have at least twenty more.
Soli Deo Gloria – To the Glory of God Alone!
