This year, God has used the resources of contributing scholars of the Mathena Center for Church Revitalization to train and equip pastors– both current and future – for more faithful service to Christ’s bride. Here are a few of our most popular resources from the past year.
As a bi-vocational pastor you feel the reality of your unique burdens and embrace the opportunities of your unique position. In this helpful article Spencer Harmon shares four basic, and obvious rhythms you can , and should implement as a bi-vocational pastor.
In part two of this series “When is a Church Revitalized” Pastor-Theologian P.J. Tibayan answer two pivotal questions. First, what is Church Revitalization? and secondly, when is it complete? He then unpacks the truth that a Revitalized Church is a Christ-Shaped and Christ-Centered Church.
The work of church reform can look a little like a jungle when you’re in the thick of it. Where do I go from here? Where do I even start? What do you do first? What should you ignore? What’s the goal I should be working toward?
The story of the Exodus helps us greatly in understanding the impossible task of leading, shaping, strengthening, and pastoring a church. Throughout the book of Exodus, Moses records in great detail the condition of the people. They are most assuredly a broken and exhausted people. He is the prophet who holds this great promise for them, a promise given to them by the Word of the Lord, but a promise in the face of such massive trial by a short sighted people will prove to be Moses' greatest joy and greatest place for frustration as well. In steps Jethro, the father-in-law to Moses, and he has something to offer.
Paul instinctively recognized that an entropic principle was at work in the church from the very beginning. Church revitalization was an integral and prominent strategy in all three of his recorded missionary journeys. Without the constant work of reformation and revitalization, local churches will disintegrate into gospel lethargy and ineffectiveness. When this impulse for church revitalization is coupled with his constant agony for the wellbeing of the early churches evidenced in his epistles, Paul’s stature as a church revitalizer is profoundly evident.
