Decline & Renewal, 19: Renewal Starts with Unknowing
Editor’s Note : I’ve written this article to launch our series of guest columns on church renewal. In the coming weeks, you'll read insightful articles from brilliant thinkers and pioneering church leaders like Ron Clark, Mark Love, Jeff Childers, Mike Cope, Chris Flanders, Jarrod Robinson and more. If you’ve followed our blog series about church decline, then you probably have a decent feel for the state of most West Coast Churches of Christ. I haven’t cherry-picked bad stories. The authors in this series aren’t a bunch of grouchy church leaders who only see the negative. We’ve given what I think is as fair a picture as one can make of a diverse topography. We now turn our attention to church renewal. To be quite honest, it might seem premature to talk about renewal. A small number of our existing West Coast churches—probably less than ten—have maintained at least the appearance of vibrancy. An even smaller number are experiencing renewal out of the ashes of decay. Almost ...