Cultivating Renewal in Your Association

Your journey to cultivating a renewal movement in your association starts here.

This Quick-Start Guide (QSG) offers simple, actionable steps for Associational Mission Strategists (AMS) to help pastors and churches fulfill their calling to glorify God by facilitating a renewal movement. To maximize your impact, assess the current state of churches in your association and strategically work toward engaging every church in a renewal movement. The following steps will guide you through this process.

QUICK START GUIDE

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“Prayer is not a preparation for work; it is work. Prayer is not a preparation for the battle; it is the battle.” - Oswald Chambers

Your renewal journey must be saturated in prayer from beginning to end. As you take each step, remember Psalm 127:1: “Unless the Lord builds a house, its builders labor over it in vain.”

Assess the Situation

How do I identify the current reality in my association?

1. Evaluate Church Health

Define a simplified list of some basic characteristics of a healthy church, plateaued church, declining church and dying church.
- Assessments:
  - Church Health Assessment (Resound Network)
  - Church Readiness Assessment
- Podcasts (The Replant Bootcamp):
  - Episode #253: Evaluating Church Health and Setting Goals
  - Episode #268: Fundamentals of Church Renewal
Use ACP data to consider churches’ attendance and giving trends.
Categorize the churches as healthy, plateaued, declining and dying congregations.

2. Measure Engagement Levels

3. Review Pastoral Involvement

4. Evaluate Your Capacity to Help

Prioritize Your Focus

How do I develop a clear strategy for helping churches?

1. Remove the Obstables

2. Build Your Skills and Your Team

Recruit a Renewal Team from the list of engaged pastors to learn with them and develop a strategy for cultivating a renewal movement.
Attend the AMS Replant Lab with your Renewal Team.
Engage a NAMB resource for your development, such as coaching from a Replant Team Member or training at an AMS Excellence Event.

3. Set Clear Objectives

Engage Churches for Renewal

How do I cultivate an ongoing movement of renewal?

1. Plan or Promote Events that Inspire and Catalyze Renewal

2. Support the Ongoing Pursuit of Renewal

Create processes for revitalization and replanting by adapting the Associational Replant Guide and Quick-Start Guides for your context.
- Quick Start Guides:
Engage pastors in intentional coaching conversations as a follow-up to events.
- Books:
Watch for God’s activity among churches and volunteer to serve them through conflict resolution, staff development, pastor search processes, etc.

3. Engage Every Pastor in the Movement

Amplify the Results

How do I expand and sustain the renewal movement?

1. Share Stories of Success

2. Offer Targeted Care

Develop a plan to help churches repurpose their resources for kingdom efforts when closure is the only option.
- Blog:
  - "Good Stewardship to the End" by Walker Armstrong
- Resource:
  - Leading a Church to Repurpose (Resound Network)
Utilize strategies like Church Fostering to provide a time and place to escalate help for declining or dying churches.
- Guide:
  - Fostering Churches Back to Health
Identify support services the association or state convention can give the pastors and their families.

3. Continue Increasing Involvement