Renewal Pathways
Working through church replanting, revitalization, and partnerships to renew declining or dying churches across Houston.
Across the SBC, more churches are declining and dying than are growing or being planted.
When a church declines or eventually dies, the loss is felt by everyone:
Current members who experience the sadness and shame of closing the doors
Past members who lose a piece of their heritage.
The larger Body of Christ loses part of itself,
The local community loses a gospel lighthouse
A Tragic Loss
“A dying church robs God of glory”
Renewal Pathways aims to maintain gospel proclamation throughout every corner of the city by replanting, revitalizing, and partnering churches.
We Need Renewal
UBA Renewal Pathways consultations begin in relationships. UBA does not have authority over any church and cannot make decisions for any church.
UBA bases its consultations, in part, on the NAMB Associational Replanting Guide we helped create.
How it works
1. Exploration
The renewal process begins with conversations between church leaders and UBA consultants. Consultants will spend a lot of time listening and asking questions.
In the end, consultants will explain the rest of the process, including what UBA will do and what UBA will not do. The church votes to work with UBA on at least the next two steps of the process, and another vote is required before proceeding any further.
2. Examination
This step determines the current reality of the church including a review of congregational dynamics, statistical analysis of finances and attendance patterns, state of the facilities, community demographic research, and baptism/attendance trends for the church over the course of its history.
UBA consultants work with leaders of the congregation to gather these and any other relevant points of data.
3. Recommendation
Having gathered the data, UBA consultants present the findings to the leaders of the church and then the entire congregation, along with one or two recommendations.
The recommendation will be customized to the congregation, but will likely include some form of the following:
-
The existing church plants a new congregation in place of the old.
The process includes rewriting the bylaws, calling an assessed and qualified replant pastor, and launching as a new congregation.
This option may include a new church name. It also may include a transition period when particular decision-making is turned over to a leadership team, usually consisting of people from UBA or partner churches.
-
In this scenario, the church in need merges with an existing church and becomes a campus or network church.
The struggling church will surrender decision-making and assets over to the existing church and will accept new leadership.
-
In this scenario, the struggling church becomes part of a new church plant.
The struggling church will sign the deed of property and assets over to the church plant and will accept their leadership in all areas.
-
Church revitalization is a much longer-term option but is useful when there is effective leadership in place at the struggling church.
Revitalizations typically take five or more years, and UBA offers coaching, consulting, and relationships to partner churches if this scenario is deemed credible.
Learn more about Renewal Cohorts
-
In this scenario, the existing church closes and gifts its property to the denomination, association, an existing church in the area, or a church plant.
This is a last-resort option, especially when there are viable facilities in hard-to-reach communities.
5. Implementation
Implementation is the real work of the process. Depending on the recommendation, this phase can take several months and may involve calling a qualified replant pastor, addressing facility needs, rewriting bylaws, updating membership rolls, etc.
This stage depends on experienced UBA consultants walking alongside the church because a proper process will make the transition much easier.
6. Healthy Sending
We believe that replanted churches replant churches. As the congregation moves forward and regains health and vitality, we encourage the newly replanted church to continue the renewal work in other contexts.
This may mean sending people to other replants, supporting other replants, or telling the story of God’s work in and through their church as they prayerfully walked through the process of being replanted.
UBA does not desire to close churches.
UBA has never recommended closing a church that was serious about reaching their community for Christ.
UBA has assisted some churches in closing that (a) did not have the capacity to continue to do ministry and (b) were gifting their buildings to vibrant ministries in the same area.
UBA does not take over facilities.
UBA wants to see every community in Houston reached with the gospel. Our consultants will frequently recommend that churches share their space, merge with other congregations, or find other ways to prevent selling their facilities. Once a church building is sold, communities are frequently too expensive to reclaim a similar property size in the area.
The UBA Foundation will consult churches on placing reversion clauses in their documents so as to ensure that buildings always remain churches rather than be turned into developments, shopping centers, etc. UBA will help partner closing churches with churches capable of engaging their community.
UBA does not ever take control of church funds.
What UBA does NOT do
Contact us
Bryant Lee
Church Consultant
Victor Marte
Church Consultant Consultante Hispano
Dr. Josh Ellis
Executive Director
On the Blog
How sharing one church building helped two congregations lean into Kingdom work.