I have started reading a book by Gary McIntosh titled: There’s Hope for Your Church. 

http://www.amazon.com/Theres-Hope-Your-Church-Restoring/dp/B00A188JCC

Gary is the speaker at our American Baptist Churches of Ohio spring church leadership conference. Gary writes about revitalization for churches. Here are some interesting excerpts:

“At its root, revitalization is a spiritual issue. In a study reported in Your Church, the number one change made in churches that turned around was spiritual, such as added prayer initiatives. Seventy-five percent of the revitalized churches reported starting such initiatives.[19] Pastors and other church leaders regularly overlook this key point, preferring to focus on organizational or facility or program issues. This is not surprising, since dealing with spiritual issues, such as confrontation of known sin, is a challenging part of ministry. It is a mistake, however, to ignore the spiritual dynamic of revitalization.
As you begin the process of revitalizing a church, establish high morals, ethics, and credibility and stick to them. Show your people daily that these principles are more than words—that they live and thrive in you. Leaders who lack such principles are doomed to fail. Consider the following principles of revitalization and begin using them today.

another one:

“When the average age of people in a church is ten years or more above that of the average age in the community, the church finds it is no longer able to relate to the community. Few visitors walk through the doors of the church, and even fewer come back a second time.”

Excerpt From: Gary L. McIntosh. “Thereís Hope for Your Church.” Baker Publishing Group. iBooks. 

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any thoughts? please share. 

blessings, Steve