KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Dying churches haunted John Mark Clifton because they seemed to be everywhere.
Churches that once experienced several hundred people in weekly worship when Clifton was a teenager, eventually struggled with fewer than 30 people attending each Sunday. Often the churches had large but empty buildings and could barely pay their facility costs.
“I had been in denominational missions a long time,” Clifton, a veteran Southern Baptist church planter and former associate director of missions at the Blue River-Kansas City Association, said. “I had always been taught — and experience had shown me — that you never touch a dying church. If you did, you’d lose all of your money, all your energy. You just stay away from them. You let them die.”
But, group of older ladies from the city’s once large and prominent Wornall Road Baptist Church in Kansas City, Mo., approached Clifton in 2004 about their dying church and relying on his 25 years of church planting experience, Clifton decided to help turn the once-thriving church around.
Beginning with 18 people, the church now averages about 140 in attendance most weekends. The community also has taken more ownership of the church, Clifton said.
“They’d realize that we can’t let this church close,” said Clifton, lead pastor of Wornall Road. “It’s an important part of our neighborhood. It feeds the kids on the football team. It feeds the kids in the elementary school. It serves our neighbors in an important way. We’re sort of the go-to church if there’s any need in the community.”
Wornall Road’s story is an example of what the North American Mission Board (NAMB) hopes will be a growing movement within the Southern Baptist Convention. Clifton is now working with NAMB to develop a strategy to help Southern Baptists breathe new life into dying churches, much like he did at Wornall Road.
More than 70 percent of Southern Baptist churches are either plateaued or declining, according to experts. There’s a growing continuum for how to help struggling churches, Chris Emery, who coordinates church revitalization for NAMB, said. Many, he added, need to address leadership issues that can hinder their growth. State Baptist conventions are particularly well-placed to help many of the churches in this category.
NAMB also sponsors Send North America Church Growth and Revitalization conferences designed to equip leaders with the necessary tools to bring life back to struggling churches.
But NAMB also encourages churches that are on the verge of closing to not let their church building be lost to the work of ministry. NAMB calls this “legacy church planting.”
“As God leads, we want to encourage these churches to consider ‘passing the baton’ — to let their legacy of ministry and missions continue through a legacy church plant,” Emery said. “Passing the baton may include a new name and a legacy church planter being called to lead the church.”
Because churches are the primary centers through which Gospel proclamation occurs, NAMB has placed its church revitalization efforts within its Evangelism Group. The goal for every revitalized church is that it would again be a place where people are coming into a relationship with Christ.
Clifton says the transformation of Wornall Road had three parts. First, Clifton “loved on” the remaining elderly congregation and warmed the people’s hearts to the Gospel.
“I didn’t make them the change agent,” Clifton said. “I didn’t blame them for what went wrong. I didn’t blame them for all the failures of the past. I didn’t marginalize them. I just loved them immensely as the bride of Christ. I just really tried to get them to warm up to the Gospel and love Jesus again.”
As he was caring for the remaining Wornall Road members, Clifton started doing the work of a church planter. He built relationships with people in the community, shared Jesus with them and discipled them. He specifically focused on discipling a core group of future leaders, young men between the ages of 18 and 30.
Clifton and the others at Wornall Road also “served the community with abandon” and povided its building for a variety of community organizations and new church plants in an effort to use the large amount of space it has. In the past six to seven years, Clifton said, nine church plants have launched and held services in the building.
“Years ago when you’d say Wornall Road Baptist Church, the people in the neighborhood would think of a dying church that would fuss and fire their pastors all the time,” Clifton said. “Now when you say Wornall Road Baptist Church, they think of a church full of young families — where the nursery is overflowing, that serves the community every week, feeds the high school football team. It’s synonymous with service. God has gotten glory from Wornall Road coming back.”
