The Local Church as Mission Field

Why Pastors Must Continually Re-Evangelize the Church

In recent days our church hosted another major event centered around recovery, surrender, salvation, and the transforming grace of Christ. It was a powerful evening. People responded sincerely. Testimonies were shared. Hope was visible.

At one point, the guest speaker made several comments about churches and church culture that, broadly speaking, were not entirely untrue. Most pastors who have served for any length of time understand exactly what he meant. Churches can become insulated. Comfortable. Program-driven. Socially predictable. Spiritually sleepy.

And yet, sitting there listening, I felt an internal tension rise within me.

Not anger.
Not defensiveness.
Something more reflective.

Because for most of my pastoral life, I have quietly understood my calling somewhat differently than many people realize. I have increasingly come to see myself not merely as the shepherd of a congregation, but as a missionary to people already sitting in pews.

That statement may sound strange at first, but I suspect many experienced pastors understand it immediately.

The local church is not a static thing. It is never fully formed. It is always drifting somewhere.

Without continual spiritual renewal, churches naturally drift toward familiarity, social equilibrium, institutional maintenance, nostalgia, and forms of comfortable Christianity that slowly replace genuine discipleship. This is not because church people are uniquely evil. It is because human beings naturally settle into patterns that reduce tension, preserve stability, and protect familiar identities.

This is one reason I have always appreciated many of the observations made by my friend Frank Viola regarding the drift of the modern church away from apostolic simplicity and spiritual vitality. Frank has sometimes developed a reputation for being anti-institutional, but I have never understood his deeper concern that way. His critique, as I understand it, is not hatred for the Church, but grief over how easily Christian movements drift from the living heart of Christ-centered community into systems that eventually prioritize self-preservation.

That concern resonates with me deeply.

At the same time, however, I have spent decades serving inside the local church and trying patiently to help real congregations move toward healthier, more apostolic life without despising the people already there.

That work is slow.

Sometimes painfully slow.

And unlike revival ministries or conference platforms, local church ministry requires living among people through the long middle of transformation.

A traveling evangelist may encounter people at moments of crisis and openness. A local pastor walks with them afterward:
when enthusiasm fades,
when conflict emerges,
when old habits return,
when spiritual growth slows,
when comfort settles back in,
when discipleship becomes ordinary rather than dramatic.

That is harder work than many people realize.

One of the unintended consequences of modern testimony culture is that dramatic conversion stories sometimes become the unspoken standard by which all spirituality is measured. The person radically delivered from addiction or rescued from visible destruction is celebrated — and rightly so. God’s transforming grace is glorious.

But there is another kind of testimony that matters deeply too.

There is the believer who slowly learned faithfulness over fifty years.
The woman who quietly raised children in the faith.
The ordinary Christian who matured gradually through worship, prayer, repentance, Scripture, suffering, sacraments, and long obedience.

Yet many lifelong church members quietly feel spiritually incomplete because their story is not dramatic enough.

That troubles me.

Scripture honors both Paul on the Damascus road and Timothy raised from childhood in the Scriptures. The Kingdom of God has room for both sudden rescue and slow formation.

In fact, the local church may be one of the only remaining places in modern society where slow human formation is still possible over generations.

But that process is tedious compared to revival culture. It lacks spectacle. It often feels repetitive. It requires patience, structure, endurance, forgiveness, and long-term relationships.

In many ways, it resembles Israel in the wilderness far more than a mountaintop revival meeting.

I sometimes think pastors discover that the hardest part of ministry is not leading people out of Egypt, but walking patiently beside them while Egypt slowly leaves them.

People often leave bondage physically long before they leave it psychologically.

Congregations may embrace salvation while still resisting surrender.
They may desire renewal while instinctively defending comfort.
They may pray for growth while resisting the very changes growth requires.

And pastors live inside that tension for decades.

This is why I increasingly resist simplistic attacks on “institutional churches.” The institution is not the enemy. Without institutions there would be no continuity of doctrine, no preserved theological tradition, no long-term mission structures, no seminaries, no accountability systems, no sacraments faithfully stewarded across generations.

And yet institutions themselves are never the point.

That tension matters deeply to me right now as part of the emerging Global Methodist Church following the painful divisions within the United Methodist Church.

One of my quiet concerns is that we may fail to fully seize the opportunity before us. After surviving denominational conflict, it is understandable that leaders become focused on stabilization, structure, protection, and continuity. Those things matter. They truly do.

But every renewal movement eventually faces the same temptation:
to slowly begin protecting the institution more than the spiritual life the institution was created to serve.

That danger is not unique to Methodists. It is part of nearly every movement in church history. Revivals institutionalize. Reform movements stabilize. Structures become self-protective. Human beings drift.

Which means the work of renewal is never finished.

The local church remains both beautiful and unfinished.
The institution remains both necessary and vulnerable.
The people in the pews remain both sincere and partially formed.
And pastors remain called to love them patiently anyway.

That, perhaps, is one of the most missionary tasks imaginable.

Not abandoning the Church.
Not romanticizing the Church.
Not despising the Church.

But loving her enough to continually call her back toward Christ.