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The third step in Harry Reeder's paradigm for church revitalization is "Recovery." Perhaps, to be very clear, it is better to say that this is the third step in Harry Reeder's understanding of the biblical way of revitalizing a church. His paradigm, after all, is based on Jesus' words to the declining church of Ephesus near the end of the first century: "Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent, and do the things you did at first" (Rev. 2:5).
Re-doing the first things, the basics - that is where the path of revitalization takes us after the initial steps of "remembering" and "repenting". In breathing life back into a declining church, Jesus first says to it, "remember the height from which you have fallen" - that is, face the fact of your sin squarely. Then he tells it to "repent" - to own up to its failure and turn away from its sin. And then this - "recover the things that were once part of your life as a church."
Interestingly, Jesus' paradigm for renewal doesn't present the church at Ephesus with anything essentially new. He doesn't provide it with a new strategy, a new programme, a new practice that will guarantee its revival. To use Harry Reeder's term, he doesn't set out to "reengineer the church" but says that it must be "reestablished" on the basics.
That's where the biblical paradigm for revitalization differs so strikingly from modern approaches to church growth and renewal. Listen to Harry Reeder on this: "Whether it is the business model [of church growth and renewal], the entertainment model, or the healing model, they all have one thing in common: they are new strategies for growing the church in the modern world" (p. 45). Jesus, however, doesn't offer the church at Ephesus anything new. He calls it to return to the old things, to the things that made its life great before.
That's why Harry Reeder uses the term "recovery" for this third step in revitalization. Revitalization is not about discovering a new solution for a church's problems; it's about recovering what it has lost. The medical application of the term fits here. In the medical world, "recovery" is the road back to health. Church revitalization aims at the same thing - restoring churches to health.
Reeder, like many other church renewal writers, emphasizes the importance of church health over church growth. "So many pastors and church leaders today," he says, "are striving for church growth, but that is putting the cart before the horse. The objective should not be church growth, but church health, because growth must proceed from health" (p. 46). The church, he argues, is just like a body. If it is healthy, it will grow. "So," he concludes, "we should focus on the health of the church and let God take care of the growth. If you do it the other way around, you may end up with an unhealthy church that has a lot of people - one that may look successful but is not really pleasing to God" (p. 47).
Recovering spiritual health, then, needs to be our priority. If we take care of this, other things will look after themselves. That's true of the church, and it is also true for the individual Christian. If you find yourself, or your church, plateauing or declining, face up to the fact that what you are seeing is a sign of poor health. Don't resign yourself to the inevitable, and don't blame your circumstances. Take a long, sober look at your condition, take ownership of your sins and failings, and then do something about them. Humble yourself before God and ask for his grace, then set about doing the "first works". What these are will be the focus of our studies over coming weeks.