Artwork for podcast Our Urban Voices
#129. Stop Trying to Revitalize Your Church-- Do This Instead
Episode 12917th June 2025 • Our Urban Voices • Dr. Alfonse Javed
00:00:00 00:46:00

Share Episode

Shownotes

Josh has recently authored Remissioning Church, A Field Guide to Bringing a Congregation Back to Life, where he talks about transforming a church from the inside out to bring a new missional presence that brings life and flourishing to the neighborhood.

Book: Remissioning Church

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

  • How and why congregations might be dying
  • Remissioning vs Revitalizing
  • Inside-out transformation

ABOUT THE GUEST: 

Josh Hayden is the co-founder and co-president of `Iwa Collaborative, which helps leaders fly high and live low as they lead through change processes in their community. He runs remissioning trainings through `Iwa Collaborative across various denominational, non-denominational, and global networks.

Josh Hayden is the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Ashland, Virginia. For over 20 years he has worked and led in nonprofit organizations, church plants, and established churches. He has a doctorate in leadership and organizational change from Duke Divinity School and is the author of Remissioning Church and Sacred Hope. He serves on the boards of numerous nonprofits. He and his family live near Richmond, Virginia.

RELATED LINKS:

TIMESTAMPED SHOWNOTES:

00:39 - Introducing Pastor Josh Hayden

04:49 - How and why congregations might be dying

05:21 - ...churches in survival mode

05:38 - ...counting, not reflecting Jesus

05:59 - ...want people to lead, but rarely invite or train up leaders

06:33 - ...afraid of conflict, stuck in tradition

07:02 - How Josh's journey influenced the writing of the book

08:39 - Established Church vs Church Plant

10:10 - Exploring the book title: Remissioning Church

10:59 - ...Remissioning vs Revitalizing

14:01 - ...Remissioning was not a word that people were using regularly

15:44 - ...Is it RE-missioning or re-MISSION-ing?

18:29 - How does church leadership assess if the church should be remissioned?

18:45 - ...awareness of where the church is in the life cycle

19:02 - ...spiritual health of the church

19:10 - ...counting vs measuring

19:19 - ...honest evaluation

21:12 - How does the church leadership manage feelings in assessing a church?

23:40 - ...helping people navigate loss and change

24:52 - ...embrace conflict

26:02 - What does a healthy church look like?

26:04 - ...clear sense of how to make disciples who are good for the community

26:47 - ...common life with the community

26:53 - ...see change as God inviting us into a life-death-resurrection journey

27:20 - ...disciple people inside the church so not to export the mission of God to others

29:51 - What is the goal of remissioning a church?

32:08 - What needs to happen for inside-out tranforamtion to take place?

32:36 - ...people disclipling someone

33:35 - ...learn to live on mission with God

34:07 - ...live with more purpose and intention

34:42 - How and why is discipleship the mission of the chuch?

35:14 - ...a lot of pastors haven't been discipled

35:42 - ...not clear on what a mature disciple looks like

36:51 - ...church-hopping is the result of not having a clear discipleship process

40:02 - If your church disappeared, would the community notice?

DID YOU APPRECIATE THIS PODCAST?

Checkout previous episodes, leave a review, drop us a note or support the mission here: oururbanvoices.com

Links

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube