It sounds good. In recent years, there has been a ton of talk about "the missional church." There has been another ton about how churches need to base themselves in scripture, which often is taken to mean reading it "the right way," whichever way that might be.
The past fifteen years, however, have only served to prove that church renewal is not something that can be neatly packaged in this way. Where it happens, personalities are involved, circumstances shape events, and an uncontrollable element of serendipity that we associate with the Holy Spirit is usually at work. There are no magic bullets apart from commitment, wisdom, and openness to the Spirit by the faithful. In one church, the renovation of a narthex surprisingly takes it down the path of renewal. In another church, a concerted effort to generate a revival leads only to division, discouragement, and accelerated decline. In still another church, the unlooked for emergence of a small-group movement reorients the future of the congregation. In a fourth small, rural church, an elder prays week after month after year for his church to grow without answer—until, one day, a family begins to attend who prove to be a catalyst for renewal. Sometimes conflict leads to renewal because it breaks a logjam of dysfunctional relationships; sometimes (more often, actually) conflict leads churches in the opposite direction. You just can never tell, not for sure.
What seems to be constant in the stories of renewal is that courage, vision, prayer, and humility are usually involved. Renewal means change, which means courage. Somewhere in the church there has to be a vision, a hunger even for renewal. Humility is crucial, meaning a compassionate, self-aware, disinclination to force or push, demand or judge. Prayer is key as well. These things can be channels for the Spirit.
