By Cid Latty, Regional Associate (CBOQ)
Have you ever stood in church and felt as though the air had somehow been let out of the balloon? As you look around, just for a moment, have you sensed that something is missing? Many people love their churches deeply yet quietly acknowledge that church life often feels stuck or static.
If self-effort, faithfulness, and service alone could produce spiritual vitality, every congregation would be thriving. But the truth is that working harder has mostly resulted in busy, burnt‑out people who feel stuck. We get trapped in patterns and practices that keep us in monotony, as we sit inside predictable churches. The same songs, the same announcements, the same routines, the same people in the same pews. I love the church. But as Craig Springer has observed, “the way we are functioning is not working anymore.” (How to Revive Evangelism, Barna 2021)
When the prophet Hosea saw God’s people stuck in barrenness, he declared, “Break up your fallow ground; it’s time to seek the Lord until he comes and rains righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12). This wasn’t a pep talk; it was a call to adopt new spiritual practices through which God could transform the landscape. The antidotes for a stuck church are no less than this. Before we explore them, let me offer two important provisos:
- What I write here is not finger‑pointing. Every church can become stuck, even ones we lead ourselves.
- God can continue to great things – because we feel stuck does not mean that God is not still at work, or does not have new things in store for us.
With that in mind, here are three essential antidotes for a stuck or static church.
1. Antidote: See Faith as Risk
Because we rightly hold to unshakeable certainties, Jesus saves, God is love, God is faithful, we sometimes assume that church life itself should contain only certainties, no risks. So, we plan, structure, schedule, and strategize until everything becomes predictable. Yet biblical faith never unfolds within the realm of certainty.
Think of the disciples in the storm, while Jesus slept in the boat. (Luke 8: 22-25) Faith was encouraged to grow in the context of uncertainty and fear. Or picture the moment Jesus told them to seat thousands of people in groups of fifty. (Mark 6:39) As the disciples threaded their way through the crowd, they must have been filled with bewilderment and breathless anticipation: What is Jesus going to do?
But they followed him anyway despite the risk.
That is faith.
Faith flourishes outside our comfort zones. It thrives where we let go of control. It invites us into a deeper dependency on God, creating space for fresh encounters with him. Risky faith frees us to experiment, trying new expressions of ministry while feeling vulnerable, yet trusting Jesus with the outcome.
A stuck church often needs exactly this: a restored sense of spiritual exhilaration achieved by risky faith. Doing the same things will never produce different results. When faith is spelled risk, the stuck church will venture out of stagnation because they are free to take a risk by faith.
What risk of faith is before you now?
2. Antidote: Practice Transformation
We all know that right thinking doesn’t automatically lead to right actions. Picture someone who cannot sleep, heads to the kitchen, and eats the whole tub of ice cream for comfort—despite knowing it is not good for them. Knowledge alone does not transform behaviour.
Many churches believe that if people simply learn the right things, they will naturally do the right acts. But discipleship doesn’t work that way. James K. A. Smith (You are what you love Brazos Press 2016) describes this as the flaw of “intellectualist” discipleship, the assumption that we can “think our way to holiness,” as if information transfer alone could produce transformation.
This gap between what we know and what we do is called cognitive dissonance:
- We know the speed limit but drive faster.
- We know we should return a borrowed book, yet it sits on our shelf.
Real transformation happens through practices, habits, and communal reinforcement. We cooperate with the Holy Spirit through embodied actions, and our thinking slowly shifts as new habits reshape our desires. What we want shapes the way we think. So, I practice my way into transformation by ‘offering my body’ (Romans 12:1), my desires and wants to God as an act of worship, taking on new habits that change my thinking.
Stuck churches (and people) seeking this kind of transformation must recover the historic Christian practices that form the soul:
- Daily Scripture reading
- Prayer
- Fasting
- Silence and solitude
- Worship
- Sacrificial giving
- Serving others
These habits don’t just inform us, they transform us. They get us unstuck.
3. Antidote: Learn and Unlearn
Romans 12:1-2 gives us a compelling vision of discernment. Paul writes, “In view of God’s mercy… be transformed by the renewing of your mind…. Then you will be able to discern…” The word “discern” here carries the idea of testing through practice, approving something by learning and unlearning. (Faithful Risk, Micheal Adam Beck)
Every stuck church needs this kind of discernment. We are not called here to rely on what we already know. Instead, we are invited to test, try, practice, stretch, and discover, to learn new ways while unlearning old ones.
To learn something new, we often must unlearn something old.
To adopt new disciplines, we must make room by setting aside frozen patterns.
To move forward, we must release practices that once served us but have now become obstacles.
Every church stuck in inertia should ask:
- What habits or assumptions are preventing us from moving forward?
- What practices have become so ingrained that they now stifle life and creativity?
- What must we release so that new life can emerge?
Unlearning is not loss; it is the way we often get unstuck.
Taking the Antidotes
Most people, when given a prescription or plan of action by a doctor, choose not to follow the recommendations. We resist change until the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the discomfort of changing. The same is often true for churches. But every church can change and become unstuck, by applying antidotes before any further sorrow forces the issue.
All three antidotes for a stuck church, risking in faith, practicing transformation, and learning and unlearning, invite us to break up our fallow ground and seek the Lord afresh. When we take these steps, God has a way of raining righteousness upon us, renewing the soil of our life together, and awakening new life in his people and his Church.
May this be our experience today.
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One Comment
by Elizabeth Mead
Excellent article and suggestions!