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Keywords

Organizational Culture, Church Revitalization, Strategic Leadership

Abstract

Church revitalization is a field that addresses refreshing the church’s mission and vision by leaders who assess internal and external factors affecting the congregation’s current state. However, researchers in organizational culture argue that refreshed strategies will be ineffective without also addressing underlying cultural issues. This essay addresses the need for and the process of transforming church culture during the revitalization process. Pastors and leaders bring about cultural change by disrupting the status quo. This disruptive leadership is achieved through two approaches. First, leaders proactively and incrementally disrupt the status quo to influence cultural change through faithful pastoral practices. Secondly, leaders plan a strategy for cultural change to respond to and react during seasons of divine interruptions. Divine interruptions are unique, God-ordained windows of opportunity for transformation. This essay evaluates research from strategic leadership, church revitalization, change theory, and cultural anthropology, and then argues that culture is a necessary part of church revitalization. Several illustrations are provided of disruptive leadership, divine interruptions, and church cultural transformation for revitalization purposes, along with relevant biblical exposition and anecdotal accounts from leadership interviews with pastors and church leaders. The synthesis of these lines of research leads to practical principles for leading change and cultural transformation in churches.

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