Comeback Churches:

How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can Too

Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson (Broadman and Holman, 224 pp., hardcover).

According to Leadership journal, “85 percent of churches in the United States have plateaued or declining attendance.” That is approximately 340,000 churches.

I am not worried for two reasons. First, I know that God wants churches to grow. Second, God has provided plenty of tools to help churches grow.

One of those tools is Comeback Churches by Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson. This book identifies five crucial issues in revitalizing your church: leadership, vibrant faith, lay ministry, intentional evangelism, and celebrative but orderly worship.

Church revitalization requires strong, change-oriented leadership from pulpit and pew. To make a comeback, your church needs the right people in the right jobs doing the right things.

Leadership is not everything. Members of comeback churches must also have faith characterized by a personal commitment to Jesus and the church’s mission, a servant’s attitude, and strategic prayer.

In revitalized churches pastors have limited roles and invite laity to exercise their God-given ministries. The entire church is involved in intentional evangelism, gradually incorporating unbelievers into the community, and then into the faith.

Finally, comeback churches have celebrative but orderly worship services. More often than not, their musical style is contemporary, and they do everything with excellence.

Read Comeback Churches and you will discover that your church’s best days are still ahead you.

—Reviewed by George P. Wood, pastor, Living Faith Center, Santa Barbara, California.

To order a copy of this book from GPH, click here.