# Reclaiming Glory ![rw-book-cover](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51ERQoRiqVL._SL200_.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Mark Clifton]] - Full Title: Reclaiming Glory - Category: #books ## Highlights - Study after study indicates that 70 to 80 percent of evangelical churches in North America are either plateaued or declining. ([Location 147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B077JLR2F2&location=147)) - Southern Baptists alone lose more than nine hundred churches every year. Ninety percent of those churches are in our cities. Seven out of ten churches are either plateaued or declining. They haven’t seen a “winning season” in more years than they can count. ([Location 201](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B077JLR2F2&location=201)) - Losing seasons—whether in baseball or in ministry—tend to devour leaders. ([Location 209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B077JLR2F2&location=209)) - According to LifeWay Research statistics, only about 15 percent of SBC churches are healthy, growing, and multiplying churches. The vast majority of our churches in North America are struggling. ([Location 222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B077JLR2F2&location=222)) - Success—bearing fruit in the life of a church—means having a pattern of making disciples who make disciples that results in the community being noticeably better. ([Location 234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B077JLR2F2&location=234)) - Discipleship is sharing life and seeking to reproduce ourselves in others. ([Location 237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B077JLR2F2&location=237)) - Every week the declining churches in their midst simply reinforced the tired narrative that most people believed: Church is an irrelevant place where people whose lives are nothing like mine do things that have no connection to how I live my life. ([Location 267](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B077JLR2F2&location=267)) - In this passage, the Lord makes it clear. As many have said, the pathway to new life for a dying church is repentance and remembering. Scripture isn’t talking about the nostalgic kind of remembering that builds your pride through control and a desire to return to a better time. Instead the pathway to new life comes when we remember the legacy of missions and ministry that birthed the new church in the first place and become broken to return to that place once again. This kind of remembering can only happen on the other side of repentance. ([Location 306](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B077JLR2F2&location=306)) - When a church dies, we must ask ourselves, “What about a dying church reflects the glory of God or the power of the cross to a hurting and confused world?” When those churches were first planted in the neighborhoods where they now reside, they staked a claim for the glory of God in those physical places in a very real way. When they die, they are also making a profound statement about God to that community. ([Location 321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B077JLR2F2&location=321)) - In Matthew 5:16 Jesus gives us a primary motivation for replanting dying churches, “In the same way, let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” We replant churches because we want people to see what God is doing in our lives. We want people to see how lives transformed by and covenanting together for the gospel can have positive impact on a community. We want people to see in our lives the glory of the gospel. We replant churches to reclaim God’s glory in a tangible way in our communities. ([Location 338](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B077JLR2F2&location=338)) - As I have already said, it’s often easier to close a dying church and go across the street to plant a new one than it is to replant. At a new church plant you don’t have to worry about the baggage from previous leaders. You don’t have to navigate through an often complicated change process. You don’t have to spend time with longtime members whose hearts have grown cold to the gospel. But when you replant a dying church, you have to do all of those hard things and many more. Yet once accomplished, it becomes a platform to display God’s glory. You give people a living picture of what the gospel looks like—what was once dead is now alive. ([Location 343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B077JLR2F2&location=343))