Change Your Church or Die

Now with small group study guide!

Change Your Church or Die: Why the Church Must Change—and How It Can Change

Your church is perfectly tuned to get the results you are getting right now.

If you keep doing what you have always done, you will probably keep getting what you have always gotten. For many churches, that means declining attendance, an aging congregation, fewer young families, and increasing difficulty reaching the next generation.

But changing a church can be dangerous. Pastors know that even seemingly small changes—to worship, Sunday School, small groups, facilities, programs, or schedules—can create surprising resistance and painful church conflict.

So how do you lead change without dividing the church?

In Change Your Church or Die, pastor and church growth leader Josh Hunt offers a practical, biblical approach to church revitalization and leading change. This isn't a book about copying the latest megachurch model. It is about helping your church develop a culture of continual growth, learning, experimentation, and improvement.

The big idea is surprisingly simple: lasting church change usually doesn't happen through one enormous change. It happens through a thousand little changes.

Rather than betting everything on the next big program, vision statement, worship overhaul, or church growth strategy, learn to experiment. Try something small. Listen to your people. Learn what works. Adjust what doesn't. Build trust. Celebrate small wins. Then take another step.

Change Your Church or Die explores practical issues pastors and church leaders face every week, including church growth, church revitalization, resistance to change, worship and music styles, Sunday School and small groups, leadership, vision, innovation, denominational structures, and building congregational trust. The book also includes discussion questions designed to help leadership teams work through these ideas together.

You will learn why successful change begins with helping people understand the problem, why involving church members in developing solutions creates ownership, why small wins build credibility for larger changes, and why a leader needs to make deposits in the church's "change bank account" before attempting difficult changes.

The goal isn't change for change's sake. Some things must never change. God doesn't change. His Word doesn't change. The gospel doesn't change. But our methods can—and often must.

If you are a pastor, church leader, elder, deacon, ministry leader, church revitalizer, or Christian who cares about the future of your congregation, this book will help you think differently about change.

You don't have to change everything tomorrow.

You just need the courage to take the next wise step.

Because a church that learns how to change can learn how to thrive.