“For me, the biggest thing in terms of church revitalization that I think is important is to remember you are not the belle of the ball.’

“Mark Dever, I think, said one time, ‘We call it church revitalization now. Fifty years ago, it was called pastoring.’”

“When a church has been the premier church, and has done well for a long time,… even Christian people seem to kind of enjoy it when things aren’t going well.”

“So, we volleyed a couple of times on whether our church was open or not. I said, ‘Hey man, I’m telling you, I’ll show you a pay stub… I promise I’m the pastor there.’”

“We want to make sure it’s really clear we are this way on purpose. We don’t want anyone to ever come to our church and think, ‘Bless their hearts.’”

“I would just say, you can’t. And, the harder you try to do it in six months, the more likely you’ll be trying to figure out how to fix another church in six months.”

“I do think that biblical, faithful preaching is the Archimedean point from which a church turns.”

“If I address it in the pulpit from the Word, people are one million times more receptive than if I share it on Facebook, or Twitter, or something like that.”

“We are not called to be Old Testament prophets. We are called to be shepherds and pastors. We are heralds of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

“When we’d gone through a tough season here, I just remember thinking, ‘If I can’t be me, I can’t do this very long.’”

“It’s not a sacrifice for me to stay here. It’s great. I love it. They treat me really well, and love me, and they listen to the Word every Sunday, and they love my family… I’m here because I love it!”

“Our lives are bigger than our ministries. Our lives and our relationship with Christ is worth more than our pastorates.”