When the Community Church of Little Neck was founded in 1927, Little Neck was a small suburban town. As the community grew over the years, so did the church for several decades. A steady decline in church attendance began in the 1970s, resulting in just a handful of members remaining and no pastoral staff by 2020. With a changing community and an aging population wondering what to do with their large facility, the congregation started to ask what it would take to revive the church.

About fifteen years ago, I was invited to a meeting at a Panera Bread with a church-planting director from NYC and his team, who wanted my help to start a church on Long Island. That conversation opened my eyes to the darker side of church planting. Sometimes church plants fail for understandable reasons, and God can still teach through that. But for years, I have also watched people fail miserably because of scammers with no experience in church planting, leading young pastors down a dead end. I know several pastors who were so hurt in the process that they no longer attend church at all.

Over the years, I've had the privilege of pastoring in a wide range of settings, small and large churches, church plants and established congregations, communities in need of revitalization and those thriving, multi-site and church-planting churches, monoethnic and multi-ethnic, and even multi-lingual, and younger, older, and multi-generational congregations. Those experiences have taught me that every stage of church life demands a different mindset and skill set. What works in one season can actually hold you back in the next. Understanding these stages is essential for leaders who want to shepherd their churches toward health and multiplication.