The Chief Culprits Hindering Church Revival: Pastors Themselves
The Chief Culprits Hindering Church Revival: Pastors Themselves
— How the Modern Pastoral System Restrains the Church and Divides the Body of Christ
By Pastor Yongliu Jiang
Christianity in many parts of the world is experiencing a decline that can no longer be ignored. Churches are closing, attendance is falling, younger generations are leaving, and congregations are aging. These developments are no longer limited to a few regions or denominations. When people try to explain this phenomenon, they usually point to the rise of secularism, moral decline, the influence of atheism, or changing values among younger generations. These factors are certainly real, but if the Church attributes the problem only to the external environment, it risks avoiding a far more fundamental question:
Is the Church itself still living out Christ?
The environment of the early Church was certainly no more favorable than ours today. The apostles had no magnificent church buildings, no established seminary systems, no modern media, no professional worship teams, and no sophisticated administrative structures. On the contrary, they faced political pressure from the Roman Empire, persecution from religious authorities, and the dominance of pagan culture. Yet in that environment, the gospel spread rapidly, the Church continued to grow, and its influence transformed society.
Therefore, the problem cannot simply be explained by saying, “The world is getting worse.”
The real question is:
Why does the modern Church possess far more resources than the early Church, yet often display far less of the spiritual vitality, missional passion, and supernatural power that characterized the Church in the book of Acts?
The central argument of this article is that one of the greatest obstacles to genuine revival today is the institutionalized pastoral system itself. Because pastors largely control the pulpit, teaching, allocation of resources, and administrative direction of the Church, they must bear primary responsibility when that system departs from the New Testament pattern.
This is not an attack on the pastoral calling itself, nor is it a denial of the sacrifice and faithfulness of countless pastors who sincerely serve God and care for His people. The New Testament clearly affirms the importance of pastors, teachers, and church leaders.
What must be examined, however, is a pastoral model that has gradually transformed pastors from those who equip the saints into those who manage believers; transformed the Church from the Body of Christ into a religious institution; and transformed believers from saints called to minister into congregants who remain permanently dependent on the pulpit.
When this model becomes normal, it inevitably begins to hinder genuine revival.
1. The First Crisis of the Church: Christ Has Been Replaced at the Center by Denominations and Systems
The most basic New Testament definition of the Church is not an organization, but a body.
Paul writes:
“There is one body and one Spirit.”
He also says:
“Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.”
The Church becomes the Church not because people share the same building, organizational structure, or denominational name, but because all who have been born again have been brought into Christ and united by the same Spirit as one body.
Therefore, Christ alone can be the true center of the Church.
Yet one of the most serious problems in the modern Church is that many pastors, in practice, place denominational identity, theological systems, organizational traditions, and even personal ministries above the unity of the Body of Christ.
The church in Corinth once fell into division when believers began saying, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” and “I follow Cephas.” Paul responded with the piercing question:
“Is Christ divided?”
That question remains just as relevant today.
Few Christians openly say, “I belong to Paul,” but the same problem often appears in different language:
“I belong to this denomination.”
“I belong to this theological tradition.”
“I follow this particular pastor.”
“I belong to this ministry.”
Denominations and theology are not inherently evil. Doctrine can help the Church discern truth. Theology can help believers understand Scripture systematically. Organizational structures can help ministry function effectively.
The problem begins when these things cease to function as tools and instead become the basis of identity, separation, and exclusion.
Once that happens, pastors may become more concerned about whether a person accepts their church system, joins their congregation, and remains within their organization than about whether that person truly knows Christ and is growing into His likeness.
The result is that the Body of Christ becomes increasingly privatized and fragmented at the institutional level.
Churches compete instead of cooperating.
Pastors compete for members rather than laboring together to equip the saints.
Different traditions focus on proving the superiority of their own doctrinal systems rather than receiving one another around Christ.
This directly contradicts the direction given in Ephesians 4. Paul teaches that Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers:
“to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”
The goal is that believers should ultimately come to unity in the faith and mature into the full measure of Christ.
In other words, the purpose of pastoral ministry is not to build a community that belongs to the pastor.
It is to build the Body of Christ.
Whenever that order is reversed, the Church has already begun to depart from its true nature, regardless of how large or successful the organization may appear.
2. The Greatest Structural Problem in the Modern Pastoral System: “Equipping the Saints” Has Been Replaced by “Maintaining the Congregation”
Ephesians 4 provides a clear standard for evaluating pastoral ministry. The pastor’s responsibility is not to replace the saints in ministry, but to equip them so that they themselves can serve.
This means that a mature pastoral system should gradually reduce unhealthy dependence on the pastor while increasing the believer’s ability to live, minister, and stand in Christ.
Yet in many churches today, the opposite pattern has developed.
The pastor preaches; the believers listen.
The pastor prays; the believers receive prayer.
The pastor evangelizes; the believers invite people to come and listen.
The pastor handles spiritual problems; believers look to the pastor whenever difficulties arise.
Over time, the Church can become highly centralized around a religious consumer model: a small group of professional ministers provides spiritual services, while the majority of believers remain recipients.
This model may appear stable, but it directly limits the function of the Body of Christ.
According to 1 Corinthians 12, every believer is a member of the body, and every member is intended to function.
A healthy body cannot consist of one member doing all the work while the rest remain passive observers.
If someone has been a Christian for ten or twenty years but still cannot study Scripture independently, share the gospel, pray for the sick, stand against spiritual opposition, or deal with basic spiritual challenges without immediately seeking a pastor, then something is wrong with the equipping process.
Even more seriously, this system can produce a distorted definition of success.
The number of people attending a church and the size of a pastor’s congregation can gradually become the primary measures of ministry effectiveness.
As a result, churches become very skilled at gathering people, but not necessarily at sending people.
Yet the Great Commission of Jesus was not, “Bring all nations into your church building.”
It was:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”
The word go cannot be removed from the Great Commission.
A mature church should not simply accumulate a larger audience sitting permanently in church seats. It should continually produce disciples who can go out into the world.
These disciples should know Christ, understand their identity in Him, depend on the Holy Spirit, preach the gospel, serve others, pray for the sick, resist the powers of darkness, and reveal Christ through their daily lives.
Therefore, when evaluating whether a church is truly experiencing revival, we should not merely ask:
“How many people attend?”
We must also ask:
How many believers have actually been equipped to minister Christ independently and effectively?
3. When Knowledge Replaces Spiritual Reality, the Church Becomes Better at Explaining Christ but Worse at Revealing Him
Another troubling tendency in the modern Church is the confusion of theological education with spiritual life.
Theological education certainly has value. Sound interpretation, historical study, original-language tools, and systematic theology can all help believers understand Scripture more accurately.
The problem is not knowledge itself.
The problem begins when academic knowledge becomes the primary standard by which spiritual qualification is measured.
Acts 4 records that when the religious leaders saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were ordinary, unschooled men, they were astonished and recognized that:
“they had been with Jesus.”
This passage is not anti-education. It reveals a crucial order of priority.
The source of apostolic authority and effectiveness was not first of all academic training.
It was that they had been with Jesus.
Paul himself was highly educated, yet when describing his ministry he said:
“My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”
This raises a serious question for many modern pulpits.
We may develop increasingly sophisticated theological education and yet still produce generations of believers who do not know how to live out Christ.
We may carefully explain historical context and Greek vocabulary while failing to help a person bound by fear enter into freedom.
We may develop an elaborate doctrine of the Holy Spirit while rarely witnessing the actual power and working of the Holy Spirit.
Knowledge can explain life.
Knowledge cannot replace life.
If pastors only help believers accumulate information about Christ, without leading them to truly know Christ, experience Christ, and live out Christ, theology itself can eventually become a religious substitute for spiritual reality.
New Testament ministry should not force us to choose between knowledge and life.
Rather, knowledge must serve life, and theology must serve the believer’s actual knowledge of Christ.
The world does not ultimately need the Church to present the most sophisticated religious system.
The world needs to encounter the risen Christ.
4. The Greatest Deficiency of the Modern Pulpit: Much Is Said About Christianity, but Believers Are Not Brought into the Full Reality of Salvation
The modern Church does not lack sermons.
What is often lacking is a complete understanding of salvation.
Many churches teach that Jesus died for our sins, that we must repent, and that believers will go to heaven after death. These truths are certainly important parts of the gospel.
But if salvation is reduced merely to “forgiveness of sins and going to heaven someday,” then large portions of the New Testament revelation concerning being in Christ, being united with Christ, dying and rising with Christ, and the indwelling Holy Spirit are seriously diminished.
New Testament salvation is not merely forgiveness.
It is a transfer of life.
Paul says:
“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.”
He also says that God:
“made us alive together with Christ”
and:
“raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
Therefore, the gospel must do more than tell people what Christ accomplished two thousand years ago.
It must reveal:
What has happened to us because we have been united with Christ in what He accomplished?
Our old self was crucified with Christ.
We have been raised with Christ.
Christ has become our life.
The Holy Spirit dwells within us.
Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.
We have been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son.
If the Church continually emphasizes human sinfulness, weakness, and unworthiness without equally revealing the believer’s new identity in Christ, it will produce a deeply contradictory kind of Christianity.
Believers will confess that Christ is victorious while continuing to identify themselves as defeated.
They will believe Christ is powerful while assuming they themselves can do nothing.
They will confess that the Holy Spirit lives within them while remaining completely dependent on external religious assistance in daily life.
Such a faith structure cannot easily produce the kind of life described in the New Testament.
True pastoral ministry must bring believers out of the old understanding of “who I was” and into the revelation of:
Who am I now in Christ?
Because transformed conduct ultimately flows from transformed identity.
5. When the Church Loses the Power of the Holy Spirit, Religious Activity Gradually Replaces the Gospel Itself
Another issue the modern Church must seriously confront is the marginalization of the power of the Holy Spirit.
The early Church did not spread the gospel through words alone.
When Jesus sent out His disciples, He did not merely instruct them to explain truth. He also gave them authority.
Throughout the book of Acts, the advance of the gospel repeatedly accompanied healings, deliverances, signs, wonders, and manifestations of the power of the Holy Spirit.
Before His ascension Jesus said:
“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses.”
The relationship is clear:
Power and witness belong together.
Yet when confronting real human suffering, many modern churches increasingly reduce Christianity to emotional encouragement, moral guidance, or psychological support.
A person facing disease needs more than the instruction to “learn to accept it.”
A person oppressed by darkness needs more than a psychological explanation.
A person in despair needs more than positive thinking.
The unique claim of the Church is that we proclaim a Christ who has risen from the dead and is alive today.
Paul says:
“The kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.”
If the Church retains words but no longer expects the Holy Spirit to act in tangible ways, it can gradually become little more than an institution offering religious knowledge, social relationships, and emotional comfort.
It may still appear Christian, yet the supernatural reality of the gospel becomes increasingly absent.
This is one reason many believers can attend church for years, yet when they face serious illness, death, fear, or spiritual oppression, they still have little understanding of how to live from the life and authority they possess in Christ.
The problem is not that the Holy Spirit has lost His power.
The problem is that much of the Church has changed its expectations concerning the power of the Holy Spirit.
6. Once Pastors Privatize the Flock, the Church Inevitably Becomes a Personal Enterprise Rather Than the Body of Christ
Another deep danger within modern pastoral structures is the tendency for pastors to treat believers as spiritual assets belonging to their own ministry.
Jesus said to Peter:
“Feed my sheep.”
That sentence clearly defines the relationship between pastors and believers.
The sheep do not belong to the pastor.
They belong to Christ.
The Church does not belong to the pastor.
It belongs to Christ.
The pastor is not the owner.
He is a steward.
Yet in practice, the degree of concern shown toward a person can sometimes depend heavily on whether that person belongs to a particular church.
If a person becomes a stable member, giver, or worker in the church, he may receive considerable attention.
But if he chooses to attend another church or participate in another ministry, attitudes may change immediately.
This reveals a serious distortion.
Pastoral care has shifted from loving Christ’s sheep to protecting one’s own constituency.
Once this happens, denominationalism, ministry competition, and the pursuit of personal influence follow naturally.
Pastors may begin to fear mature believers leaving, coworkers becoming independent, or other leaders gaining influence, because such developments are interpreted as a loss of resources.
Yet according to Ephesians 4, a successful pastor should be continually equipping people and sending them out.
The glory of pastoral ministry is not that people remain permanently dependent on the pastor.
It is that those who have been shepherded eventually mature enough to serve Christ effectively.
A healthy pastor should therefore expect his personal indispensability in the believer’s spiritual life to decrease while the practical reality of Christ in that believer’s life increases.
This is precisely the spirit of John the Baptist:
“He must increase, but I must decrease.”
7. What the Church Needs Is Not a New Management Strategy, but the Restoration of New Testament Order
The crisis of the modern Church is therefore not primarily a management crisis or a marketing crisis.
It is a crisis of spiritual order.
If the only problem were declining attendance, then the Church could focus on attracting younger people, improving music, redesigning programs, strengthening online communication, and creating better environments.
Such approaches may temporarily increase attendance.
They cannot restore life if the Church itself has departed from its New Testament foundation.
True revival requires a return to several fundamental principles.
First, Christ must once again become the sole center of the Church.
Denominations, theology, tradition, and organization must all serve Christ rather than replace Him.
Second, pastors must recover their calling to equip the saints.
Pastors are not called to perform ministry in place of believers, but to train believers to minister. They are not called to create dependence, but to cultivate maturity.
Third, the full scope of salvation must be restored.
The Church must proclaim not only forgiveness of sins, but also union with Christ, death and resurrection with Him, the reality of the new creation, the indwelling Spirit, and the believer’s identity and authority in Christ.
Fourth, the power of the Holy Spirit must return to the practical life of the Church.
The gospel is not only correct information.
It is the power of God.
The Church must once again believe and practice the mission Jesus entrusted to His disciples: proclaim the gospel, heal the sick, release the oppressed, and allow people to encounter the power of the risen Christ.
Fifth, the Church must move from a gathering model back to a sending model.
A true church does not merely keep everyone permanently inside the building.
It continually sends mature disciples into the world.
Conclusion: The Greatest Obstacle to Revival Is Not That the World Is Too Dark, but That the Church Has Failed to Shine
It is far too simplistic to blame the decline of the modern Church entirely on secular society.
The Roman Empire was no more godly than our world today, and the early Church did not enjoy more favorable external conditions.
Yet the gospel spread from Jerusalem throughout the Roman world.
Therefore, the most important question is not:
“Why does the modern world increasingly reject Christianity?”
The more important question is:
“What kind of Christ is the modern Church actually presenting to the world?”
If what people see in the Church is denominational conflict, organizational competition, pastoral control, moral rules, intellectual systems, and religious activities, then it is not surprising that younger generations may walk away from such a religious structure.
But if people truly encounter the risen Christ—if they see lives transformed, the sick healed, the oppressed set free, ordinary believers strengthened by the Holy Spirit, Christians from different backgrounds loving one another, and every saint learning to live out Christ—then the Church will recover the kind of witness that characterized the early believers.
Therefore, the modern Church does not primarily need another innovative church model.
Pastors must first return to their proper place within the Body of Christ.
A pastor is not the owner of the Church, but a servant of Christ.
He is not the owner of the sheep, but a steward entrusted with their care.
His calling is not to build personal influence, but to equip the saints.
His task is not to keep people permanently dependent on the pulpit, but to help them know the Christ who dwells within them.
When pastors once again exalt Christ, when the saints once again fulfill their ministry, when the power of the Holy Spirit is once again manifested, and when the Church once again functions as a living Body of Christ, revival will no longer need to be manufactured by human effort.
Because true revival is not the prosperity of a religious system.
True revival is the risen Christ being revealed to the world once again through His Body.