Regeneration Equips Churches to Thrive

Story by Natalie Lilly

Stewart Lozensky, director of the Church Regeneration Department, is currently in the process of helping 20 churches reach their full potential. Regeneration is an initiative by the Pennsylvania Conference in which there is partnership with churches to provide extra resources, training and mentoring to advance the local churches’ growth objectives.

Lozensky derives a lot of inspiration for his regeneration process from author S. Joseph Kidder’s book, The Big Four. In it, Kidder shares the concept of “faith-based optimism” and applies it to thriving Seventh-day Adventist churches that are rapidly growing the kingdom of heaven.

“In my experience working toward the regeneration of a church and in the Christian walk in general, I have found Kidder’s book to be vital,” says Lozensky. “Can we see our churches’ potential? I believe that we can capture the vision and mission for our churches again.”

One of Lozensky’s most effective methods of training pastors for growth is by sharing practicum content binders with them. The practicum binders contain evangelism materials with helpful guidelines on how to form an evangelism committee, create a one-year evangelism strategy, build an evangelism calendar and more. Several pastors have reached out to Lozensky to thank him for making measurable growth happen in their churches.

“Thank you for presenting the regeneration practicum in our district. The content was clear and compelling. The content binders you provided were particularly helpful because we were able to follow along with something in our own hands, take notes and even refer to the information later,” shared one conference pastor. “In one of my churches, I was having a difficult time forming an evangelism committee, but after the practicum, because our members were so excited about what we were learning, we scheduled a practicum follow-up meeting immediately.”

To begin a church’s consultation process, contact Lozensky at slozensky@paconference.org, or visit paconference.org/church-regeneration.