Church Revitalization

1. A Church Founded in 1872

Bethel Baptist Church was established in 1872 as a church plant begun by students from William Jewell College. Across more than 150 years, the church experienced seasons of vitality and seasons of decline, serving generations of families in the Kansas City Northland from its longtime home at 3700 NE Barry Road.

2. A Congregation in Decline

In the years preceding 2021, attendance gradually declined to approximately twenty regular attenders, and closure became a genuine possibility. The building at NE Barry Road, once filled, now held a small remnant of a congregation uncertain about its future.

3. Harold Dinsmore and the Courage to Change

Harold Dinsmore began serving Bethel on December 4, 2005. Pastor Dinsmore played a critical role in what followed. Rather than protecting his own position, he honestly acknowledged the church’s condition and encouraged the congregation to consider a different path. That kind of candor is costly, and it made a future for Bethel imaginable.

“Harold was awesome,” Marty says simply. As changes came, Harold became the primary advocate — in Marty’s words, the “cheerleader” — for the revitalization, supporting Marty both publicly and privately. Marty believes Harold gave him credibility with the congregation and a foundation from which he could lead. It is one of the most important reasons the transition worked.

4. Why Revitalization?

Church revitalization was not originally part of Marty’s ministry vocabulary. After Marty and Jessica left their previous church, he began considering what ministry might look like next. Rather than immediately planting another church, he began exploring other possibilities and was introduced to church revitalization. “Before then, I had never heard of it.”

As Marty studied Scripture, a question began working on him. God obviously cared about reaching people who were lost. But God also cared deeply about people who already belonged to Him and were members of struggling churches. Marty began asking:

“Instead of seeing new churches planted, what if we started caring for old, dying ones? Were those people not deserving of pastoring as well?”

Conversations with Mark Clifton became particularly influential. While Marty was wrestling with these ideas, Clifton invited him to a church revitalization conference — the point, Marty says, where he became passionate about revitalization.

5. Two Conversations Pointed to the Same Church

Before Bethel entered the picture, a group of people was considering planting a church, and Marty had agreed to lead a four-week prayer meeting simply to see what God might do. But before the first meeting ever happened, Marty had already become convinced that he did not want to plant another church — he wanted to pursue revitalization. The problem was that he had not yet told the group, and they still needed somewhere to meet.

They had secured the offices of the Clay-Platte Baptist Association for only the first two weeks. At the very first prayer meeting, Gary Matthes, director of the Clay-Platte Baptist Association, approached Marty. Matthes had recently met with a dying church that he thought might allow the group to use its property for the remaining two weeks. Then, at the end of that same meeting, another man independently approached Marty. He had been looking at area churches and knew the pastor of one that might allow the group to use its building. The remarkable part was that both men were talking about the same congregation: Bethel Baptist Church.

Marty reached out. Bethel’s pastor, Harold Dinsmore, invited him not only to use the building but also to preach the following Sunday. After preaching, Marty scheduled a meeting with Harold to discuss the logistics — but he already wondered whether God had just provided exactly what he had been praying for. At that meeting, Harold spoke first: “Marty, I think you might be called to be the pastor at Bethel.”

Marty prayed. He talked with Jessica. He spoke with other pastors, including Matt Mars and Mark Clifton, and with the North American Mission Board. During the fourth week of the prayer gathering, Marty told the group that rather than planting a new church, he believed God had called him to help revitalize Bethel Baptist Church. The following week, Bethel called him as pastor.

6. September 26, 2021

7. A First Impression, and What Really Mattered

Marty remembers his first visit simply: “It smelled a little weird.” But the more important memory is that the people were friendly and grateful his family was there. Most strikingly, everyone loved seeing Marty’s children. The church had not had children regularly present in years, and the congregation was genuinely thankful to hear and see children in the building again.

Marty is careful about where credit belongs. It was less about what he saw in the approximately twenty people remaining at Bethel and more about what he saw in the team coming with him — a group of people committed to loving and caring for the existing congregation.

“It had far less to do with me and far more to do with the group that committed to helping me.”

8. What I Was Afraid Of

9. Patient Revitalization

Rather than rapidly changing everything, the congregation spent months studying biblical teaching regarding the church. Bethel subsequently revised its constitution and bylaws, established a plurality of elders, and strengthened its practices surrounding membership, congregational responsibility, and pastoral leadership. This was slow, deliberate work carried by the whole congregation rather than by any one man.

Start with Sunday. When Marty arrived, the Sunday service commonly included ten to twelve songs, sometimes including one or two solos, followed by roughly a fifteen-minute sermon. Marty immediately believed the priorities of the gathering needed to change, and he assumed responsibility for planning and directing it. “We could get a lot of things wrong, but the church’s gathering on Sunday had to be the emphasis.”

What we refused to rush. Marty deliberately avoided immediately removing people from ministries they had faithfully served in. As long as a ministry was not disrupting the central priorities of the Sunday gathering, people were generally allowed to continue serving — Women’s Missionary Union activities, supplies, offering responsibilities, bulletin distribution, and other longstanding roles. Marty also did not immediately rewrite the church’s constitution or restructure leadership; that process took approximately a year. Not every needed change has to happen immediately.

Why structure mattered. Clear constitutions, bylaws, membership expectations, elder plurality, congregational responsibility, and defined roles create order in the church. One reason churches become unhealthy is that they fail to clearly define what the church is and how it functions. “God’s church is to be one of order, not chaos.”

10. Expositional Preaching From Day One

Marty explained this approach on his first day as pastor and began preaching verse by verse through Philippians. Other teaching and training could occur through Sunday School or other environments, but Marty intentionally protected the Sunday gathering. “Sunday service was kept sacred” — intentionally set apart for corporate worship and exposition.

11. Joyful Gospel Advancement

Marty doesn’t remember one exact moment the phrase was coined. It simply reflected the theme of Philippians, and he began using it repeatedly throughout sermons. Over time, members began using the language themselves, and it became the mission language of the church.

Joyful Gospel Advancement

Writing from prison, Paul tells the Philippians that what has happened to him has actually served to advance the gospel. The congregation recognized in that verse a description of its own hope: that God can use difficulty, ordinary obedience, patient endurance, faithful preaching, prayer, and life together in the local church to advance the gospel.

12. Outgrowing NE Barry Road

By God’s grace, the revitalization brought steady, healthy growth. In time, the congregation grew beyond what its longtime sanctuary at 3700 NE Barry Road could reasonably accommodate. The room seated approximately 120 people, and the property offered limited realistic opportunity for the kind of expansion a growing congregation would require.

Bethel therefore made the difficult decision to leave its longtime church building. This was a significant act of faith. The congregation did not already have another permanent building waiting for it when it left.

13. More Than a Year in a School Gym

After leaving NE Barry Road, Bethel worshiped for a little over one year in the gymnasium at Oak Hill Day School. Sunday worship, expositional preaching, membership, discipleship, children’s ministry, missions, pastoral ministry, and the ordinary life of the church continued from borrowed space.

This was a transitional season marked by faithfulness and adaptability rather than hardship to be regretted. The congregation’s willingness to prioritize ministry over possessing a building reflected the same conviction that had carried it through decline: God builds His church, and buildings serve that mission rather than define it.

14. What God Did That Marty Could Not

Asked what God has done at Bethel that he could never take credit for, Marty answers, “Everything?” More specifically, he points to the people God has brought to Bethel. He says he could not have chosen a better group of people or a better leadership team: “We have the best leaders in the world who really love one another.”

15. The Hard Parts

Revitalization was not constant success. Marty describes moments when people who seemed aligned with the direction of the church became distracted by what he jokingly calls “side-quests” — situations that could be discouraging because leadership thought the church was moving together only to discover unexpected conflict. He also remembers one particularly difficult day he calls “Black Wednesday,” spending approximately six hours speaking with different people who were upset about what was happening at the church.

Marty’s larger perspective: the deepest difficulties of revitalization are often simply the ordinary difficulties of pastoral ministry. People struggle. People sin. Relationships suffer. Pastors care for people through it.

Things I would do differently. Marty believes some changes happened too quickly. One example was decorating; the changes themselves may have been reasonable, but older members were not brought into the process well enough. Revitalization taught Marty through failures as well as successes.

16. Stripping the Structure Down to Build It Back Up

At one stage in the revitalization, Bethel made a major governance decision: the church temporarily removed its existing pastor/deacon leadership structure and established an interim leadership team operating under the oversight of a group of pastors from outside the congregation. That temporary structure allowed the church to work through existing problems while rewriting its constitution and bylaws and clarifying its doctrinal commitments.

For approximately nine to ten months, the congregation was taught through the nature of the church, doctrine, membership, elders, deacons, governance, and the proposed constitution and bylaws in Sunday School. At the end of the process, the congregation formally adopted the documents and installed new leadership. Marty describes the original vote to remove the existing positions and governing structure as “pretty nerve-racking” — a specific decision Bethel made in its own particular circumstances, not a universal formula.

17. A Turning Point: Easter

Marty does not primarily measure Bethel’s renewal through numbers. But one moment stands out. Approximately three years into revitalization, Bethel held an Easter service whose attendance exceeded a normal Sunday. Marty explains the significance this way:

“There are two types of churches: the ones you go to on Easter and the ones you leave to be with your family on Easter.”

When Bethel became the kind of church members wanted to invite their families to attend on Easter, Marty viewed it as a major milestone.

18. An Extraordinary Provision

In 2026, the former Glen Haven Church property became available. Bethel Baptist Church was given the opportunity to purchase the property for a price far below its actual value — comparable to or below many modest homes in the Kansas City area. The congregation regards the circumstances surrounding this opportunity as an extraordinary provision, what the congregation regards as a remarkable act of God’s providence, and a purchase opportunity few within the congregation could have imagined.

19. 4301 NE Vivion Road

Bethel began worshiping at 4301 NE Vivion Road, Kansas City, Missouri 64119, in August 2026.

The property had previously been home to Glen Haven Church, a Presbyterian congregation that had likewise faced a season of decline and made the decision to sell its building to Bethel Baptist Church.

This became the church’s new permanent ministry home — a place to continue the same preaching, membership, discipleship, and mission that had carried the congregation through decline, transition, and a year in borrowed space.

20. The Story Is Still Being Written

Decline did not end the church. Leadership transition did not end the church. Leaving a historic property did not end the church. A year without a permanent building did not prevent ministry. And when a permanent facility eventually became available, Bethel understood it as provision rather than achievement.

None of this is a promise that faithfulness guarantees numerical growth or material provision. It is a testimony to God’s sovereignty and to the responsibility of Christians to remain faithful regardless of outcomes. Numerical growth is not the central definition of success here; a healthy church is measured by its faithfulness to Christ, His Word, and one another.

This remains an ongoing story rather than a completed success story. The revitalization continues, week by week, in preaching, membership, prayer, discipline, discipleship, and the ordinary faithfulness of a congregation that has been given more time, and more room, than it once expected.