Perhaps you have seen video clips in movies or on television shows of a steam locomotive taking off from a depot. You hear the water boiling and see the steam rolling, and at the right time the engineer pulls a lever, and you hear that steam being transformed into energy, energy to turn the wheels on the train. It is then that you see the wheels turn
slightly and ever so slowly. The engineer pulls again, the engine bellows, and the wheels turn again, slightly and slowly. Another pull, and the wheels turn a little more and slightly faster. The actions are repeated again and again. Each time the wheels move with slightly more speed than the last. All the wheels turn simultaneously, and each turn is faintly
greater than the one before, each turn building momentum from the previous turn.

This process continues until the train is moving and generating speed and seemingly pulling its own weight. Momentum has kicked in, and the train will continue to
move down the track, headed for its destination. The wheels are now turning with ease. The engineer’s job now becomes maintaining the correct pressure on the boiler and, as
needed, converting that steam into the energy needed to maintain the forward motion and speed of the train.

To reverse the decline in a church requires not one turn of the ignition but a series of good decisions, each one building upon previous decisions. Like the steam locomotive, it takes
time and energy exercised in the right direction. All of the train’s wheels are always pulling in the same direction. To get the train moving, each blast of energy is pushing the wheels in the same direction. Every blast is for forward motion.

As a church you must set the course (this is articulating the vision), and from that moment every decision made needs to be to move the church forward. You cannot go in different directions. The track is set, and every move will be either forward or backward. To make one not-so-good decision or the lack of a decision to move the church forward
only thwarts the momentum gained by previous actions and good decisions.

To gain momentum is to make each decision with God’s wisdom and with the express intention and purpose to move the church forward. Each good decision will improve the
church’s momentum, until the church appears to be moving on its own, as does the train. Every good, solid decision you make is fueling the locomotive of the church forward. It is
helping gain the momentum to propel your church to be the church God wants it to be.

Excerpted from Reaching the Summit: Avoiding and Reversing Decline in the Church, chapter 11.