"Leaders in breakout churches stop wishing and start asking, 'Lord, what would You have me do?' They individually become part of what God would have them to do. When God starts changing individuals, He starts changing the church."

Although Rainer and his research team found only 13(!) established churches that transitioned from run of the mill or good to great, he is optimistic that any church can make the jump, but not, he cautions, without great sacrifice or evangelistic fervor.

Said Rainer: "We did not do a screening of theology on the front end of our survey, but when we came out on the back end, it was with conservative evangelical leaders. None of the other types of leadership were even close. Quite frankly, it hard to do evangelism unless one holds to the exclusivity of salvation through Christ."

Rainer further asserts that the appeal of evangelistic, Biblical preaching transcends church=attending Christian believers. "The unchurched are only attracted to a church that believes in the truths of God's Word. When you interview the unchurched, they say that they will only go to a conservative church. Essentially, they are saying, 'We get enough of relativism out in the culture. We're looking for a place that really believes something.'"

The driving force of evangelistic zeal has to begin with leadership - either clergy or lay - that is awake, convicted, and passionate.

"We heard consistent testimony of wake-up calls as leaders progressed to becoming legacy leaders," said Rainer. "Sometimes the wake-up call would be an external, dramatic moment of deep conviction of the Holy Spirit; or an internal contribution of the Holy Spirit. In each case, a sudden rather than a slow progressive movement caused these leaders to change.