Church Growth
On any given Sunday, even the smallest, simplest church service juggles an amazing array of complex issues.
- Set-up to tear-down
- Relationships to administration
- Spiritual to emotional
- Planned events to unplanned interruptions
- and more.
But too often we reduce the value of this beautiful, ...
All healthy things grow.”
There may be no phrase that has caused me more ministry angst than that one.
For years, I pastored a healthy church.
For many of those years, it was a numerically growing church.
Then it wasn’t.
But, as far as I could tell, it was still healthy.
Church growth is great.
But I’m done with pushing for it.
Done with making it the reason I wake up in the morning.
Done with obsessing over numerical increase or decrease.
Done with thinking that our church has to be bigger to be better.
Church Growth Is Not Enough
Years ago ...
If you want your church to break through the 200 barrier there’s a lot of help.
From the classic book, How To Break Growth Barriers, to newly-developed programs by great leaders like Carey Nieuwhof, Ed Stetzer and The Unstuck Group, there’s no shortage of top-notch ...
Why do we equate size with health and effectiveness in the church?
One reason is our tendency toward confirmation bias.
When we want to know what church health is, we look at what’s happening in the biggest and fastest-growing churches.
On the other hand, when we look at ...
Who is responsible for the health and growth of a local church?
Is it all up to the pastoral leadership? As one former megachurch pastor used to say, “if it’s going to be, it’s up to me.”
Or is it all up to Jesus who said “I will build my church”? ...
Almost every pastor wants their church to be bigger.
By at least 50 to 100 percent.
Got 50 people? 100 would be great.
100? Let’s shoot for 200.
There’s a lot about that drive that’s healthy. But there’s another side that’s unsettling, uncertain and ...
Everyone wants the sure thing.
If we just learn the right principles, follow the latest How To Grow Your Church list, or (my favorite) “do it like the early church”, then Boom! Our church is guaranteed numerical success.
I wish.
Here’s the reality behind church ...
Last week, Aaron Earls wrote a very helpful article entitled The Church Growth Gap: The Big Get Bigger While the Small Get Smaller. In it, he outlined the results of a recent survey taken by LifeWay Research.
There’s a lot of data in the survey and the article, much of ...
Recently, I've had several conversations with friends who teach church growth principles. Several of them have asked me some version of the question in the title of this article.
“Why is there so much more pushback against church growth principles lately?”
I’m ...
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