Church Growth
If a church wants to break growth barriers, here are some of the principles pastors need to follow:
- Equip church members to do ministry, not just have ministry done for them
- Train the people you have to reach out to the people you don’t have
- Be friendly and welcoming to your guests
When it comes to pastoral ministry, I've discovered an interesting (and sometimes frustrating) paradox.
The more I care for people, the less concern I have for increasing the size of the crowd – while the more I work to increase the size of the crowd, the less caring ...
More isn’t always better.
No one wants more heartache, more tragedy, or more loneliness. Unless you’re trying to write a hit country song.
In fact, it’s not just bad things we don’t want more of. No one wants more of an average meal, a typical day, or a ...
There’s nothing anyone can do to guarantee that any particular congregation will grow numerically.
No, I’m not being pessimistic, I’m being realistic.
There are simply no absolutes in church growth. At least not for the numerical increase of an individual congregation. ...
You know those commercials where clients or patients had amazing results, only to hear a hurried voice at the end telling you “individual results may vary”?
It might be helpful if church growth books, blogs, podcasts and conferences had that, too.
The reason those ...
Because I minister to small churches, I’m often asked, “aren’t you worried, that by supporting small churches you’ll be encouraging churches that could grow, to stay small instead?”
Yes. That is a concern. One that I’ve addressed in Small Church ...
Getting more people to go to church has never been the point of church growth.
Jesus didn’t tell us to “work really hard to gather people into large crowds to fill up your church buildings. Then I’ll know that you love me.” But when you look at how most ...
The title of today’s post is based on a question that I read in a Facebook group for pastors.
While I seldom take such discussions into a public forum like this, I think this question is important enough to answer here. So here’s the longer version of what was asked: ...
By far, the most common question I’m asked about small church ministry is “if your church is healthy, why is it so small?”
It’s a valid question, for sure. And one that I’ve answered in several previous blog posts, including these:
In recent years there’s been a lot of talk about the impending demise of the megachurch.
But is the era of the megachurch really drawing to a close?
I have four answers to that question:
- Yes
- No
- I hope so
- I hope not
Let’s look at these four contradictory responses one at ...
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