Church Growth
Imagine all the time, money and resources that have gone into church growth in the last generation.
Is it naïve to wonder what the world and the church would look like today if all that effort had been invested exclusively in church health instead?
Is it possible that if ...
There's more than one way for churches to grow.
But over the last forty years or so we've been given one model of church growth almost exclusively. Get more people in the building.
That model is so prevalent that when I dare to suggest that many small churches are healthy ...
Big churches serve many great roles in the body of Christ. And the church growth movement that spawned many of them has been a great blessing to me and so many others in ministry.
But numerical growth, while great, does not come without challenges.
In my last post, 5 Mistakes ...
Oh my. That question.
“How can you say your church is healthy if it’s not growing?”
If I’ve been asked it once…
But I still don’t know how to answer it.
I wish I did. Because it’s a perfectly valid question.
But life doesn’t tie itself ...
I love my church. I want it to be strong, healthy and growing.
That’s why I read church ministry blogs and books, go to conferences and seminars, listen to podcasts… whatever I can get my hands on. I’m always looking for the best advice I can find.
But I’m ...
We don’t measure the things that matter.
We measure the things we manage.
One of the unquestioned premises of the church growth movement is that when something matters to us, we measure it. So we count things like church attendance in an attempt to measure a church’s ...
We’ve invested a lot into the art and science of church growth in the last 50 years.
It makes me wonder. After such a massive output of time, energy, research and money, have we become like the proverbial man with a hammer who sees everything as a nail?
Is that why church ...
I’m a huge supporter and promoter of growing churches.
How can I not be? Jesus said he’d build his church, and I always want to be on Jesus’ side.
But I’ve stopped using the term Church Growth when I talk about it.
I never tell our church staff, volunteers ...
I hate either/or choices. I like both/and.
But life doesn’t always give us that.
Take church growth and health, for instance.
Usually, a choice for church health is also a choice for church growth. But not always. Sometimes it's one or the other. Especially in a smaller ...
I read another one of those church growth blog posts recently. You know the ones. A list of steps your church can take to break through whatever growth barrier you’re facing.
It was a very good list. Every one of the principles was about church health. In fact, as I read ...