Church Growth
Some principles about church size and church growth need an entire blog post to describe. Some require a book.
Others can be said within the current 140-keystroke limit of Twitter. Like the following 15 truths.
Because they come from my perspective, on the small side ...
We want numbers to verify our successes.
There are two huge problems with that sentence – and they’re found in the words numbers and our.
First, not all successes have numbers to verify them.
Second, the successes of the church are not our successes.
We ...
When something matters to us, we measure it.
That is one of the unquestioned premises of the church growth movement.
Unquestioned premises should always be questioned.
When we do so, we discover that church metrics don’t measure the things that matter. Because ...
Are you a small church pastor? Me too.
Have you ever felt like that’s not enough? Me too.
Today I have good news for both of us.
Your church is big enough.
Right now. Today. At its current size.
Your church is big enough to do what Jesus is calling you to ...
Church growth is not a steady line.
Not only does it have ups and downs, it also has gaps. Some bigger than others.
In my church, for example, the growth from 35 to 200 has been an up-and-down, step-by-step, decades-long growth curve. But the next level of growth beyond ...
Do all healthy things grow? Yes.
Do all healthy churches become big churches? No.
But many of us have been ministering under that false assumption. We've been told there’s one set of ingredients. Use them to become a healthy church and it will inevitably become ...
“Most churches will never be mega, because you can't build megachurches on regular givers alone. You need some huge donors. And there’s not one pastor in a million who can successfully do The Big Ask. Who can put their arm around the shoulder of a wealthy donor ...
There are broken churches in the world. Broken churches with failing pastors.
Most of those churches are small. Thankfully. But that’s just because 90 percent of all churches in the world are small.
So yes, there are good reasons for failing pastors to leave failing churches. ...
“If a church stays small, they must be doing something wrong. It can’t possibly be healthy.”
This has been an underlying assumption of many in the church growth movement. (Although it’s usually more subtly stated than that.) But, as with any assumption, ...
I don’t want my church to be small. It just is.
I want my church to grow numerically. But it’s not.
I follow all the how-to lists to get it to grow. But they don’t work.
I’m told to pray more. So I do.
Plan better. So I do.
Work harder. So now I’m burnt ...