Posts Tagged ‘Christianity’

8 Principles for Churches That Want to Grow

When it comes to numbers, churches tend to err in one of two ways: they either discount them as unimportant or they put too much emphasis on them.

The reality is that numbers are important, and though they aren’t the only sign of a healthy church, they are an important measure.

For Mars Hill, numbers are a key measure of our health. For us, it’s all about the numbers, if by “numbers” you mean the number of people getting their sins forgiven, getting their lives changed by Jesus, and going to heaven instead of hell. We’d like that number to go up. We’re all for that.

When numbers are viewed from this perspective, they are a good thing to desire to see grow. This is why I commend pastors who desire to see the church they pastor grow for the right reasons.

In my conversations with pastors around the world, many have questions on church growth. So, I thought I’d share eight principles I’ve learned about church growth.

1. Begin with the end in mind and know how large you want to be.

The following is a rough breakdown of reported (which may not be entirely accurate) church attendance. Admittedly, these numbers are a few years old, but, as a general rule, they do give you a rough idea of church-size barriers.

• Churches with 45 people or fewer = 100,000 churches or 25% of all churches
• Churches with 75 people or fewer = 200,000 churches or 50% of all churches
• Churches with 150 people or fewer = 300,000 churches or 75% of all churches
• Churches with 350 people or fewer = 380,000 churches or 95% of all churches
• Churches with 800 people or fewer = 392,000 churches or 98% of all churches
• Churches with 800 people or more = 8,000 churches or 2% of all churches
• Churches with 2,000 people or more = 870 churches or 0.22% of all churches
• Churches with 3,000 people or more = 425 churches or 0.11% of all churches

Lyle Schaller, considered one of the best church consultants in the world, states in his book, The Very Large Church, that the two most comfortable church sizes are under 45 people and under 150 people, likely making them two of the hardest thresholds to pass through, in addition to the 800 mark.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell states that 150 is also the maximum number of people someone can purposefully connect with, which explains why some people do not like bigger churches. It may also explain why John Wesley divided people into groups of about 150, the average hunter-gatherer village is about 150 people, most military units are under 200, and the Hutterites allow their communities to grow no larger than 150.

Understanding group dynamics like this is important in understanding that there are significant challenges that come with each phase of church size, and being aware of where you want your church to grow allows you to begin preparing for those growth phases more effectively.

2. The larger the church, the more different it is from other churches of the same theology and tradition.

As a church grows, while the theology remains the same, the organization complexity doesn’t, often requiring new methods of ministry.

Size affects the number of lines of communication, how an organization stacks or does not stack leadership, access to the senior leader and family, etc. Simply put, church size does matter for how a church is run, much like a married couple who some years later find themselves with a dozen children cannot simply organize their life as they did with their first child—everything must change.

For those wanting to learn more about the dynamics of church size, Tim Keller has a helpful paper, and Larry Osborne has a helpful book called Sticky Teams.

3. Change is inevitable.

You either move forward or backward. A living church changes differently than a dying church does, but all churches change.

For a church to grow, it must change. It does not need to change in theology, but it will need to change in methodology. If a church is unwilling to change their methodology to reach and care for more people, then it is guilty of method-idolatry, which is where we confuse unchanging biblical principles with what are supposed to be changing cultural methods.

4. Don’t assign moral judgments to size and change.

People tend to wrongly attach a moral value to church size, which is unholy, unhealthy, and unhelpful. This explains why big churches are accused of being uncaring and small churches are accused of not reaching people or being well led or organized.

I pastored Mars Hill when it was small and saw a lot of people saved by Jesus. And, now that Mars Hill is large, I’m certain we take far better care of our people with far better community than we did when we were small. Many smaller church pastors, especially those who value theology well above ministry philosophy and size, tend to completely overlook or even deny the importance of church size. They will accuse those who care about numbers to be simply pragmatic, as if wanting more people to meet Jesus and grow in grace were a bad thing.

The reality is that Jesus works through churches of all sizes, and if he should see fit to bless a church to grow bigger, that is not a bad thing but a good thing.

5. If you want to grow, you need to prepare for common changes now.

Here are few of the changes you’ll face as you grow:

• You move from managing workers, to leading managers, to leading leaders.
• Focus shifts from a survival-in-the-present mode to a success-in-the-future mode.
• Expectations move from informal to formal (elders, deacons, and members).
• You have to grow from making decisions by general consensus to a handful of people making decisions.
• Communications becomes formal and written rather than informal and oral.
• People’s roles move from general responsibility to specialized responsibility.
• The church moves from being one community to being many communities (e.g. multiple services, community groups, etc.).
• The senior leaders shift their focus from being primarily caregivers to making sure people are being cared for by raising up leaders.
• The senior leader shifts from working in the organization to working on the organization.
• The members move from being connected to the pastor to being connected to other leaders.
• Focus shifts from drawing people through relationship to drawing them through events and dynamic Sunday services.

6. Be humble as a leader to seek the counsel of pastors ahead of you and receive their counsel.

Over the years, I’ve reached out to many godly pastors who oversee larger churches for advice and counsel as Mars Hill has grown. Their friendship, advice, prayer, and service to our church have been much appreciated and priceless. No man is an island, and it’s crucial to seek godly counsel and humbly receive it.

7. Discern between guilt and conviction in seasons of transition.

Developing this discernment is key, as you cannot do what everyone wants you to do and also do exactly what God calls you to do. As the old adage goes, if you try to please everyone, you please no one.

Proverbs 29:25 says that fear of man is a “trap” or a “snare,” depending upon your translation. Fear of man causes us to live for the approval of our tribe and to fear criticism or ostracism from our tribe. Fear of man is a form of idolatry—living to please someone other than Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, when you get to heaven, you’ll give account to Jesus for your decisions and actions as a pastor. Strive to be faithful to Jesus, not to the demands of people.

8. Pray and plan for people to meet Jesus.

As you often get what you pray for, and you need to prepare for it.

Mars Hill has been blessed by God to see a great harvest over the years. Like any large harvest, there is much work to do and it is tiring. As you pray for many people to meet Jesus, also prepare in faithful expectation for the work that will come if Jesus answers your prayer.

The good news is that seeing many people meet Jesus, while demanding work, is the best kind of work there is.

- Pastor Mark Driscoll – Mars Hill Seattle

~ God Bless
Pastor Tyler

The ministry methods that succeeded in evangelizing people during the modern age simply are no longer working because the average lost person is culturally different than he or she was a few generations ago.  ~Mark Driscoll

It seems very obvious to me to say that people in 2011 are very different from those born in the 1950′s and even still there is a greater difference from my Grandfather who was born in 1918.  Think for a second about the changes that he has seen in this country during his life.

The US National Academy of Engineering, by expert vote, established the following ranking of the most important technological developments of the 20th century:

1. Electrification
2. Automobile
3. Airplane
4. Water supply and Distribution
5. Electronics
6. Radio and Television
7. Mechanized agriculture
8. Computers
9. Telephone
10. Air Conditioning and Refrigeration
11. Highways
12. Spacecraft
13. Internet
14. Imaging
15. Household appliances
16. Health Technologies
17. Petroleum and Petrochemical Technologies
18. Laser and Fiber Optics
19. Nuclear technologies
20. Materials science

So as I have undertaken this journey of reading the entire Bible in 180 days (which is been very challenging and rewarding all at the same time) I have really gotten a refreshed look from the Holy Spirit into God and His desires for us as His children.  And as I do most days I read a lot of other’s blogs and make sure that I am attempting to stay current with all the things that are happening across the Church in America today.  In one of those readings I came across a profound statement that made me sit back and think for awhile about our state as a Church and some of the things that I have seen or heard happen.  I wanted to do two things then today:

1. Share the quote and the article with you (it take abouts 5 minutes to read it is very short)
2. Share a video with you that accentuates the point of this blog and of the article as well.

So here is the quote that I read that I felt was very profound and possibly a perspective changer (as a pastor I love perspective changers).

God laid aside his wants—and so can we

God’s action in the world never revolves around the immediate satisfaction of wants and needs. His action is focused on reconciliation. The amazing news is the God of the Bible incurred all the cost of reconciliation himself. He paid our debt in full to restore us to his family. And when we see the God of the heavens lay aside his wants and needs to serve us, we can make the much smaller sacrifice of laying aside our own.

Now take a second and look at this article

OK, now that you have read that…take about 2 minutes and watch this video from the Family Fued.  Now I am not condoning the topic I am simply making a point as to the order that the answers fall in the survey.  It really makes my heart grieve that we have grown so lackadaisical as believers that we have lost a lot of the impact and priority in society.

Give me your thoughts…
~ God Bless
Pastor Tyler

“We must be careful to value all the biblical books. Christians are always tempted to construct a ‘canon within a canon’—-a set of books within the Bible that are more important than others. The danger is that we will end up with an imbalanced Christianity—-a view of faith based on a narrow selection of books and passages. The antidote to this problem is to force ourselves to deal with the whole gamut of biblical revelation. We should expose our minds to the whole of God’s truth, not just those books we happen to be interested in or those issues we happen to get excited about.” -Unknown

My prayer for you and for me is that we would frantically beg the Holy Spirit to show us where our Christianity is imbalanced.  Where we have chosen to grab hold of certain doctrines and be loose or even rejecting of other doctrines.  I pray that over this next year we would search for those things in our lives that would make us more surrendered to, broken, and usable by God to bring glory to Himself through our lives.

~ God Bless
Pastor Tyler