Wednesday, September 19, 2012

church growth

I have two thoughts on church growth.  The first thing that is needed for your church to grow, is for the church to be doing the right things.  Good preaching, solid programs, strong missions, all taking place within a healthy culture.  The concept of healthy culture we will discuss another day.

If all of that is taking place, I believe that most churches will grow unless something gets in the way.  There are all kinds of things that can get in the way and be a barrier to growth.  If you don't have enough places to park, enough seats at the prime service times, if you don't have adequate access to your building, all of these will hinder growth.  Barriers must be removed, at any cost.

Sometimes folks ask me why growth is important at all.  The answer is that growth is about reaching people.  Humans.  Souls.  Jesus asked us to go and make disciples.  Not just enough so that we can pay the bills, not just enough that we feel comfortable, but to win everyone that we can, every time that we can.  That is our mission.  It is what Christians are supposed to be doing.

It's a beautiful day in God's world, be sure to see the good.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting comments on growth. Our church appears to be not only growing in numbers, but growing together in the grace and purposes of God.

A thought from the Converge Conference. One of the pastors came up to me and said "your church is just beautiful." (giving us a sincere compliment on the facilities.) With that I couldn't help but thank him, and say "the most beautiful thing about our church is it's strong involement in missions and it's amazing volunteers who help make missions happen." I think that the vision and strength of our leadership at Woods Chapel, and the volunteers who step up to minister, are the true beauty of our church.