Church Growth

It’s true for people, and it’s true and for churches: the passing of time does not guarantee the development of maturity. When it comes to church growth, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of measuring only numeric growth or decline.

A common challenge that every church planter will be faced with is the challenge of making “mountains out of mole hills.” I am not talking about blowing a given issue out of proportion, rather, I am speaking of providing majestic mountains on mole hill resources.

Sometimes when you come to a place in ministry where you have never been before—or a place you cannot seem to grow past—what you would really like to do is sit down with another ministry leader over a cup of coffee and ask questions.

There’s a lot of talk in our day about transparency. Some of it is just talk in which people try to create an illusion of transparency where there is none. But biblical Christianity is transparent and free of guile.

We know that God is more interested in the spiritual health of a church than its numeric growth. A spiritually thriving church will be reaching people with the gospel and seeing people added to the church, but a church focused only on growth may be seeing people added without true conversion or spiritual maturity.

If you’re like me, you’ve read plenty of books and opinions about church growth. People tell you everything from how many songs to have in the service to what types of doughnuts to serve.

How does a church not only stay intact, but grow so they are maturing in the Lord together?

An unavoidable nail in the road, and a subsequent flat tire, forced me into an unplanned trip to the tire store. With the flat tire in the trunk and the spare tire providing a temporary replacement, Teri and I headed to the newly opened Hibdon Tire Store in my hometown of Owasso, Oklahoma.

On a scorching hot Monday in July of 1958, Louis Johnson and his family arrived in Tucson, Arizona. By the following Sunday, Pastor Johnson had reserved a room for the first church service in the Pueblo Garden Elementary School. Pastor Johnson and his oldest son knocked on eight hundred doors the following week, inviting everyone that was home to attend a new church plant. Twenty-eight people attended the first service in 1958.

Growing up in the average Australian household means a life void of religion, God, or faith. By the time Robert Bakss of Sydney, Australia, was eight years old, his parents had divorced, and he found himself in not one, but two of these average Aussie households. “I went through a bit of an ordeal then,” Robert recalls, “I was going back and forth between two homes, a dysfunctional sort of home life.”

We are all familiar with the contemporary church. I know there are those who think that we, old-fashioned Fundamentalists who preach against it, are merely jealous of its success. They think we are high-bound traditionalists who are unwilling to change and unable to keep up with the times.

A growing church is always in transition. From building programs to classroom changes to staff adjustments to schedule flexes to responsibility changes to added ministries, a growing church must constantly prepare for the transitions that come with growth.

The people of Israel were told by the prophet Isaiah, “Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes” (Isaiah 54:2). He encouraged them to prepare for, expect, and make room for the fruitfulness that God would bring.

On any given service, I can look across our auditorium and see people whom I’ve led to the Lord, baptized, dedicated their babies, and, in many cases, married their children. To me, our church is just family.

Today we are bombarded with information. Our world is filled with advertisements, billboards, TV ads, radio spots, informational flyers, and newspapers all trying to sell us something or persuade us that a product is worthy of our dollar.

Most churches want to reach people; anyone who is actually trying to fulfill the Great Commission gives serious thought to strategies for doing so. Along with an aggressive outreach effort to reach people, many churches employ programs, campaigns, and various other tactics to keep guests once they have come.

Every pastor wants his church to grow. Many pastors do not realize that they often hold the key to significant growth. We know that God ultimately blesses a church with numerical growth as He sees fit, but the pastor can unlock the door to usher in this growth if he is willing to pay the price.

When God sends guests to your church, you must see them as a gift from God and treat them as such. Your reaction to them and response to their visit largely determine whether or not they will be your guest again.

There is an old saying that is absolutely true; you never have a second chance to make a first impression. All of us have visited churches where our first impression was less than positive.