Church Growth

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.

Handling the financial pressures of a church are without a doubt the toughest task we face as pastors in our churches, especially when the expenses of our ministry have increased, and the income has leveled off or even decreased.

In John chapter two, Jesus entered the newly refurbished Herodian Temple. What would His attitude be toward the pseudo worship of the Jews of His day? The building had not looked so good since the day of Solomon’s Temple, but buildings are not ends in and of themselves.

Every church enjoys special days throughout the year. Easter and Christmas usually top the list of special holidays; but in addition to holidays, there are patriotic services, revival services, Bible conferences, and missions conferences.

Good, strong, faithful churches in our day are increasingly being enticed away from the foundation of Scripture. In an effort to draw a crowd, they are actually being drawn into the crowd.

Once each year we have a special night at our church called “Vision Night.” This is usually New Year’s Eve or the first Sunday of a new year, and it is one of my favorite church services of the year.

When a string of setbacks come into our lives we seldom begin with the question, “What is right here?” The typical starting point is, “What is wrong here?”

Most if not all church planters have heard the word scaffolding used by preachers to describe many of the people who were attracted to their church plants during their early days.

Growth continued until when we were four and a half years old we left a Baptist denomination, and we were sued for everything we owned.

The following is a lesson I gave to our soulwinners at Heritage Baptist Church. This article will help you form a well thought out retention strategy and answer the following questions.

A church plant is an awesome adventure, an important calling, a needed endeavor, and much more. However, for all the things church planting is, there are many things that it’s not.

I couldn’t pass up the chance to tease some teen-aged young men. They were right on me and another teacher from the Christian school where I taught, and though we couldn’t see their faces, they were obviously afraid to ride. We began to banter with the young men who looked no older than thirteen to put them a little more at ease.

Only two dozen American mega-churches—a church with at least 2,000 people in average attendance—existed in 1990 according to Outreach magazine. Today there are over 1,300 mega-churches in America. The mega-church movement has boomed.

I am thrilled for this resource to be available. This book will encourage and strengthen independent Baptist pastors and churches to fulfill the Great Commission.