Tuesday 17 April 2012

Growing a church - Size matters


So if you want your church to grow you’ve got to work and build to momentum moments - these can be a whole range of things. How do you create this? I believe local church-based evangelism is the way. 

A few years back I got into trouble for an article I wrote about para-church organizations. The heart of the article was that we should build missionary churches.  If we are building missionary churches and doing what I believe God has called us to do, then para-church organisations will be less influential.  Fewer resources (money and people) would go to them because we are fulfilling what God has called His church to do.  Because I believe in the local church the article was actually more of a challenge to the church than a comment on para-church organisations. The church is the best way to reach people, to disciple them and see them come through and integrated into the body of Christ. 

A comment on church size here. If you don’t factor in an awareness of the impact and influence of your church’s size then you can attend conferences on church growth and either go away really disappointed at the end of it or you can misapply to your situation the exhortations you have heard. So, the size of your church will determine the best way for it to grow and be effective.  You may have heard an exhortation to preach the gospel on Sundays.  You may build it into a guest service programme - but then the exhortation comes to do so every week. Added to which you hear someone like me tell you that we see people respond practically every week when we preach the gospel.   

The difference is often the size of the church. Some of you know the name of every single person in your meeting and you will know as you preach that there is no unbeliever in the room - or perhaps there’s just one person. How you implement such an exhortation will depend on your church size and on your understanding of the impact that will have.