Tuesday, 24 April 2012

Growing a church - Your front door - a door to growth...


If your church size is under 150 the primary way it will grow is through relationship with the senior leadership, particularly the pastor. The best way for you to reach people, and for your church to grow in that situation, is for you – the leader – to have people round to your house.  Guys - that is the best outreach strategy you can follow!  Now, you will also need to run Alpha and provide other things - but the thing that will really make your church grow is you opening your home. Your front door could be the door to growth! Running discipleship groups, gathering young men - these are the ways to grow your church.  Become involved with unbelievers, people making recommitments, new Christians – these are the people I’m talking about.   When I first came to King’s I ran the Alpha course as I wanted to be among those unbelievers. 

When you get to a size of around 150 and above then the way you will grow is likely to be through multiplying ministries. You reach a critical mass where you run a kids’ club or toddler group or something like debt-counselling. You have all those different avenues which get you into pools of different people.  So that’s what you have to do at that phase of growth. 

The last phase is if you get over 500-600.  The bigger you get, then your Sunday meeting (or meetings!) becomes THE growth engine.  People join your church through that front door.  Of course you will need all these other things going on that I have already mentioned – toddler groups, Alpha etc.  At every stage you need to be aware that the impact of church size is massive.