What Makes The Church Grow?

There are hundreds and thousands of books on how to grow a church and even more academic studies on the subject. With so much data we all know it’s difficult to ascertain what to believe about what makes and grows a healthy church from a purely practical standpoint when you’re digging through the piles of information on the subject.

Most of the available information, in my reading, focuses on the views of those who left a church for one reason or another or on the views of those who abandoned church entirely. That is, in my view, a HUGE mistake. Why? Because, while there may be legitimate complaints and reasons in that pile of data, it will inevitably be riddled with false information from people who would never return to church no matter what was done. They have simply abandoned the faith and pointed at some superficial reason rather than frankly admitting that they’re no longer interested in Christianity as a worldview.

On the other hand, if one talks to new Christians about why they’re in church after never having an interest in church or return Christians who’ve been out of the church for a decade or more as to why they showed up AND STAYED, the information will be of more substance.

The answers are generally common sense:

They realized they had a need spiritually, a hunger for the things of God.
They went looking to have it fulfilled, to be fed.
They arrived at a church where the people there welcomed them and treated them with genuine interest and kindness.
The sermons and relationships fed that appetite in a satisfying manner.
They respected the efforts of that church to take the quality of their services seriously. That is not that they were perfect but that they made an obvious effort toward quality.

None of this is complex or surprising. Where it gets tricky is when a church *thinks* they’re doing all of this but to an outsider not swimming in the stew of that church’s culture, they’re absolutely missing it.

(If you’d like to read more on this subject, go here. It’s a fantastic read, in my opinion.)

Many churches think they’re friendly, but to a visitor, they’re not. It may not be intentional. It may not be that the people are unfriendly. It may simply be a lack of an organized effort to greet people and help them find their way around the church. There are a gajillion reasons why this may happen, but that reason cannot be determined until the church recognizes there’s a problem in the first place and decides to do something about it.

Still other churches think their sermons are quality, but to a visitor, it rambles, lacks focus, and is confusing. Many churches fail to have an objective third party take a look at their Pastor’s sermons in order to help them improve their ability to feed the flock. Some overwork their pastors to the point that they do not have the time to actually prepare a sermon. Seldom does any of this fall off on purpose but putting it back into place takes intentionality. Again, the problem has to be recognized before solutions can be realized.

The real question at the end of the day is whether a church, its leadership, and its laity are willing to put down their excuses, their whataboutisms, and their personal preferences and ask the difficult questions about their own way of doing things, about their own attitudes, and about their own fixations. This attitude of self-evaluation is at the very heart of what it means to be a Christian. We cannot pull the speck from our brother’s eye until we’ve stopped focusing on everyone else’s issues and dealt with our own, that plank in our own eye. Therefore, we ought to want to deal with our own issues in order to KNOW HOW to help others!

Are we, any of us, willing to be held accountable for our service to the church by someone who genuinely cares for us and the church and the kingdom? Are we willing to be told with kindness (that being absolutely key) and sincerity that we have areas we need to improve in? If we, any of us, are not willing to be mentored, corrected, and directed, we have fallen out of the right practice of humility as clearly outlined in scripture.

When that happens to a larger portion of a local body, the outcomes are deadly to that church. Right humility cures what ails the church.

This year let’s make that the focus: the discipleship of the total body into an effective force for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen and amen.