What’s preventing our growth?

 

What are the things holding small churches back, well the bible says we parish for a lack of knowledge. As I stated in earlier post small churches don’t have a database of resources or ideological practices to guide them. Many small churches neglect business practices or don’t have the desire to be innovative in how they handle services. What makes a small church a small-minded church has a great deal to do with desire, people have to want to grow.

Per Joe Mckeever and many others who study church growth, the number one reason churches stay small is:

Wanting to stay small.

“We like our church just the way it is now.” While this attitude usually goes unspoken — it might not even be recognized by its carriers — it’s widespread in many churches. The proof is clear in how the leaders and congregation reject new ideas and freeze out new people. This is worst when people say they want growth but have no real desire to do so. Lip service with this can cripple a movement; this isn’t exclusive to the leadership team (or lack thereof in small churches, at least none officially) people who have influence have to be on board with the desire to grow. So knowing this will help in figuring out what the next move is and how to get the buy in from everyone involved.

Some great insight from Simon Crowe, he hits the nail right on the head with an important but overlooked reason:

Churches stay small when the pastor does everything

If the pastor’s doing all of the teaching, bookkeeping and visiting every sick person in hospital there’s only so far a church can go. We have a saying around here; many hands make the work light. Leaders can only do so much. Putting all the pressure on one person can burn out the leader or even the best. (Look at Lebron James) being the best and doing it all will catch up to you at some point. Its important to have a leadership team officially or unofficially (to be honest, you already have a leadership team. We just talked about those folks; the ones needed to onboard with the shift) they are the people who if nothing less have influence to help the pastor make decisions and get others involved.

We don’t want to innovate

We will talk more about this issue, well because the whole point of this blog and this tribe is to help small churches grow. The last bullet point we will hit on today is, we are looking in all the wrong places. Many small churches follow my daddy, my daddy’s daddy, and his father before him did it this way; and so am I mantra. The Mayans and Romans also had church the same way and I’m not seeing too many alters for Venus out here anymore. We have to be innovative in our approach to growth, I started this blog with we perish from a lack of knowledge. There are tools and resources out here to help. I honestly have found tribes relating to this topic. I believe the issues they face are similar in many ways to the ones I will be addressing but there are slight difference in urban churches in low-income areas that have unique issues. Do the work, be a blessing to someone else, and stay prayed up.

Later Dayz,

J

#rttmtp2b #bishopwiththeheartofgold #imperfectmiracle #stayprayedup