Posted in Church Growth, Leadership, Worth Dreaming About on September 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
People often confuse mission and vision, often using them interchangeably, but they are not the same.
Mission is your purpose. It is the reason you exist.
Vision is what the world will look like if you accomplish your mission.
Here are some things to think about when seeking God for His vision for your church.
Posted in Assessment Center, Church Growth, Church Planter, Church Planting, Coaching, Fund Development, Statistics on March 24, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Great new research by Ed Stetzer and Leadership Network on the State of Church Planting USA showing the contributing factors to a successful church plant.
Some highlights:
The research is broken up into topic-specific areas and is available at: leadnet.org/churchplantingresources.
Posted in Church Growth on December 3, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Not too long ago I was an assessor at an assessment center for potential church planters. One of the candidates shared in his philosophy of ministry about how his church was going to have this big multi-media production on Sundays and have grass-roots-based neighborhood ministries during the week. It didn’t strike me at all as odd, but my fellow assessors jumped all over him, peppering him with critical questions like, How can you be attractional and missional at the same time? “Obviously, you haven’t really thought much about this,” was the insinuation. (And in this case, he hadn’t really thought it through). But are attractional and missional really two mutually exclusive ministry philosophies?
Posted in Church Growth, Church Planting on May 2, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Yesterday, I was privileged to hear and learn about the state of the American church from David Olson. His book, that was recently published by Zondervan is described as:
Groundbreaking research based on a national database of over 200,000 churches reveals that the overall population growth rate far outpaces the church’s rate of growth. What does this mean for you, your church, and the future of Christianity in North America ? The American Church in Crisis offers unprecedented access to data that helps you understand the state of the church today. This book not only paints a realistic picture that confirms hunches and explodes myths, but provides insight into how the church must be renewed to reach our changing world with the hope of the gospel.
After the large group presentation about a dozen of us sat in a small group with him. Here are a few snippets from our Q&A time:
Posted in Church Growth on April 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
There is a huge philosophical danger (if we don’t understand that God builds the church) as we plant our churches. Church Planters need to decide to build reproducing, mature people called disciples.
When we just focus on planting a church we run the danger of having a group of people coming to a Sunday morning event. That’s not a church, that’s a gathering. If we are going to build churches we need to put our focus on making disciples (even better, making disciples from those who are far from Christ).
In preparing for the Exponential Conference, Rick Warren (Direct link to mp3) is featured on the pod cast talking about this very issue.
Posted in Church Growth on October 12, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Here are the top 40:
To be considered for the list, a church must have:
Churches meeting these criteria were ranked by numerical growth and then by percentage growth, and the average of the two ranks determined their final ranking. Each church was responsible for self-reporting their numbers, and consequently, some churches may not be included if they chose not to participate.
To see the rankings, numerical growth, and percentage growth of all 101 churches, view the PDF of the list on Outreach magazine’s website.
Posted in Church Growth on August 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Church Growth on August 1, 2007 | 1 Comment »
I was reading a pastor from “down under” (Mark Edwards) today and thought some barriers his blog underscored were note worthy.
It seemed to me that the number one limiting factor on this list is either the pastor or things that the pastor can control. I find that incredibly important because in my experience I am the number one growth barrier at our church.
If we are going to grow to any particular number there are a five things I need to be thinking about (and I think about these all the time):
The barriers that are on the list below are just that, barriers. Barriers can be overcome. It is important to say again that if anything is going to change at the church I pastor, the change will usually be me. If you are going to change anything at your church the change will likely be with you.
