Now church growth and development is a field of study that has actually
produced a lot of theories, a lot of books, seminars on the subject, like this
one here is a seminar on church growth.
Perhaps the difference is this one is squarely based on very specific types,
not types, but very specific scriptures that deal with the
growth of the church. But nevertheless it's a big field, a lot of books come out every year about church
growth. And no wonder.
No wonder that church growth books and seminars are a
growing industry. With less and less people attending services
a more secular society,
churches are in decline not just churches of Christ are not growing the way they
should, or in decline, but all groups, all religious groups, their
churches are in decline and they're searching for ways to not only
win souls or new converts but also to maintain and
motivate existing members so "church growth stuff"
is a growth industry in itself.
But a lot of what has been written comes from ministers of large, what we call,
"mega churches" who have packaged their various
growth formulas into books and seminars which propose to help churches
reproduce in their own congregation the success that the mega churches have had.
So you have a mega church and they say this is our system, this is how we've done it. And so on and so forth. And
here's 60 lessons in a book and tape and so on and so forth.
And if you do what we do, if you take the approach we take, then you'll have the
success that we had. Now the problem with this
is that research has shown that trying to reproduce a growth model by
simply copying the system or the approach of another church rarely works. Rarely works.
This is why there's only one Saddleback Church. Or there's
only one Willow Creek Church. You hear about Willow Creek ten thousand members,
but how many of those are there? There's only one. They export their system to all kinds of
churches but there's still only one of them,
they're a hybrid. In our fellowship, in the churches of Christ,
how many Memorial Roads do you know? That you can name? How many 3000
member churches that you know of? Well there's that and there's Highland and couple in
Dallas and a few in Tennessee and so on and so forth. There are not that
many I mentioned before that the average growth is about to, the average size about 200 people.
Now the reason that just exporting your system doesn't work is that
those growth churches, those huge mega churches are unique
to their time and place and cannot be multiplied simply by copying
their structure or implementing their programs. It just doesn't work.
Now this is not to say that there are not valuable resources that these churches can provide.
There are. There is one book that is the
result of an exhaustive research project about church growth
around the world that I think is very valuable. Like I say, not everything is bad. There
are a lot of good ideas and one book in particular has really terrific
ideas. A writer called
Christian Schwartz. He's a researcher.
And he is a church growth researcher. He conducted the most
extensive survey of churches around the world. He surveyed a
thousand different churches of every type and every size
in 32 countries with over 4 million responses
to analyze. Now if you're a researcher, if you've done any type of research or surveying,
you need to understand a thousand different institutions from
32 countries, four million respondents. I'm telling you,
that is an exhaustive research program.
Well what did he want to know? Well he wanted to know what
characteristics do growing churches share. That
was his question. OK. Now do any of you remember a book that
came out, still on the best seller list but there was a book that came out by a man named
Stephen Covey a couple of years back. And he wrote a book called The Seven
Habits of Highly Effective People. You remember that book.
Very popular book, as I say if you look at the list is still on the best seller list down in number
nine or ten. Stphen Covey poured
over two hundred years of success literature. How to
succeed and so on and so forth, he analyzed that kind of literature, 200 years
worth. In the form of biographies and systems and profiles of
successful people from every walk of life and what Stephen Covey did is he
distilled all of this information down to seven key character
traits that all successful people share regardless of time,
regardless of culture.
So whether you lived in England in the 18th century or in
California in the 19th century or in Africa in the 20th
century, no matter where you lived or where you were, successful
people shared certain characteristics regardless of their culture,
the time they lived, or the society that they lived in.
His findings confirmed the important idea that success is not about how
much you acquire or how much you succeed but rather what
kind of person you are. That's what he found out. In other words
character over quantity. Principles over production.
Well in the very same way Christian Schwartz has done a similar
thing with the subject of church growth. His research
has revealed that growing churches, all growing churches,
regardless of country or position on the doctrinal issues that they have,
all of them share 8 specific quality characteristics
and they possess these at a level far above non-growing
churches. Now remember when I say a thousand churches, I'm not talking about a thousand
churches of Christ. I'm talking about Catholic churches, Methodist churches,
Presbyterian churches, Baptists, Southern Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Churches of
Christ, Christian church, disciples, he went through all
the different churches. And so the results were very specific about two
points. One, not only did growing churches possess these
8 quality characteristics, and it didn't matter which group it was
whether it was a growing Catholic Church or a growing church of Christ, it didn't matter, they
all possessed the very same characteristics.
and they had these characteristics or
exercised them at a rate or level that was far above those churches who
merely had some or all of the characteristics but their level or
practice of achievement of these were low, in other words,
some churches had all of these characteristics but the plates were spinning very
very slowly. Understand what I'm saying?
Alright, so I'd like to briefly share these with you today. Now before
I give you these, I want to explain the difference between
models for church growth and principles for church
growth. Not the same thing.
Number one,
a model is an existing congregation that for whatever reason
has experienced success and church growth, a model. The
systems that are used in the model are then copied in other
places in order to apply them to churches hoping to make them
grow. In other words, Saddleback will export its system to another
church so that they can copy their system, that's a model.
OK. Now we've done that too. Madison, remember the Madison church of Christ in the
1960s was the largest congregation of the Churches of Christ. It
far surpassed some of the big ones today. It had nearly 6000 people
in Madison Tennessee and it had systems, they were exporting their
system to other churches who couldn't quite replicate the 6000 people
model. OK? The second idea is a
principle. A principle is something that applies to every
church at all times. It's generic. It's biblical.
It's universal in its application. So what we're talking about here
is not a model.
It's a principle.
Church models are usually seen in a few very successful and innovative
churches that have like a high profile and what they do is they export their
model for others to copy. Church principles
are seen in many, many churches of all sizes and shapes and they promote
a more natural approach to church growth. So what's my point?
My point is the following. Instead of copying a successful
model, we should implement principles and characteristics that
all growing churches have and all growing churches
share in the natural growth that they experience.
We're about principles, we're not about models. Alright.
One last explanation before I share the list with you. The researchers also
discovered that growing churches not only shared 8 similar
characteristics and experience them to a certain high level,
they also learned that each characteristic had a particular
quality. For example a person is not just a
skater; she's a figure skater or a speed
skater, see a quality to the skill or a man is not just
intelligent, he's intelligent in math or he's a genius in
physics, alright? A quality to the characteristics and you'll
see what I mean when I go through these. So each characteristic that they
found had a specific quality to it that contributed directly to the
growth of that church. So here are the eight quality
characteristics shared by all growing
churches, based in research now.
Number one. All growing
churches had empowering leadership.
You see the breakdown? Not just leadership, all churches have
leadership in one way or another, but growing churches had
empowering leadership. In other words, leaders
of growing churches concentrate on empowering other Christians
for ministry. So let me give you an example.
Empowering leaders don't just enlist members to help them achieve their personal
ministry goal or visions. They assist members in developing their own
giftedness and they mentor them in reaching their own spiritual goals. So
let me give you an example of this type of thing. Leaders
visit members, but empowering leaders bring a member
with them to visit other members and train them in personal work.
See the difference?
See the difference? Leaders teach and
evangelize, but empowering leaders are always on the
lookout to find and to disciple members who have these gifts
and provide opportunities for them to use these gifts. See the difference? Not just
leadership, empowering leadership. Empowering leaders
invest most of their time in discipleship, delegation, and
multiplication. Our research shows that empowering leaders
are not the superstars of mega churches.
One of the problems with having a superstar, the superstar preacher or the
superstar youth minister or the superstar whatever, is that when the superstar
leaves, what happens?
Everything that the superstar did goes down the drain. That's what
happens with a superstar,
but if you have an empowering leadership, even if that leader
leaves, he or she because women in the church
serve as well and in many instances they also have leadership in a ministry
area, these people have empowered others to
continue the work and the ministry after they
leave. So after they leave someone else steps in.
So research shows as I say that empowering leaders are
not the superstars of mega churches but rather people who know how to cultivate
spiritual qualities in other people.
It's OK if you don't get around to seeing 70 people.
If you manage to mentor two or three That's pretty good. That's good.
You know I always say Jesus only had 12 apostles, just 12.
He was the Son of God and He had just 12 apostles and one of them didn't work out real well.
So I'm not going to beat myself up if I can't manage personal deep
mentoring relationships with 29 or 54 people.
If the Lord could only manage 12, who am I to try to do 50?
Now a couple of other interesting findings based on the research in the area of leadership are the following:
Formal theological training had a negative effect on church growth. Isn't
that weird? In other words the more theological training of the leaders the
less growth.
Now when I say theological training, I'm not talking about Bible training,.
I'm talking about theological training. The discussion of the various philosophies of
religion and what it means. And some people say, "well why is that?"
Probably because most institutions of higher learning that offer
post-graduate and graduate degrees in theology and so on and so forth are extremely
liberal. Like if you go to Harvard, you get a Ph.D. in theology, you probably come out not
believing in God any more.
Certainly not believing that the Bible is His word.
And so people at that level of education, not all, but
many of them, and I've met many of them, promote the idea of pluralism.
Everybody's going to heaven. Let's make friends with everybody. The Bible
however is very clear about that. The Bible and Christianity is an exclusive
religion. It's very exclusive. It's one of the reasons why people hate Christians because
they dare to say only Jesus is the one who can save us. I mentioned
before Acts Chapter 4 verse 12, "There is no other name under heaven by which you
may be saved." People don't like that.
And so as you get away from that idea you make friends, but you don't make converts
and you don't grow the church
of the Lord by denying the fact that He is the Son of God and His word is not
the Word of God. In other words, leaders who recognize that they needed,
well one other thing I forgot to mention, research also
showed that there was a positive relationship
between the willingness of leaders to accept help from outside the congregation
and the positive growth of the church. So those were two additional findings in the area of
leadership. The more theological training, the less growth. And the second one is
that leaders who sought help from outside the congregation, outside their circle,
usually were ones who were leading growing churches. So leaders who
recognized that they needed help to do their jobs usually succeeded better in building
growing churches than those who thought they knew it all. Proving
that humility is a key ingredient for successful empowering
leadership. Alright, quality characteristic number two.
Growing churches focused on gift oriented ministry. You see the
relationship? Not just people serving in ministry, but people serving in
their area of giftedness, their area of strength.
When people serve according to their giftedness, they're more likely
to be serving in the power of the Lord and not according to their own strength.
For professional ministers, identifying and training members in the
use of their gifts should be a major part of their actual work.
One of the jobs of a minister is he's a scout,
like a baseball scout or a football scout, he's a scout, he's looking for
talent, he's looking for people. There's a joke at Choctaw,
there's a kind of a running joke that goes...there's a running joke that goes
that even in our family and Hal knows this joke as well, "Don't ever ask
Michael if there's something you can do, because he will find you
something to do. Don't ever make that mistake." That's in the church and
in our family, because everybody's tight and doing filming, whatever, they're all doing
something. Right?
So, for professional ministers as I said
identifying and training members to use their gifts, this should
be a major part of the work. Helping Christians identify and use their gifts contributes to
church growth more than any other activity.
More than any other activity they found.
Building each other up
builds the church. Quality characteristic number three.
Growing churches experienced passionate spirituality.
Now by passionate spirituality I'm not talking about speaking in tongues or the rock and roll
worship services with lights flashing and people jumping up and down,
that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about a concert.
The research showed that growing churches had members who cared deeply about spiritual things.
That's what I mean about passionate spirituality. They cared about Christ
and they cared about their lives as Christians. It was important to them.
Their passion was in pleasing and serving the Lord. That kind of passion.
Now churches whose focus was only getting the forms right, and so what I
mean by the forms in other words churches that were only focused on the
correct way of doing things. One Cup
16 cups you know two prayers and then a song.
The externals, the forms. These churches were not growing
and they had little enthusiasm.
And I dare say that's one of the main problems in the churches of Christ, we've focused so long on the
externals, we forgot about the guts of the thing. That's why my very first
lesson and my very first bible study with you about church growth was not in the book of
Acts, it was in Ephesians
because if we can be the church that Paul describes in Ephesians, we will be a loving church.
We will have the New Testament pattern right there.
So churches where the focus was on getting their lives
right and getting their lives in sync with Christ found
that their enthusiasm for all things including the forms promoted growth.
I'm not saying let's do away with orderly worship service,
I'm not saying that at all, but when the goal is simply
order and we're in and we're out in an hour and let's
not make any noise, if that's the goal then we've
missed the boat. There is no passion in that. It's all externals,
but if the goal is I want to be, I not only want to do what's right and be
orderly and biblical in how I praise and worship God, but I want to be right
with God. I want to deal with the sin in my life. I want to
be crazy about getting rid of the sin. I want to be ruthless.
There's the word. I want to be ruthless in getting rid of the sin in my life. I want to be
ruthless with it. I want to be sexually pure and I want to be
ruthless about that and I want to be kind and I want to be ruthless about that. Tamping
down my ego and screwing down my pride. When people
become ruthless about being Christians
and how they treat each other, that's when the passion starts
to come out. Quality characteristic number four.
All growing churches had functional structures.
Boy when I read that, that was one of the
most happy moments in my ministry career when I read about the guy who is an
expert in church research who had done a thing that I myself could never do
and in his research he simply confirmed the thing that I had been teaching all along simply from
looking at the scriptures for 10 years. Man, I said, "Hallelujah!"
Every church has some kind of structure and organization but not all structures promote
growth. That's what he said. Functional structures are those that promote
church life and effective ministry and clear communication. Now what's interesting
about this research is that it is, as I say, confirms statistically
what I've been teaching about church organization and structure for many many years in
this unlimited growth seminar. For example,
that the most effective structure for the church is the one that is
outlined for the church organization in Acts chapter 2.
It's so nice to get what you simply read from the book
confirmed statistically and scientifically.
We also learn, as we mentioned, we're going over this again, there are five areas
of ministry: evangelism, education, fellowship, worship, service and when these are functioning
properly and simultaneously what happens? The church grows.
So the research demonstrated
that the closer to this organizational model the church was,
the greater the growth. The further away you went from it,
the growth stopped.
Do I have anecdotal personal experience? Absolutely.
In California when I went there they were 300, when
I left there they were 500.
It wasn't me, it was just hey let's... same thing as we did here...Here's the
ministry models, start filling in the things, let's start working, that's all. I just manage the
system, taught them how to do it. Boom! It took off. Where do they come from? I don't know.
I don't know. We baptized I don't know 20, 30, 40 people a year,
but people can't, some people they pooh pooh this idea of people
placing... oh, that's not growth. Really? That's not growth? Who do you think sent those
people here? If God is in charge of everything and if we ask God to give
us guidance in the kingdom of God, Brother and Sister Smith have moved from
Okemah to the Ponca City with their four kids, all of them Christians, all of them ready to
serve in the Lord. If that's not a blessing, I don't know what is.
That's church growth.
Somebody who stopped coming to church for three years and away from the Lord, finally his
conscience, her conscience, is convicted and returns and says I want to be
restored to the ministry of the Lord, I want to be restored to the church, I want to start serving
again, that's growth.
Spirit of God brought that person to us.
So growth is they're baptized, they joined, they're restored.
Hey, it's all growth.
Our job is not to decide what is growth and what isn't growth. Our job is to
minister. That's our job. Don't worry about the growth. I'll tell you something else.
It never comes from where you think it'll come.
It never, never does. I'll tell you a story. So in Montreal we're having a
gospel meeting and we're having a college group, no a church group from MacArthur Park Church of
Christ in San Antonio. And there were a whole bunch of people, there were like 30 or 40 of them, they came in the big
bus, you know the drill, the summer missions, college, teens, whatever.
And with my wife and I, it was a small mission where we worked like dogs. I'm telling you, printing
stuff, delivering stuff, organizing these people, putting them up in houses, whatever. And they came and
they knocked doors and they handed out 10,000 pamphlets and we invited a speaker, the whole drill.
Gospel meeting. And my wife said, "You know, I've worked so hard on this, this gospel meeting
with you, I don't want to just stay home," we had four kids, "I'm going to be home with the kids."
And I said, "Look, I'll tell you what, let's invite that little girl down the street. Let's invite her. Teenager.
She could watch the kids and you can come to the meeting." ..."Oh great." So we hired the girl, paid her whatever, and she every
night she'd come to the meeting and of course you know how it is, we're in the church right? After the Gospel
meeting people would come back to our house and we'd talk about it, blah blah blah anyway. Long story short.
We didn't get a lot of visitors. We got a couple,
but we didn't get a whole lot of visitors. It was fun. It was great for us. We love being together, fellowship. We heard some
great lessons, we were pumped and we're excited at night,
but the entire Gospel meeting yielded only one baptism. And do you know
who that baptism was? The little girl who watched our kids.
She watched us come home every night excited and talking. "Oh it was great. Did you hear what he said?" "Yeah."
I forget what her name was, so many years ago, but she listened and she listened
and then she started asking, anyways. She was baptized.
She never went to the meetings, she didn't read the literature, she didn't hear the sermons. She
just kind of was going off of us
and she was like, "Man, I want what they've got. What is it that you
people have? I want some of that."
So I say that story to remind you, it never comes from where you
think it's going to come with the Lord. It's always "Look, you just minister
and I'll add and you know what? I'm not going to ask your permission on how I'm going to add.
I'll add the way and the time that I want to add. You just be convinced that I
will add when the time is right, you just keep on ministering. Don't you worry about that. OK?"
Quality number five.
Growing churches had inspiring worship service. Now here we need to make a
distinction between style of worship and inspiring worship.
There are a lot of styles of worship services, there's high church with a lot of ceremony,
Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, that's high church. You have high
impact worship with music and performance and lights and cameras and stuff.
Church.TV or Life Church, lots of stuff
going on, you got the band in the back, you've got the guest singer, you got the charismatic
evangelist, the lights and everything going on.
You have seeker services geared to introduce worship to nonbelievers.
You have acapella style which is the practice in New Testament churches.
Now what the research showed was that the style did not
impact growth one way or another.
For all of those people in our congregations that are
moaning about the fact that the reason we're not growing is because we're acappella churches, we need to get
instruments, we need to start swinging here and rock and rolling, for all the people that make those
arguments, the research shows changing your style of worship is
not going to impact your growth.
Inspiring worship is that worship where the Holy Spirit of
God is truly at work in the worshipers and they are
inspired by His presence among them.
You cannot manipulate the Spirit of God with your style of worship. You know what that is?
That's magic.
That's the basic definition of the occult.
Magic is trying to influence something in the spirit world
by doing something in the physical world. So you got the lucky charm that you
carry and what does that mean? Well you have the lucky charm, the lucky charm means that if you hold it or
carry it or whatever the spirits will give you "good luck,"
will favor you. What is that? Something in the physical world that's trying to manipulate
something that's in the spiritual world. In the same way, if we think that jumping around and lights
and screaming and professional singers with six octave voices and so on and so
forth that that is going to manipulate the Spirit of God to like us better.
No. You not only have the action wrong,
you've got the theology wrong.
The only factor that style in worship plays
is if the worshippers are offering their worship in an acceptable Biblical
manner and with an acceptable believing heart. If you
don't believe that, just go back to the Old Testament and take a look at the relationship between God
and His worshippers.
Worship is about what God wants, not what we want and certainly you've heard sermons
on that before, I'm not going to repeat them here.
The inspiration for worship however does not come from externals like
the type of building or the talent of the worship leaders but rather is a
dynamic played out between the worshipper and God throughout the week and
shared with others on the Lord's day. If that was not the
case that means that the American Pentecostals, OK,
only their worship is acceptable because it's so exciting and so
impacting and so high energy and the guy who is living in South
America in a small village meeting with six of his brothers and sisters in a
hut somewhere or in a place where I have actually been in Haiti, OK,
let's do Haiti, out in the country in Haiti and again a stick church
with 19 people who only know two songs, those people's worship
is unacceptable. Why? Because they haven't got an electric organ. They got no lights. Nobody's shouting,
nobody's jumping up and down, nobody's going nuts and rolling on the floor so therefore their worship must not be any good.
Is that the God we worship? Really? Really?
If we only could hear the music of the first century.
It's chanting. It's like three notes. It's
reciprocal. Sing to each other. It's Jewish.
Nothing like what we have today. So if we think that modern showtime
worship style, if that's what pleases God, then all of us are going to hell together, I
mean tell you, I can play the accordion, but that's about it.
The spin off benefit of this inspired worship,
this worship between me and God
is the overall growth of members who worship because of inspiration and not duty.
I love to worship God. I love to do it.
I love to do it. You know the Muslims, they pray five times a day because you have to pray five times a day with the prayer mat facing east and all that kind of stuff facing Mecca.
Man, I got them whooped. I pray way more times than
five times a day. Way more. Not out of duty.
Not out of duty.
Out of compassion. Out of compulsion.
When I open my eyes and I switch out of bed and my feet hit the floor I
begin to pray.
I begin to pray at that moment, then I pray at breakfast and I pray at work,
then I have my personal bible reading time where I pray some more, then I pray
for all my meals, then I pray with my wife and as my head hits the pillow at
night, the last thing that's going on in my mind is what? It's prayer. I'm praying.
Why? Because somebody, some moolah somewhere told me I got to do it five times a day?
No.
I love God. Period. I love Him
and when I remember what He's done for me, where I was at in my life when He found me,
I mean, you don't need to hear my story. It's ugly, it's bad, it's terrible.
When I realized that while I was making jokes about Him, I personally
was making jokes about Him, blasphemous jokes about Him
with my buddies while we were doing drugs and alcohol or whatever else we were into. While
I was making those jokes,
He was preparing to save me.
How can you not love that person? How can prayer be a duty?
So take 400 people like me and put them all together in one place.
You know how much power that can produce?
You know how spiritual energy that can create? But it can only be
created one person at a time. You can't
be whipped into love. You can't be forced into it.
You have to love them. You have to want to worship Him.
Alright. Number six. Growing churches have holistic small groups.
The researchers found that this characteristic truly separated growing from declining churches.
Now a lot of churches, they have small groups or they have a "program" or another and they
don't experience any significant growth and that's because the small groups are just one among
many programs the ministry staff operates.
Well we got the youth group, we got the Gospel meeting, we got this, we got that, we got the Sunday
night potluck and then we got the small groups over here.
That's usually the way we do it, just a program, but holistic small groups they're
different. These small groups are designed to help members use their
gifts and share their lives and minister to each other and pray and support
each other, not just eat together.
Fellowship is not about food.
It's about sharing Christ. You know what? You know how close you're coming to having an
effective small group? Don said, "Hey anybody after Sunday night church, anybody
wants to come here and eat some food and sit down and tackle these five areas of ministry and get
some brainstorming?"
That's a small group. That's a small group with a purpose.
That's a small group that's sharing something that's real and all those people that will come to that, you know
what? They'll be here because they want to.
They want to be here. Now others may just have other commitments, other things. We get
that, we're not... Just because I do something doesn't have to make somebody else feel guilty about it. I'm just
saying the people that come to that, they're a legitimate small group, why? Because they have a common
interest. They want to get things done. They want to try stuff. Great.
And that's what he's saying. Small groups are
designed to help members use their gifts, share their lives, minister to each other,
pray and support each other. Schwartz says, "...There's an enormous difference
between church leaders discussing evangelism, and loving relationships, or gift oriented
ministry in its staff meetings, and having Christians integrated
into a small group and go through a process in which he
or she actually experiences the meaning of these things in real terms within the
confines of the group."
So if the small group is just meeting to eat, that's one thing, but if the small group is meeting together
in this instance to think about how can we evangelize? Who's got a good idea? And somebody comes up
with an idea and oh everybody gets excited, everybody is on board. Well listen I'll do this, I'll do that,
whatever. You should have seen our meeting when we talked about the health fair. Are you kidding
me? People were so excited that a helicopter...we're going to have a helicopter in the parking lot!
And then we told the elders and they said, "You're going to have a what where?
But they were for it, they were for it.
So holistic small groups are not just a program, they're a way that the church can train
people in ministry and develop leaders to plant new churches. As I said
small groups are nothing new. The research simply points out that when these are
used to mentor and minister to the saints, the overall church grows. You have that meeting
Sunday night and you watch the growth that comes from that and because of that particular meeting.
Characteristic number seven, we need to finish here. Growing churches
practice need oriented evangelism.
Research in this area revealed a lot of interesting facts. Oh some of you,
please don't be angry. Now I'm going to say
Not everybody has a gift or talent in the area of evangelism.
Our mistake? We're trying to get 100 percent of the church to serve and evangelism.
But only really about 10 percent of the church actually has a gift for evangelism. It's
like, let me put it this way... It's like saying, "OK 100 percent of the men
in the congregation are all going to lead singing."
Would we do a thing like that?
Well, we recognize well some men have, I mean some women have great voices but because of
our male spiritual leadership concept of the Bible, the men are the ones that lead
the public worship. So OK, but 100 percent of the men leading worship.
Oh man. That might not be a very good idea right? How about 100
percent of the men get to preach?
Maybe not. 100 percent of the men pray?
Maybe not. 100 percent of the women teach
the teenage girls. 100 percent of the women teach the teenage girls. Really?
So why do we think 100 percent of the church ought to be serving in evangelism?
Not everybody has the gift.
I mean we're all responsible to share our faith, but not everybody has the gift of evangelism.
And so what they discovered is that
only 10 percent of each church were natural soul winners.
It doesn't mean if you're not a natural soul winner, we're talking about the DVD. Just give
it to somebody else. That's your...but somebody else who has a gift for it could say, "You know
what? Why don't you come on over to my house on Thursday night and I got this great little
video here it's called 'Christianity for Beginners', I bet you that some interesting stuff that we can talk
about together. So come on over make some coffee, blah blah blah." Is everybody like that?
I'll tell you something OK? I'm not like that.
I don't like too many strangers in my house. You know what I'm saying? It's a terrible thing to say mind
you. Raised as an only child.
It's cultural. It's ingrained I'm hardwired. I'd much prefer just being left alone.
It doesn't come naturally to me to say to people, "Everybody come on over."
I don't want you over at my house. I want peace and quiet when I'm at my house.
So I'm not the guy that's leading the charge to have barbecues. No no no.
But we got people like that at church. Sunday night. Bobby's like that. We have
boxing night at his house and we come on over. Let's go. Let's do it.
Not everybody has the same gifts. Statistics show however
that each member had about 8.5 contacts each. I don't know how that half of
a contact turned out, but I guess it's a math problem. So each member,
not each one who's gifted in evangelism, each member in the church has about,
statistics show, about eight and a half contacts apiece. In other words people who
are not believers, not members of the church. And they found that these
were two factors that promoted growth in the church due to
evangelism as opposed to growth by placing membership. First of all
the leaders knew who were gifted in the area of evangelism
and they made sure that these people were active in this area.
Reember the whole idea? The leaders know who have the gifts, so they know who
has the gift of evangelism. They provide them with resources to do their work.
And then growing churches focused in
evangelism, not making new friends or developing
contacts with strangers, but rather concentrating on the 8.5
contacts that each person already had. In other words, never mind doorknocking to people you
don't know. Never mind coming up to strangers on the street, you
already have 8.5 natural contacts that you know,
growing churches focused on that
because a person who knows you will be more prepared to listen to you than a stranger.
So need oriented evangelism encourages each Christian to use their
gifts and resources to serve non-Christians with whom they have a relationship
and see to it that they hear the Gospel and have a connection to the local church.
That's why we have a Sunday evening thing where we invite people. Hey, you don't need to come to the
services, just come be with us. Get a little taste of what Christian
fellowship is like and who we are and feel comfortable. Right? We've all got
a couple of people we can invite to church.
You use what you have to first serve and share the gospel with folks
that you already know. To me that's a great comfort because so many people feel guilty because they're not
out doorknocking.
I mean if you got to heaven because you are a door knocker, man I wouldn't be going,
but you know what? I found a way to do it. This is my way, the Internet. I found my way
to do it. I'm still getting the message across
and we get feedback. People write to us and we get letters and e-mails back from people who use our
material. Thank you. God bless you. I'm sharing it with my husband or with my neighbor, whatever. That's great. That's terrific. That's what I can do.
I'm not going to feel guilty about the stuff I can't do. I'm only going to feel guilty about the stuff
that I can do but I don't do. See the difference? Because
I know that this church belongs to God and if He wants to raise up a door
knocker, He'll do it because it is not going to be me.
If He wants to raise up a good teacher for the third grade kids, He will
raise up that person, that person will be found.
Alright last thing. All growing churches had an
abundance of loving relationships. Growing churches, they have a high love
quotient. Declining churches have a low love quotient.
Does this seem strange to us that the God of love would
be worshiped by a church of love?
Would it be biblical if we called our church the Ponca City church of love?
Would that be true?
Might be weird.
The research showed over and over again that a loving church is more powerful than an
evangelistic church or a busy church or a church that "holds the truth."
When I go home, I go by a certain street and there's a sign there. OK?
And on that sign it says "the disciples of truth" with an arrow up the street.
Imagine saying that we're the disciples of truth.
We're the only ones that have this this truth. Now don't get me wrong the church needs to
evangelize, it needs to minister, it needs to speak the truth, but Paul the
Apostle says, "the goal of our instruction is love from a pure
heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." You hear that? The goal,
what we're shooting for in what we teach people, is that people
have love from a pure heart and a good conscience.
So if a church claims to be evangelistic or busy and the pillar of the
truth, but is deficient in love then there is something missing. There are some teaching or
attitude that is incorrect, because where the Spirit of Christ is, there is
love. People come to Christ and His
church because of the gospel and because of
ministry and teaching but I'll tell you brothers and sisters people stay in the body
because of love.
So when I was 30 years old I had been on the road for two years.
When I mean on the road, I mean wandering around, traveling around by bus, by train
across Canada, down to the United States looking at different religious things, not working and
working odd jobs.
And I told you my story, I went to this church that said
sinners are welcome at the Church of Christ and that
that was interesting. I read the article. Jesus loves sinners, so on and so forth and I
went. I checked it out. Oh you should've seen me. I don't know if you would've really liked me if I
came into your church then, 35, 36 years ago
because I walked in, I had jeans, a jean jacket, a black shirt, sunglasses, cigarettes in my pocket
and I sat in the back. I hated the music. I hated the music.
I mean really.
Not the words, the music, because I like jazz. I still do. You know Brubeck and
Davis and all these guys, that's who I like, you know. So I go in and I hear the music.
What a friend we have in Jesus.
Country and western music.
No no. I am not making fun of the words mind you, but the
music is just, it's country and western, that's what it is and the way it was being sung, I despised it,
but here's the thing. So I walk in, not too sure of what's
going on and this lady comes up to me and her name is
******Hemsey Brown. Hemsey Brown from Jamaica
and she says you come over here and sit next to me son and I'm sitting next to her and
she took out the song book and showed me the song and she said, "They're not
all like this. So we have other kinds of songs," and then when they had the communion she says, "Now
the trays are going to come around and if you want you know you can take the bread and
and then it'll come around again" and she sat there with me and then she handed me a little
bulletin so I can kind of follow along and then it was all over
and she gave me a hug and she said, "So
When you come back?"
"Maybe," I said. "OK," she said, "I'll be here."
And she was. My first contact
In the church of Christ. A divorced nurse,
mother of three, Jamaican lady who had this nice
singsong way of talking.
No love,
no growth, because when people come to you,
they're not looking for theology. They're looking for love.
That little girl who's got two kids that her husband dumped her and now she's got to make ends meet and
she's tired all the time and then somebody invites her to church and so on and so forth,
do you think she cares for one minute, for one single minute do you
think she cares that we don't use instruments in our worship? You think she cares about that?
You think she cares about male spiritual leadership or that we
were a New Testament...you think she really cares about any of that?
The only thing she cares about is "are these people going to love me? Are
they going to accept me?
I've got a blown up marriage. I've got two kids, and you know what? These two kids, I've had them by different men
and one is kind of black and the other one is white. Are they going to love me?
Can I find a spot here for me?
And she'll be able to tell by your faces. She'll be able to tell. She'll know.
There'll be time to teach the Word, absolutely, and there'll be time to explain why we
do the things the way we do them and there'll be time to answer the question, "You know. I noticed that it's just
men that go up there to pray and to do... Why is that?" There'll be time for that.
But if there's no love, I guarantee you there will be no time
to teach. So growing churches.
Growing churches are churches of love. So there
they are the eight essential characteristics for growing churches, principles that can be applied to any church,
anywhere. I could preach this sermon anywhere. They're biblically
based. They have been statistically proven through the most extensive survey ever
conducted on church growth. There they are all eight of them:
Empowering leadership. Gift oriented ministry. Passionate spirituality.
Functional structures. Inspiring worship. Holistic small groups. Need
oriented evangelism and Loving relationships. Now most
churches have some or all of these characteristics to a greater degree.
The point of the research was that growing churches had all of these and they had
them in abundance. So the invitation for this lesson
is not repent and be baptized, not preaching the gospel. The
invitation is "Do you want to be a growing congregation?" And if you do,
this, these are the principles that you have to cultivate
and this the pattern, is the structure, that you need
to be based on. You combine these two things, there'll be nothing stopping you,
nothing at all. This will be a leadership church. People will be coming here to watch what you do.