So we're at the unit, what what I'm calling
unit three. This particular session here
"Unlimited Growth: The New Testament Pattern
for Church Organization and Growth" and
this particular lesson is entitled "A
Biblical Plan for Growth."
Here's a prayer I've never heard. Never
heard this prayer and I've heard like
you, thousands and thousands of prayers:
opening prayers, closing prayers, prayers
for the sick, prayers before you eat,
prayers before the devo, prayers before
the seminar; lots of prayers, but this is
a prayer not once have I ever heard this
prayer, it goes like this,
"Dear Lord, please shrink our church, we're way too big."
Never heard that prayer before. The
problem has been, everybody wants to
church to grow, I mean I've heard that
prayer a lot, "Lord, please help us grow.
Lord, please add to our number."
Different ways of asking for the same thing.
The problem is always but how? How do you do it?
What do you do to make the church grow?
How do you sustain that growth?
How do you maintain the church when it's
big? And how do you do all of this, here's the
key, without compromising scripture or
losing the values and the spirit you
enjoyed when you were a small
congregation? What's the knock against
big churches? Well, they're so impersonal
and yet everybody wants to be a
big church, you ever notice that? Nobody ever
says, "I'd just love to take this church,
plant a church in Ponca City and make
sure it doesn't grow beyond 40 people,
that way we could just be intimate. No!
We always wanted to be big, then we
complain when it's big, that it's well
wasn't it so wonderful when it was small and
yet we make no effort to shrink it down,
back down to size again. So this is the
subject matter and more importantly
the challenge of this particular lesson
this morning. We're going to try to
understand the meaning of the title of
this seminar. The title is "Unlimited
Growth: A New Testament Pattern for Church Growth,
Church Organization rather and Growth.
It took me over 10 years to come up with
that title. Now I've been working on
church growth ideas and my major in college was
actually missions, how to plant churches
and how to develop and grow them and yet
I kept changing that title around all
the time before I settled on this
particular title. So let's kind of go through it shall we?
First of all unlimited growth. In looking at churches and growth,
I realize that the growth of the church
was truly unlimited. Jesus said that the
church was to be built on the rock of
Christ and His Word and nothing He said,
nothing, including the most powerful
force of evil could overcome it.
Matthew 16:18. OK, well here's the caveat,
sometimes growth is fast, sometimes it's
slow, sometimes its dramatic or painful
or exciting, but in the end it was above all unstoppable.
So our leader, Christ, has said to us the
growth of the kingdom, the growth of the
church is unstoppable, unlimited ok?
That's biblical, that's a biblical idea.
That's not my idea. So every congregation
therefore has the potential for
unlimited growth and development. However,
for various reasons churches plateau at
a certain number and they remain there
indefinitely, many of them do, some of
them shrink back, some of them disappear.
We talked about that last night.
Unlimited growth, every congregation has
the potential. A New Testament pattern. A New Testament pattern. I believe that it
is both biblical and expedient to
acknowledge and use the concepts
developed primarily by restorationist
thinkers and writers in the task of
growing congregations. Restorationism,
we're of the restoration movement,
we've got something to say about church growth.
We've got something to say about that. We
seem to think that the gurus at the
fast growing community style churches,
they've got all the answers for rapid
church development. We drive by Life
Church, they've taken over
shopping centers, we go "Wow! Look at those guys,
they must be doing something right. What
are we doing wrong?" But you have to
realize that many of their theories and
practices while contributing to the size
of their organizations, they do damage to
the integrity of the stewardship of
God's Word and that's not just sour
grapes. If we go by numbers
right, if we go by numbers, the Communist
Chinese are right. If you want to go by
numbers, they're right. They've got the
biggest numbers, I guess, their theories
are right, their politics are right, their
approaches correct, why? Well they've got the
biggest numbers but we don't use that
when judging the value of a society or political system.
Why would we use that in judging the value of a church?
It's an old argument but nevertheless
true that sacrificing biblical purity
and obedience for fast growth is not
worth it and it does not serve the best
spiritual interests of the church.
What did we say last night? Last night we
said, "When Jesus returns, who's He looking
for? The biggest church? He's looking for
the faithful church, and again that's not
a kind of church of Christ idea, that's a
biblical idea. So most of you are
familiar with the idea of pattern
theology. Pattern theology is the idea
that the Bible contains and communicates
in various ways, instructions and
directions, patterns if you will, that
guide us in church organization, church
function, and personal living in doctrine.
Now we like to think we initiated that
idea but that's not so historically. Even
though this idea actually grew out of
earlier concepts developed during the
Reformation period and today there are
many challenging its value
you as an interpretive system, pattern
theology continues to provide an
excellent way to discern the simple
meaning and the simple application of
scripture in a very practical and
consistent manner, in other words, let's
not throw away pattern theology. Pattern
theology is a great idea, it's a good
idea, it's a good tool to do what we want
to do. So you understand? Are we clear?
When I'm talking about pattern theology
that the Bible has patterns, blueprints if
you wish, for how we ought to do things
in all kinds of circumstances, that's
pattern theology. Again we talked about that last night.
Now I want to explain why this is a good
idea by using an example given to me by
a military flight instructor who
attended a congregation that I was
preaching at in San Diego, California a few
years back. He explained to me that
planes, and again some of you may be pilots
so please forgive me, I'm not in my area
of expertise here.
Well he explained to me that planes, and
even missiles for that matter, are not
flown or launched in a perfect
trajectory until they arrive at their
destination. It's not we launched the missile, we fly the plane
and it's at A and it just goes
zoom straight to B, that's not the way that it works.
The pilots using instruments and
computers continually calculate a
variety of factors and they make ongoing
adjustments and corrections to the
direction of the plane or the missile in
order to compensate for weather and
other factors that throw the plane or
the missile continually off course.
The missile is traveling this way, the wind
is going against it, it's wanting to send the missile to the
right or left up or down and the computers
manage to always bring it back
on course so that it will eventually
land at its targets. In other words,
whether it be an instrument or the pilot
they're continually maneuvering to keep
on course until they arrive.
Well in the same way restorationism in general and it's tool of
pattern theology serve as a kind of a
spiritual gyroscope or a gyro compass to
enable the church to continually correct
its course and stay true to the goal of
New Testament Christianity which it
chartered. We started out by saying we
want to be a faithful New Testament
church, how do we maintain that direction?
Well this thing called pattern theology
helps us to keep a steady course as we
go through history, as we go through
different social milieus, as we go
through different cultures. This pattern
theology helps us stay on course so that
we maintain a true path, a true faithful
Biblical path. It's a feature, and here's
my point in all of this, it's a feature
that is not found in other religious groups.
It's a feature, not we're unique in that.
We are not unique in the fact that we
don't use instruments of music. There are
other groups that don't use instruments
of music in public worship. What makes
us unique is that we use pattern
theology to remain faithful to the
Scriptures. So others do not have
this spiritual gyroscope and as a result
they continue to change, evolve, mutate
into forms and shapes barely
recognizable to their own founders and
even their members, let alone the Bible.
Do you think that Martin Luther would
actually recognize the Lutheran Church
today? I mean Martin Luther was the guy
who got up and said let's get back to
the Bible. He wouldn't recognize what's
there today. We on the other hand are
consistently pressured to veer off in
one direction or another. We get all
shocked and nervous, the church is veering...we're way to the left, oh my
goodness, we're going to the left...
and then the lefties are saying, "you people
are conservative, you're legal, you're way to the right." That's just normal.
Just like a plane, a plane just
by virtue of the way that it's going is
going to hit headwind, it's going to go
against the wind, the wind's going to try to shift it. In the
same way, culture, society, sin, human weakness, whatever, is going to try to
shift the direction. What's our direction?
Faithful New Testament church. That's our
direction, that's the course we've
plotted and so pattern theology is that
instrument in our spiritual equipment
that helps us stay the course. We are
continually called upon to abandon the
road that we are on, but in all of this
noise and clamor in all of this worldly
headwind, we can always consult our
spiritual gyro compass to fix for ourselves
true north and make the necessary
corrections that will set us once again
on the path of biblical Christianity and New Testament church construct.
In yet still another way to say it, because of
our restoration principles and pattern
theology approach, we know where we're
going, we know how to get there, and we
know how to get back on course if for
any reason we have veered off for a
while. Now I'm saying all of this to
explain why I felt it important to
mention in the title that unlimited
growth for churches is possible because
there is a pattern for this type of
growth contained in the New Testament.
I need to repeat that again in case you were writing or not listening.
Unlimited growth is possible for
churches why? Because I say so? Because
you want? No, it's possible because there
is a pattern for unlimited growth here
in the Bible. Just like there's a pattern
for how do we take communion and how do
we baptize people and how do we appoint
elders and who should be elders
and so on and so forth. There's
a pattern for that, a blueprint for that.
I'm proposing to you that there is also
a blueprint in the New Testament for
church growth and if we learn it and follow it,
the growth that we seek will come.
OK? Good? Amen? Alright, now I firmly believe
that churches who are not poised for
this type of growth and not experiencing
it are the way they are because they're
neglecting this principle, they just
don't know it and they don't know how to
apply it. Now if you're interested in
hermeneutics, that's the science of or
the discipline of biblical
interpretation and pattern theology, I
can recommend and I think it's in your
notes there an article by Thomas Olbricht, "Hermeneutics in the churches
of Christ," a marvelous article. You can go online,
just type that in and you get that
article if you really want to go more
deeply into the subject, I've only kind of summarized it here.
Alright, so we have unlimited growth, the New Testament pattern,
the third reason for the title, church
organization. Church organization and growth. I think
that there is a definite relationship
between organization and the rate of
growth, in other words how you're
organized affects how you grow.
This relationship exists in business.
Badly organized and managed businesses
usually don't grow very much and are not
very profitable. This relationship also
exists in God's spiritual Kingdom as well.
If you think God doesn't care about
organization, if you think God doesn't
care about that,
read the instructions about the building
and the maintenance of the tabernacle in
the desert. If you think that God doesn't
care about organization. Every detail,
every piece of furniture, every ritual
meticulously organized and detailed to function perfectly. Page after
page after page after page of
instructions to Moses how to build a
tabernacle, how to move it from place to
place, how to put it together, who handles
what, who touches what, who doesn't touch...
every detail is there. So think for a
moment...if God provided such clear and
concise detail for the organization and
function of something that was only to
be a shadow, only to be a model of the
real thing, how much more careful do you
think he would be with the real thing?
That was just the shadow. That was just a
preview. We're the real thing.
The church is the real thing. Can you
imagine how much care He gives in
giving detail to how we ought to
what we say "do church"? Organize church?
So the church is the body, is the Bride
of Christ, not a shadow, not a symbol of
it and so I propose to you that in the
New Testament God has provided a pattern
for the organization and subsequent
growth of the New Testament church.
Alright so I want to say two things
about this concept. In other words the
concept that I'm proposing to is in the
Bible. There is a pattern for church growth.
OK, I want to say two things about that.
First of all, there are many strategies
for organizing and growing a religious
group but there's only one New Testament
pattern. Don't believe me, just go to any
Christian bookstore, there are shelf after
shelf after shelf of books on how to
grow churches and I'm not saying they're
not well-meaning and have some good
ideas, what I am saying there are a lot
of theories but there's only one biblical pattern.
Now this is the argument I'm making
here with this lesson, this series,
hopefully a book and a workbook later on.
The fact that a particular
church, even one that is a church of
Christ, is growing does not necessarily
mean that it is organized according to
the New Testament pattern.
My point is that for unlimited growth to be possible
you need to be following the New
Testament pattern for it. Just because
the congregation has one or two thousand
members doesn't mean that it has reached its true potential.
I've sat in a meeting at Oklahoma
Christian; I was part of a task force on
church growth and development and some
of the guys that were sitting around, I
won't mention names, but they were the
pulpit guys and elders and so on and so
forth of some of the largest churches in
the churches of Christ of all of our
congregations and you know what their
complaint was? These are guys that
our churches have 3,000 people, you know
what their complaint was? We want to grow.
They were complaining because they
wanted to grow. They saw the potential and
they said, "It's not right that we have so
many people, so much talent, so much money,
we're not growing; like we're growing at
2-percent or two-and-a-half percent, what's wrong?"
See what I'm saying? Just cause you
drive by and you see this big humongous church
building doesn't mean that the people
inside think that they've reached their
potential and the answer for them was
yeah the reason you're only doing two to
four percent is because you're not using
the biblical pattern, you're using your
ideas and also you're taking advantage
of some...it helps if you
happen to be a congregation next to a
2,000 Christian Student, next to a university, if you're
next to Abilene or if you're the church near Pepperdine;
when you've got 10,000 Christians and 500
faculty people who are members of the
church or whatever, if you're the
congregation next door, you're going to
be large no matter what you do, but it
doesn't mean that you're following the
New Testament pattern. So here's my main
point. When it comes to the issue of
growth or size for a New Testament
church, a restoration church, the goal is not
just to grow, the goal is unlimited growth and unless we're
organized and prepared for unlimited
growth were not fulfilling the New
Testament teaching, the criteria, the
pattern that a New Testament ought to be
in the area of growth.
Ok, so that's the first thing I wanted to
say, that there's a pattern for it,
we need to be following it if we want
the type of growth that it promises.
The second thing I want to say is New
Testament organization comes before
unlimited growth. Think of church
organization as the foundation for a
structure. If you have a faulty
foundation, if the foundation's
too small, it won't be able to sustain a
very large building right? If you have
one that does not take into account the
potential structure that it will be
called on to support. These
inadequate types of foundations will
eventually be the cause of the collapse
of the structure, the limiting of the
size of the structure on the foundation
that's too small, and the necessary
changes in initial design of the
structure itself in order to accommodate...
in other words you gotta build a foundation that will
support the structure that you've
designed. Well if you're designing a
structure that has unlimited potential, you have to have the right
kind of foundation that will sustain that, that's my point.
So God has mandated that there will be
no end or limit to the growth of His
church. Of course, the exception that
proves the rule is that the church will stop growing
only when Jesus returns, but not before.
And so God has provided a foundational
and organizational pattern for that
church which will be one of His own
design without human error. In other words,
the pattern that we followed to grow our
church, if it's God's pattern then
we won't have a faulty design, there won't be a flaw in
the system that will bring everything
crashing down at some point. It'll be one
that will support any size church. I'm
not saying this congregation here in
Ponca City when we're talking about
unlimited growth could have 60,000
members. You can't have a
congregation that's bigger than the size of
the city, let's put it that way, but Ponca
City could be a church that has planted
a hundred churches. It could be in the
business of planting churches everywhere;
unlimited, generation after generation, it
just becomes a church that plants
churches, so that's growth too,
like the size of the local congregation
remains steady at a certain size in
relationship to its surroundings but its
growth is measured in how many other
churches it's planted, how many
missionaries it's sent out and so on and
so forth that's growth too, that's
unlimited type of growing. And also it is
a church that is geared to exist in
any type of a culture, any time, any place,
and also it's geared for reproduction
and multiplication. One of the
big guys, won't mention which one, but one
of the big churches there that one of
the people that were complaining about
that, their mistake in their thinking process was they
wanted simply to bloat out, in other
words, we've got 2,000 we'd like to have
5,000, which meant knocking buildings down and
buying land and two millions of dollars
of commitment when in reality
their thinking should be,
"Look we already have a couple of
thousand people, we already have six
hundred thousand bucks in the bank sitting there..."
the answer was kind of apparent to me, hey,
start planting churches. There are plenty
of towns that don't have churches,
there are plenty of states that don't,
plenty of countries. You want to plant
churches? Go up to Quebec; eight million people five
churches of Christ. So here in the "Bible Belt"
should we have a church that wants to go
from 3,000 to 6,000? Wouldn't it be a little more
profitable to plant a hundred churches?
That's growth. So God has also provided
the blueprint or the pattern for this
church organization in His word and
situated it in such a way that it
demonstrates to us that in order to
achieve unlimited growth potential
we must first organize the church
according to the foundational pattern He
has provided in His word.
In other words, He teaches us how to
organize the New Testament church and I
need to tell your brothers and sisters,
organization of the church for ministry
goes far beyond men do the preaching and
are the elders, we don't use instruments,
it goes far beyond that. Those
are ok, those are the basics, that's the beginning part but
those are not the things that cause the growth.
So without New Testament organization
of the church you can have growth, you
can even have tremendous growth, but you
cannot have unlimited growth and when it
comes to growth the Bible mandates that
we be organized to handle unlimited growth.
OK, so there you have it. The reasoning
behind the title of this lesson.
Unlimited growth, that's what God wants
from you, unlimited growth that's
what he wants from you and then the New
Testament pattern for church
organization and growth that's how we go
about achieving what God wants.
Alright, so much for an explanation of
the title and some of the thinking
behind the ideas that I'm proposing
concerning church growth. In the
remaining time for this session, let me
summarize briefly the New Testament
pattern for church organization which
prepares and promotes unlimited growth.
Here are two main principles, alright?
What you just got, that was the
preliminary, now we're getting to the
meat of the matter. Two main ideas.
Number one principle. Organize and train
the church to function effectively and
simultaneously in the five areas of
biblical ministry, that's the
first principle of unlimited growth.
Somebody says, "What do we do? Well how do we start?"
You train, you organize and train the
church to function effectively and
simultaneously (and I'll explain why
that's important) in the five areas of
biblical ministry. There are only five
areas of biblical ministry. I've done
this with groups everywhere and I say go
ahead name anything you do in the church
and I'll show you where that fits into
one of the five biblical ministries.
Anything you want ,go ahead. We'll
have that little exercise in awhile. So that's the first principle.The
second principle is the church grows in
proportion to its organization and
effectiveness in carrying out the five
ministries outlined in Acts chapter 2.
Somebody said, "You've been talking all
morning about the Biblical way,
well where's the Bible for it?" Well
the Bible for it is in the book of Acts
chapter 2. Remember last night I said to you
the inside of the New Testament church
like the guts of it, the heart of it,
where do you find that? You find that in
Ephesians. The outside, the mechanics of
it, how it works, which levers are connected to which other
levers, how does the machinery work?
That's in the book of Acts and that's
what we're going to look at today. There
are five areas of ministry demonstrated
in Acts chapter 2 and my point here is
when the church learns how to organize
and function effectively in these five
ministries it creates an environment for
healthy unlimited biblical growth that
God Himself will provide. Alright? So
let's go over these five in detail,
rather let me just go over these five
quickly and then in our next session
we'll we'll kind of go a little deeper
because I want to give you an overview,
OK? Though there are five and only five
biblical ministries, they're in Acts
chapter 2. The first one is evangelism.
Acts chapter 2 verses 14 to 41. Here it
says, "Now when they heard this, (we're familiar with
this passage, verse 37) Now when they
heard this, they were pierced to the
heart and said to Peter and the rest of
the apostles, 'Brethren what shall we do?'
Peter said to them, "Repent, and each of you
be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ
for the forgiveness of your sins; and you
will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For the promise is for you and your
children and for all who are far off, as
many as the Lord our God will call to
Himself.' And with many other words he
solemnly testified and kept on exhorting
them, saying, 'Be saved from this perverse
generation!' So then, those who had
received his word were baptized; and that
day there were added about 3,000 souls."
So what's the first of the five biblical
ministries? Well evangelism, duh! Preaching
to the lost with a view to their
response of faith and obedience. There
are different approaches, different
cultures, different tools but this
ministry always has the same message and
the same objective. We support a man, a
preacher, he's a circuit preacher in Africa,
in Kenya in the Meru province and
he teaches at the college there and he
circuit preaches maybe seven or eight
churches, right? I mean you couldn't find
more different culture than
Ponca City and Meru, Kenya; totally different culture
ok? And yet what do you think this guy is
doing? He is explaining to the lost that
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for
them and rose again from the dead and that
they need to believe in Jesus, repent of
their sins and be baptized. Well wait a
minute, isn't that what we're doing over
here? You know Hal and Bobby
and I, we came here in two vans and lugging
all our equipment, all that kind of stuff;
he doesn't have a van, the roads are too bad,
he has a motorbike. The church in Choctaw
bought him a brand new motorcycle
because that's how he gets from village
to village, to places, small town to small
town, on a motorbike. Different
culture, different place, different
language, same message, same objective.
Same objective. That those who hear him
will repent and be baptized.
That's the number-one ministry of the
church and we'll talk about that a little
more later on. Alright second ministry of
the church, education. Acts 2:42 says,
"They were continually devoting
themselves to the apostles' teaching."
Teaching the saved to obey all of Jesus's commands, in
a nutshell, that's ministry number two.
They repent, they're baptized, now they have to be taught.
They have to be taught the things of
Christ. They don't only have to be taught
the things of Christ, they have to be
taught how to obey the things of Christ,
how to do the things of Christ. I mean I
can say that in one sentence, but you,
those of you especially who are Bible
school teachers and so on and so forth, you
know that that's not an easy task.
It's years right?, but that's the
second ministry of the church, teaching
the words of Christ to the saved.
Third ministry of the church, fellowship.
"And they continually devoted themselves
to the apostles' teaching and to
fellowship..." Equally important ministry.
The integration of the members into one
another, into the body, that's fellowship.
Fellowship, it's an equally important and
necessary ministry for unlimited growth.
Again I'm just touching the surface, I'll
go a little deeper in the next session.
Fourth area of ministry, fellowship.
Excuse me it said here I didn't read it
all, it said, "Everyone kept feeling a
sense of awe; and many wonders and signs
were taking place through the apostles.
And all those who had believed were together
and had all things in common" The fourth
area is worship. Acts 2:42c. In one
verse he just gives three
different areas of ministry. Public and
private adoration of God needs to be
taught, needs to be encouraged, needs to be organized.
Luke says that they continually
devoted themselves to the apostles'
teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking
of bread and prayer. The idea of the
saints being together for that. And then
the fifth area is service. Acts 2:45, "and
they began selling their property and
possessions and we're sharing them with
all as anyone might have need." The
pooling of resources of the church to
meet the needs of the disciples and the
community at large. There you have them.
Those are the five areas of biblical
ministry. They're not six, they're not four,
there not twelve, there are only five.
They're outlined briefly in the book of
Acts, in Acts 2, and then elaborated on
throughout the rest of the New Testament.
Now the relationship of all of these
five ministries to each other and
ultimately to the growth of the church
is expressed in verse 47. Watch, it says,
they were "praising God and having favor
with all the people and the Lord was
adding to their number day by day those
who were being saved." Careful now, careful.
We're hitting the sweet spot.
Note that the very last sentence in this
passage ties everything together. Watch!
They were busy preaching to
the lost and baptizing repentant sinners.
They focused on teaching the new
disciples to obey Christ's teaching. They
provided encouragement and opportunity
for fellowship and for worship and this
led to a natural outpouring of love
seen in Christian service of all kinds.
And what was the final outcome of these
things working together?
Jesus added to their number.
Brothers and sisters that's numerical growth.
I've worked at congregations where I
sat at meetings where people
were like a planning meeting and people
would say, "Okay next year
2004, whatever, next year our goal is
40 baptisms." Wrong. We don't set
baptisms as a goal. Now if I would have
said, "OK next year we're going to have
four gospel meetings." OK. You see it? You
see the difference? My job as an
evangelist, your job of various ministries
that you have, is to work out things,
ministries, projects, services within each
of these five ministries and just let God
add the people. He will add the people, I
guarantee you, He will add the people and
again we're going to talk about how that
happens in another lesson. So when we
boil it all down, we see a very simple
spiritual equation that comes forth and here it is...
Ministry equals growth. The more ministry
you have, the more growth you have. The
less ministry you have, the less growth
you have, simple as that.
Simple as that. Some people say, "Wait a
minute! We've got plenty of ministries. We've
got the quilters, we've got this, we
give food to the poor" and so on
and so forth, and that may be true, but
remember I said, you have to have all
five ministries working and they all
have to be working simultaneously.
We talked about the plane, again
pilots please forgive me for my
ignorance, but it seems to me that when
you're going to fly a plane, you
know a little two engine job, you need to get both
engines going before you think of going down the runway
I've never heard a pilot say, "Well I'll start
engine number one there and we'll start
rolling down the thing, then when we
get to 10,000 feet, we'll see if that
second engine is really working this
morning." We don't do it like that, do we?
We have a checklist: this going, that
going, this working, that working, all the
engines, OK, now everything is
working simultaneously and we get what?
We get lift. Well in the church, the same thing. Those five
ministries have to be operating at the
same time before you start to get
liftoff and the liftoff is church growth.
So when we organize and execute the New
Testament pattern of ministry which is
our part of the equation,
God will provide the growth which is the
Spirit's part of the equation. The growth
potential for this, brothers and sisters, is unlimited.
This is not legalism, this is not works,
but rather faith working according to
God's direction in His word.
Alright one last thing then we'll stop
for two minutes, not our coffee
break, just two minutes. If you need to
get some water, use the restroom and then
go right into our second session. I want
to finish this session with an example
of a local congregation that implemented
these ideas and the results that they
had. Now in the state of Oklahoma where
there are approximately 600
congregations of the church of Christ, of
these, now I'm quoting stats from in
Choctaw in the year 2000, OK? We'll
start there. Of these 600 congregations,
the Choctaw congregation where I was
working for about seven and a half years
was, in the year 2000, second only to the
Memorial Road church, which is next to OC,
in sustained growth percentage for six
years in a row. Second to Memorial Road,
six years in a row. Now most
denominations are in decline, but when
there is growth the national growth
average for all types of churches in
America, I told you last night
right? Three to five percent, that's the
normal rate of growth. If you
take all the people that have come in and
subtract all the people that have left
for whatever reason, that's your net
growth. The net growth of churches any
kind in the US of A, three to five
percent. The Choctaw congregation
experienced a net fifteen to twenty
percent growth rate beginning
in 1994 when we slowly began to
implement and refine this particular
approach to church organization and
growth and it grew to over 500 in
attendance. When I went there in 93
attendance was around 200 to 225, when I
left, it was over 500. We had to add was
it ten, fifteen thousand square foot and
renovate the entire building to
make room for that many people. I went to
work in California, left Choctaw on good terms, I had other things that I
wanted to accomplish and I went to work
for a church in California in San Diego,
the Canyon View congregation. I worked
there, not a long time from 2001 to 2003. We
implemented the same system, had the same
results, even though Canyon View is an
urban church. I mean Canyon View in San
Diego is an urban church
alright and Choctaw especially around
2000 was very much kind of a country
church. Very different places, very
different culture, very different
approach to things and yet as long as we
implemented the New Testament pattern, we
got the results. By 2003, their growth
rate was fifteen to twenty percent.
Then my wife and I went back to
Montreal to do mission work for a small
mission church there that we had planted many
years ago that were having trouble, they
were down to like 20 people, when we had left
they were a hundred, they we're down to 20, so
we decided to move back to Canada and go
back into mission work. Again,
implemented these principles and in the
six years or so that we were there, they
experienced a ten to fifteen percent
growth rate. I went back to work, very
unusual, I was the pulpit guy at Choctaw,
left to be the pulpit guy at Canyon View,
left and went and did mission work in
Canada, came back to Choctaw as the
education and media minister. They had a
very good pulpit minister still there,
Marty. Marty Kessler, he and I work well together.
I have other things that I want to do other than
do pulpit work, I want to do this kind of
work and yet we reviewed and
re-established those ideas that we had for
New Testament pattern, New Testament
pattern for growth and the Choctaw
congregation since 2011 has experienced
a ten to fifteen percent growth rate.
Again, somebody said last night,
"Wow! Why can't we have a hundred percent growth rate?"
Yeah, why not? It'd be great, but I'm thankful
that Jesus said the harvest, sometimes 30, sometimes 60,
sometimes a hundred-fold, so it's
possible, the hundred fold but a lot of
times, it's 60 or its 30 or it's twenty.
What I'm saying to you is if it's beyond
five, you are really growing beyond the
national average. So if you did
you know next year, you looked at
your things and say, "Hey we grew at a rate of
seven and a half percent." Good! Good!
You're growing. That's real growth. Next
year after that, nine percent, eleven percent,
fifteen percent, that's good, that's excellent.
Alright, last two things, we'll take a
five-minute break. Number one, Effective
and Simultaneous. The five ministries of
the church need to be carried out
effectively which means biblically and
at the same time they all have to be
working at the same time. It's like a car,
if you've only got two pistons, the car
will go, but it'll be chugging
along, you've got to have all pistons firing.
And then the second thing, ministry
equals growth. If we minister, the Lord
will add the growth. More ministry, more growth.