Alright so we're going to begin our
first session and our first session has
less to do with me and more to do with
you. What I want you to do, it says "group
discussion unit number one." There are
four questions. Number one, in
your opinion what are the two major
reasons why the church or your church is
not growing? Number two, who do you think
is most responsible for church growth
and why? Number three, if you have the
authority and resources to change or
help the church to grow, what 3 things would you do?
And finally, what is considered a good
percentage for growth each year: 10, 25, 70, or 90%?
So we're going to do it in two stages. Number one, I want you
to write down what you believe to be the
answer to these questions. Don't discuss
it with your seatmates, the people at your table, just
write down what is your opinion not
your church's opinion, not what the
elders think, what is your opinion? And
after you've written those questions
down, I'll tell you it's time to start discussion. I want you to then
share your opinion that you've written
down with the people at your table.
Everybody got that? We good?
Alright, you've got 10 minutes to
answer those four questions, go!
Alright, we're going to start kind of
getting some feedback, so if you can stop
the discussion among yourselves and
maybe kind of come back to be here.
We'll start getting a little feedback from the
different tables, different individuals, see what you had
to say. Okay, question number one was and
we'll start over here. Start over here
with this the table and work our way
this way around, okay?
In your opinion, what are two major
reasons why the church or your church is
not growing? Have any ideas from you guys?
Couple things kept coming up, one was
there is a lot having to do with what
we think is the culture. Our society is
really working against that. And then
number two was just a lack of personal
or every member really sensing
their obligation to be involved in
helping the church to grow.
Ok, anyone else have some ideas about
that? One of the things that we said is
people are just not interested in church growth. -Which people?
All of the people; people outside, people
in the church or just it doesn't seem to be any interest
and besides that people are basically
just not willing to do what it takes to grow.
OK, alright, how about back over here, this
troublemaker table, see what they came up with.
Yeah we need more involvement of all members. -So the reason that the church is not
growing is because all members are not
involved is that saying it in the reverse? -It's just as much a
responsibility for you as it is for me or somebody else.
OK, fair enough. Anything else from you guys? -We put down here, we need more
information to be able to be put out to
the general public as to who we are and why we are here.
Yes somebody mentioned brand,
Bud and I were talking before and we
were kind of discussing this
idea and the idea's...we have such a good
thing, we're like the best kept secret in
in America as far as religion
is concerned. The big religions with all
their fancy theologians and their big think tanks and everything,
what do you think that they're coming up
with as the solution to their problem?
Well, we need, they say we need to
simplify, we need to go back to the Bible
we need to cut out stuff that we've been
doing for two centuries,
they're coming around to this idea, so
we've got a marvelous idea, we've got a
terrific approach, it's just that nobody
knows about it. A lot of times not even
our own members know about it, so yes,
absolutely, well said. Let's move to
question number, anybody else would
really like to share on this first two
major reasons why the church or this
church isn't growing somebody else want
to share on that? -We want to think that
we ought to keep our congregation in the
eye of the public as much as we can,
every day, not just once in a
while when we're going to have a meeting or
something that we advertise the congregation.
Right, okay, sure. Everyday involvement.
OK, someone else? -There are two things
that came up in our group. One is it's
not my job, it's not my responsibility, we
pay people to do that. And the other
thing is we kind of lost our identity
with the uniqueness of the Gospel
message, we've allowed ourselves to be
blended in with the denominational world
and we haven't come out of that yet and
once you realize you've got something
special and unique, you want to share
that and we've lost that unique feeling.
Terrific. That's a good point.
That's a great segue because my next
lesson here, the first session we're
going to do, is going to talk about that.
Let's move on a question number two, who
do you think is most responsible for church growth and why?
- I think the right answer would be me, and why is that we
need to be out in the world seeking others.
OK, again who do you think is most responsible for
church growth and why? I haven't heard the why yet.
I think the who is kind of, let's face it, we're preaching to the choir here tonight right?
We kind of know who's responsible for
church growth, we are, but the why. Why is that?
Well, I said why is because you need to seek others who are lost. I guess I left that part off.
OK, anyone else have a why?
Yes we were given the Great Commission to go out and preach.
Because Jesus said to go out and preach, that's
why because it's been given to us as our
mission. The mission is not church growth
obviously, the mission is preaching the
gospel, church growth is a spin-off.
Alright, let's talk about number three. If you had the authority
and resources to change or help the
church to grow, what three things would you do?
- We came up with an idea, we think we
should get a hold of a high school and have
Phil Robertson come to the stadium
that would get just about everybody in
town in front of somebody from the church.
Alright you'll have to get in line on
that one, of course, but exactly
we have to exploit the resources that we do have.
Absolutely. Good idea. I mean why
not? Even if you do have to get in line
right? Even if he said, "well you know I'm
free but next April." OK, so what?
Next April you've got something to look forward to.
OK, if you had the authority and
resources to do something to help the
church grow, what would you do? Somebody else, another idea?
- We had to have an open forum about Biblical authority.
About Biblical authority. Okay, back there.
- The mainstream media is doing its best
to turn this country from God we should
use that mainstream media in our local
community to turn people to God.
Hey, I mean people are spending a lot of
money to sell soap right? Or to advertise I don't know whatever bars and other things
sandwiches, to sell sandwiches,
why wouldn't we pull our resources to not
sell, but to promote and to expose the
community to the Gospel? We're going to
talk about that a lot in this seminar. OK, someone else, one more over here.
- One of the things we thought about was
making a variety of resources available.
I mean we were talking about this is a
resource. We're talking about, we started
talking, how many of us remember the
Jewel Miller filmstrips series and how
many people that brought to Christ? That,
it died off. We quit using it, but other
people could probably still use that
same medium. So using a multitude of
methods and medium.
Right and one of the reasons why they stopped using that
particular film strip, I mean the content
was great, but eventually they became
dated, nobody uses filmstrips
anymore and the people who were
in those strips, they had "zoot suits"
on and the lapels that went all the
way out to here. It was the fifties. It was great,
the content was great, but they never
kind of updated the content and I might
even put a little plugin for Bibletalk.TV.
Bibletalk.TV, that's today, that's the internet,
that's what people do with the
Christianity for Beginners, they use it
like the Jewel Miller film strip. They
pop the DVD in and hold the remote in
their hand and they watch the first
lesson and wait for questions and some
say, "Wait I have a question." They just
pause it, "Go ahead, ask your question" and
so that's how modern technology
today, modern resources, does exactly the same thing,
sharing the gospel with someone using a
piece of equipment or technology that
enables you to to teach even if you
yourself don't have that skill you can
still find something or someone to help you.
Okay anybody else? One more over here.
- We talked a little bit about the joy bus
program that we used to have here in our
community. That served our purposes very
well. It appears that if you bring the
children in, the parents will follow when
they notice a difference in their
children and so we thought that might be
another area that we could look at here as a congregation.
OK, alright. Alright last question, what is
considered a good percentage for growth
each year? I'll make this simple okay?
How many people said ten percent? How many people said twenty-five percent?
Wait a minute some of you are raising your hands twice.
OK, how many people said 70-percent? How many people said ninety percent?
How many people said a hundred percent?
Yeah, I heard that, it wasn't on the thing,
but they... Alright, so here's the stats
OK, the stats for all churches not just
Churches of Christ but for all
churches: Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist,
the whatever, Churches of Christ, Catholic,
whatever, for all churches statistically
the average growth per year and when I say average growth
I mean people who have left because
they've gone on to their reward or they
left because they moved to Kansas or
they left because they were mad;
actually you start with the people that
came in, people who were baptized, people
who moved in, who placed membership, subtract
those who left, net growth.
OK, the average for the US of A, three to
five percent, three to five percent.
That's everybody. Three to five percent.
We're going to talk about those
percentages as we go along.
OK, well we just wanted to kind of get
the blood flowing a little bit and get
the sandwiches digested. We're going to
take a three-minute break in case you
want to go fill up with some water or
use the restroom and then we're going to
actually begin our first session, our teaching session, about
three to four minutes. So take the break,
do what you need to do and we'll start
our session for tonight after.