Thursday, September 26, 2013

Church Growth 101

When we talk about church growth in the 21st century we are almost exclusively speaking of how many people attend the local church gathering on a weekly basis, predominately Sunday morning.  Mega churches seem to be the pinnacle of achievement in the ministry with the idea that larger is better and larger is the margin by which we measure success.  I think we would agree, there is nothing inherently wrong with a numerically large church.  A lot of ministry can be accomplished in the name of Jesus when a large number of believer’s pool God’s resources and spiritual gifts.  However, is numerical achievement really the biblical measure of success?  Is a church with 600 attendees on Sunday morning more successful than the church with 300, or 200, or 100?  Is the mega church paradigm what every pastor and church staff should be reaching for?  Let’s think about it.