If You Want Your Church To Grow - Read This.
oday I’d like to start a conversation around the one word that everyone uses, but not everyone defines – and that can be a problem. And that word is – Growth.
On the surface, the answer to the question 'how do we define growth?' might seem easy, but I'm not so sure. When I consider this question, my brain goes to three places – and from there, and kind of spreads out like a massive flow chart - let me tell you what I mean.
I think in the church, there are three main areas of growth: Numerical Growth, Spiritual Growth and Financial Growth. Let's dig into these one at a time.
NUMERICAL GROWTH
Every church would like to see this type of growth. Whether it's youth group, the membership roll or Sunday attendance, I've never come across a church that was disappointed when more people started showing up.
But just because you want to see more people doesn't always mean everyone is thinking the same thing. There are a few different ways churches grow numerically.
They can draw folks from other churches – transfer growth.
They can bring in those who don't have any faith yet – new growth.
You can grow community programs without growing Sunday attendance.
You can bring more youth, more seniors or more young professionals to programming nights.
You could increase the attendance of a concert or a fundraiser.
Each of these growth areas is different. And each one of these groups will have a different effect on your church.
The reason that knowing what everyone means by "Growth" is so important is what you don't want is everyone thinking something different. If one person sees growth as more Sunday morning attendance and someone else sees growth as more mid-week programming attendance, at some point, those two things are going to collide. And what might happen, because it 1happens a lot, is one leader will think things are going well, and another leader will wonder why the church isn't growing.
And when you get two people who think they're on the same page, but they aren't, it will slow you down and become a pain point.
When someone around your leadership table says this ____ needs to grow, your first question back should always be, "what do you mean by that?"
SPIRITUAL GROWTH
One of my favourite questions to ask church elders and pastors is how a church measures spiritual growth because there isn't an easy cut-and-dry answer. When your church says it wants people to grow spiritually, what does that mean?
How do you and your church measure someone's spiritual growth? Are there markers along the way?
Maybe it's baptisms or confessions of faith
Perhaps it's more quiet time or prayer time.
Maybe, it's seeing people consider how their daily decisions interact with their faith.
maybe it's an intangible spiritual maturing that you notice
I'm not sure there is a right or wrong answer here, but what is important is that you know how you measure spiritual growth so that you know what to do next as a church.
There's nothing more frustrating to a staff member or a spiritual leader in your church than thinking that you're defining spiritual growth one way, only to find out that others are doing it another way. When you're leading your church and your team, you should be as close to as on the same page as possible. So when it comes to something as difficult to measure as spiritual growth, make sure you have a clear conversation about what that means to you and your team.
And here's one other thing to keep in mind. Church to church and denomination to denomination will define or track spiritual growth differently, or you might use different language. And if I'm not using your language, then take this concept in apply it in your context. How do you measure the spiritual growth, faith development, or the spiritual journey of those around you?
I don't want you to figure this out so that you're judging one another. I want you to figure it out to help those around to understand their faith better and about Jesus. Knowing where people are in their journey and how you determine that puts you in a position to help them.
FINANCIAL GROWTH
Money is a funny thing in the church. It's important because it helps support your community, maintain your staff and keep the lights on, but nobody wants t talk about too much because they are afraid of elevating it or making it too important.
Now, I don't claim to be an expert on all things church budget, but there are a couple of things that should be part of every conversation, and one of them is defining what financial growth or financial stability means - and here's why:
There are those in your church that will define financial growth as a budget just breaking even.
Some would see growth as a considerable increase in giving.
Others will judge it by the bottom line - meaning that maybe your church takes in the same amount of money but spends less – to some people, that's growth too.
Look at the pandemic and how that's shaped financial outlooks. Three years ago, if a church was down 10% in their givings, they might be freaking out a little, but mid-pandemic many churches are looking at it as "only being down 10%." Context is everything, and often context can change without us having a follow-up conversation with it.
So when you start a conversation about growth at your church and money comes up, make sure you take a minute to define what financial growth, or stability, looks like. Make sure everyone is on the same page before you start because then you'll all be working together on the same goal.
HOW IT ALL COMES TOGETHER
I was once leading a youth ministry program, and when I arrived, there were about 12 kids that regularly attended. As a leadership team, we decided that we wanted to try to grow the group numerically. We felt that a critical mass of teenagers would supply some energy and excitement to the program that it needed.
In about a year, we grew our group numerically (meaning our mid-week program) from 12 to about 22. And this was exciting. That was growth working for us.
But then we found ourselves in a bit of a different spot. All the students that arrived weren't kids that knew Jesus. Those kids changed the culture of our group, and now we needed to switch our focus away from numerical growth and focus more time on spiritual growth. And here's why:
With an average of 10 more students per week who didn't know much about Jesus, we needed to make a shift. We no longer worried or focused on numerical growth because we needed to spend extra time on spiritual growth.
This change didn't mean that we weren't feeding the students spiritually before, but with so many kids lacking faith basics, we just needed to invest more time.
And identifying this switch, and talking about it, was important for our team because of what people perceived our ministry to be doing from the outside. A couple of people came to me at one point and mentioned that we seemed to have a growth spurt but then levelled off and asked me why they thought that was.
At that moment, I could articulate that although we weren't growing numerically, we were growing spiritually. My ability to clearly explain what we were doing brought someone from feeling concerned about a lack of growth to excited about the amount of growth. And it all was possible because we defined those things clearly as a team and knew how to explain them.
So here's the bottom line.
The next time someone – anyone – in your church talks about wanting to grow, I'd challenge you to ask them the question, What do you really mean by that?"
If they give an answer that is still a little vague, then ask the question again differently. Make sure you find out what that person means, so you know their hopes and dreams for the church, and so you know what they feel growth is.
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