Church - From Jeff Daniel

I want to talk about the goofy way today’s church looks at church growth. To grow a church, you need to think about five concentric circles. We will list them, but quickly dump all but one or two in the garbage (where they belong). You’ve heard me say, today’s Christian doesn’t need to learn more stuff, they need to get rid of some wrong stuff they already know! I’m gonna use the “churchy” words we always hear:
COMMUNITY: Those living around your church who never or occasionally attend. I’ll go ahead and tip my hand, this is NOT the key. Yet, this is where the church spends all it’s resources. This would include the CEO’s—Christmas and Easter Only’s!
CROWD: Those who attend your church regularly or sporadically, but are not members.
CONGREGATION: Those who are half-heartedly committed to both Christ and membership in your church family.
COMMITTED: Those members who are serious about growing to spiritual maturity.
CORE: Those members who actively serve in ministry and mission in your church.
For any of you guys who remember Promise Keepers in Mobile a couple of years ago, you might recall Adrian Depres making the comment: “Community is fine, because they know they are lost. Core is fine, because they know they are saved and have the fruit to prove it. It’s those other ones that are so dangerous because they are most likely lost, yet don’t realize it.” Just because you grew up in church and walked an aisle one time doesn’t mean squat. What are you doing with Jesus today????—I mean right at this moment?
Let me go ahead and make my point upfront: The church will continue trying to grow by focusing on the community at it’s own peril. It better start focusing on DISCIPLING the sheep that are in it’s doors! The idea of disciplemaking is to move people ever closer to the core. We don’t have to focus on “growing the church” because if we focus on disciplemaking, the church will just grow automatically. My word I feel like a broken record on that subject! But I don’t think most folks really believe that! Here’s the dump: FYI—biblically speaking, there is no such thing as CROWD or CONGREGATION. Those are each what I call “justification words”. Just fancy man-made labels to explain why lost people, who say they are saved, act like lost people. (You know who you are) Because we all know, if they say they are saved, then we dare not question it. Sorta like when Little Red Riding Hood didn’t dare question why Granny had such big teeth! You know when we talk about “80% of the names on a church roll are lost”…well, those are the “CROWD” and “CONGREGATION” folks. Again, I’m not equipped to declare whether or not those folks are truly saved, but when I read what the bible says about true converts, they look narrowly like “CORE” folks (or at worst, “COMMITTED” folks). Doesn’t it prick something in your heart that the church is made up of 80-90% crowd and congregation? What’s crazier to me is that we are a generation of people who don’t know that’s not right!!!!!!!!!!!—that’s the kind of stuff I said above that the Christian needs to get rid of. Furthermore, our culture has made it inappropriate to call this out. People will say things like “you can’t make them grow”. No WE can’t, but the Holy Spirit can! And according to the Bible, the Holy Spirit DOES—so how do you square the person who SAYS they are, but remain “crowd” or “congregation”? Hunh?
But the point is this: it is a whole lot easier to grow a church by concentrating on the inner rings—moving the crowd and congregation to committed and core. It is not easy to concentrate on the outer ring—moving the community into the crowd. This is clearly the mission statement of every church, but it’s a faulty mission. This is the commission of each believer—to take the Gospel to the lost, but the fact remains that we’re asking a crowd and congregation of false believers to accomplish this job—and it ain’t happening! I contend that the great commission is the job of individual believers—not so much the “church” on Sunday mornings. The church must focus on discipleship, because disciples simply do what is honoring to God. And if it did so more, we wouldn’t have so much crowd and congregation! Too much church growth thinking concentrates on how to attract a crowd. The surest and fastest path to growth is to concentrate on the inner rings. Fix the ones you got!!!
[As a sidenote on “fixing the ones you got”, let me repeat one of the most poignant statements I’ve ever heard: “The greatest single cause of atheism today is Christians. Who profess Jesus with their mouth, then deny Him with their lifestyle. THAT is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” I’m sorry if I sound harsh, but the crowd and congregation do more damage to Jesus than the committed and core can repair.]
This seems to be the way Jesus operated. He concentrated on the few more than the masses. While not ignoring the masses, Jesus seemed to concentrate his energy on the few. As time went along and the cross grew closer, he seemed to concentrate more and more of his energy on the few. DO NOT think I’m saying Jesus was “clique-ish”. I’m just saying, he discipled the few—trained them perfectly to do the job correctly—and look what they accomplished!!
My observations corroborate this approach. Ask yourself four questions and then watch each week:
How many attend?
How many attended a year ago?
How many visitors do you have?
How many join? Can you remember the last time someone joined? Not working very well is it?
I suspect there is very little difference between growing churches and non-growing churches in terms of how many visitors they have (calculated as a percentage of worship attendance). The big difference is in what I call the "Velcro factor," not the "magnet factor." Here is my answer: Invite every visitor and “crowd/congregation” person to class repeatedly. Not because Jeff said so, but because the Holy Spirit within you should be screaming—“they are going to fall through the cracks if you don’t”. Invite every member and every prospect to every fellowship every month. Have a party once a month and make sure every member gets invited. Go beyond that, do whatever you can to see that they actually come. We have to be results oriented. If we can get them to the party you would not be able to keep them from class. Small groups change everything. People grow in small groups—they DO NOT grow in corporate worship. Repeat—they DO NOT grow in corporate worship. Small groups make a church sticky. The key thing is YOU have to be a fan of small groups. After three+ years of leading one, I have discovered this—a majority of people are not a fan of small groups. Why? I can only offer my opinion—which is based on my knowledge of human behavior and stuff I have heard after folks left—“I felt like they were forcing me to be more than crowd and congregation”. Yes, amen, and hallelujah!!!!—we are doing our job right! It is the exact same principle as when I told you about my uncle and aunt who once said, “we go to Hillcrest because it’s such a large crowd that they don’t know when we aren’t there”. And they meant it like they had full intention to be uncommitted, and thus didn’t want the accountability. Like we always say, it’s a spiritual issue. I don’t know if I’m saying you have to be a fan of small groups to be a radically fired up saint (IE: normal Christian), but if you can show me a radically fired up saint (IE: normal Christian) who isn’t part of a small group, I’ll back off this stance. Good luck!