Building and growing a successful church
This is a follow-up to my last article titled, “How to grow your church, free of charge”
What makes a successful church? It really depends on your reference point of what success is.
Success can have many metrics such as money, size, influence, continuity, outreach, programs, etc. Too often we garner our attention to church growth as the most important indicator of success. There are well-meaning studies of booms in church growth, not just in recent history as defined by the term megachurches, which are congregations of 2,000 or more, but also examining the dramatic numbers of conversions in the Bible.
Consider Acts 2:41 NIV, when Peter preached a message and about 3,000 were added to the numbers of one sermon sitting. Also moving forward in the book of Acts there are more scriptures affirming serious positive growth for the Church.
Acts 2:47B NIV states, “and the Lord added Daily those being saved.”
“So the number of men who believed grew to about 5 Thousand,” states Acts 4: 4B, NIV.
Read Acts 6:1, 7: Acts 8:5-8, Acts 9: 31 and many more. There is nothing wrong with studying what happened to propel your church’s numbers upward. It is sustainability that leads to what is called “revival.”
History records the Great Awakenings, the Urban revivals, the Welsh Revival, Azusa Street, etc. The most common factors were they all were preceded by great prayer, sincere leaders and a hunger for more of God.
These movements, church/ministry growth and revivals have their histories marked as being successful.
By all accounts considering the amount of people who turned their lives around along with the positive impact in the surrounding communities that term “success” rings true. This begs the question then, what about churches that never grow in numbers or those that grow slowly? Are they stagnant? Are they lazy? Is there sin in the church, keeping them from progressing? As I mentioned in my last article, churches can grow large and still be unhealthy, much like a person’s body can get bigger upward or outward and also be unhealthy. Bigger is not always better, as the saying goes.
Perhaps a church has experienced significant growth, and that usually garners attention from interested observers. However, if it has a high degree of biblical illiteracy, it can rightfully be called unhealthy. This typically stems from those more interested in growing numbers than building disciples. You can gain age year after year and still be immature.
In looking at Rev 2:1- 3:22, the Lord criticizes and commends the seven churches for various reasons, but nowhere does he criticize them for low numbers or commend them for their growth.
No megachurch or national ministry there, he praises them for their faithfulness. The real, underlying factor that God was looking for was their faithfulness. God’s emphasis was not so much on quantity as it was on quality. Quantity may not yield quality, but quality can yield quantity: think planting seeds.
Now in no way am I implying that any church or ministry should become complacent with the status quo and lack concern for increasing its numbers, making disciples and mature believers is still the Great commission.
Matt 28:19 states so what is a successful church/ministry? Those who are faithful.
Again, success can be subjective but here’s a question: Would you rather have five guards who are slacking around and falling asleep at their posts, or one guard who remains vigilant, alert and faithful to his position?
What kind of church are you in?
This is about overcoming the criticisms and keeping the commendations of the seven churches in Revelation chapters 2 and 3.
The theme is the same; a successful church is a faithful one.