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    Can Small Churches Grow?
    Can Small Churches Grow?
    Can Small Churches Grow?
    Ebook87 pages58 minutes

    Can Small Churches Grow?

    By Grace Communion International

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    About this ebook

    Many small churches would like to grow, but find that it is difficult to change the culture inside of the church. In this collection of articles, we address some of the challenges, and some of the ways that small churches can be the best they can be.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrace Communion International
    Release dateDec 21, 2015
    ISBN9781311462954
    Can Small Churches Grow?
    Author

    Grace Communion International

    Grace Communion International is a Christian denomination with about 30,000 members, worshiping in about 550 congregations in almost 70 nations and territories. We began in 1934 and our main office is in North Carolina. In the United States, we are members of the National Association of Evangelicals and similar organizations in other nations. We welcome you to visit our website at www.gci.org.

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      Book preview

      Can Small Churches Grow? - Grace Communion International

      Can Small Churches Grow?

      Copyright 2015 Grace Communion International

      Scripture quotations, unless noted, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

      Cover art copyright Grace Communion International.

      Table of Contents

      Whatever Happened to Church Growth?

      What Makes a Church Grow?

      Spiritual Gifts and Church Growth

      Church Buildings and Church Growth

      When We Fall Short

      Good Things in Small Packages

      Choose Your Future

      Hope for the Left Behind Church

      Small Groups or Cell Groups?

      Edification or Building Up Through Cell Groups

      Cell-Based Church: Community, Nurturing, Outreach

      Should You Plant a Church?

      About the Authors…

      About the Publisher…

      Grace Communion Seminary

      Ambassador College of Christian Ministry

      ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

      Whatever Happened to Church Growth?

      A discussion with Dr. Eddie Gibbs

      Question: Church growth was a popular idea 15 or 20 years ago. It promised to halt the decline in congregations and turn things around. Why hasn’t it worked?

      Dr. Eddie Gibbs: It depends upon the criteria by which you judge whether something has worked or not. If you have a lot of previously churched people, the insights and techniques of church growth were helpful. In the USA we had a wave of returning baby boomers following Watergate and Vietnam. Many of the boomers resisted traditional Christianity but responded to an approach which was contemporary and which fitted their needs and their cultural context. Some church growth insights were helpful in those contexts.

      However, I think that with the wisdom of hindsight, the ideas of Donald McGavran, the founder of the church growth movement, were not really heard in the West. His principles were missionary and outreach principles. In North America particularly, they became marketing principles. In other words, how can I increase my slice of the religious market? The principles were misunderstood—even prostituted.

      Outside the US, there was no phenomenon of returning baby boomers. So the standard approach was to remove all the barriers we thought would get in the way of people coming to faith. That was okay when you had folks out there who were coming in your direction—were in your aisle of the spiritual options supermarket, so to speak. But that is not where they came from.

      Has it worked in terms of turning the tide of church going? Clearly no. In North America, if you believe the marketing figures, which I don’t, between 39 and 43 percent are supposed to be in church on Sunday. But when you change the research methodology and see who is actually there, it is estimated that only between 18 and 25 percent of the population are actually in church.

      Q: Do you think it is a mistake to assume genuine church growth is subject to market forces? There is some brilliant marketing of Christianity. But does it misrepresent the product’?

      EG: It certainly can. If we use marketing techniques to edit the gospel, so that only those aspects which serve our purpose are highlighted, then it is no longer the gospel. There is a tendency to proclaim a gospel that meets people’s needs without challenging their priorities or values. We fill our churches with members that are not disciples. There is little evidence of life transformation, particularly amongst those who are simply at the worship service once a week.

      It is only when you separate out the 10 percent who are involved beyond the worship service that you see a significant statistical difference in lifestyle. If it is just the general churchgoing population, there is little difference between them and the population at large when you look at their attitudes on racism, truth telling, divorce and lifestyle in general.

      Q: What are we doing wrong?

      EG: We have not recognized a profound cultural shift. From the conversion of the Emperor Constantine until the First World War in Europe and the 1960s in America, churches have lived in a Christendom framework. Most people were at least notionally Christian. They would come to church for weddings and baptisms and funerals.

      Under that umbrella the church was a central institution of society and our strategy in communicating good news was come to us on our terms, to events where we are in the majority and in power. Now we are no longer within a Christendom framework. We are in post-Christendom—some would say a neo-pagan society. In that environment you don’t operate in a come to us way. But most church leaders are not trained to function in that environment.

      Look at the various positions in Ephesians 4:11. This is a pre-Christendom model of leadership that emphasizes the need for missional leadership. It is apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. The pastors

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