GROUP WORK ON BOOK REVIEW OF THE BOOK:

PLANTING GROWING CHURCHES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

BY

ADESINA AYODEJI OYENIYI LIFE2020172

DAVID AYOWOLE AKINTADE LFT2021048

BAMIDELE DAVID OPEOLUWA LIFE2020222

ADEWOYE GODWIN OLUWATOYIN LIFE2020170

Group 4 Presentation

Submitted To Rev Dr. Daramola Israel Olaoluwa

In partial Fulfillment of Strategy for Church Growth

For 400L (DAY) Session

LIFE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, IKORODU.

21th February, 2024.

Lecturer: Rev Dr. Daramola Israel Olaoluwa

Assignment: Group Presentation on “Feed Them And They Grow” in “Planting Church
Growth for the 21st Century” by Aubrey Malphurs

Group: Group 4 – Review of Chapter 17 “Feed Them And They Grow”

Title of the Book: Planting Church Growth for the 21st Century

Author: Aubrey Malphurs

Publisher: Baker Books

Year: 2004

No of Pages: 432

No of Chapters: 25

Chapter pages: 341-360

Comments

The book was well packaged, easy to read and understand because of the practical model
used by the author. Aubrey Malphurs offers one of the best and most practical guides to
church planting available. Malphurs successfully accomplished his intent behind this work
by clearly laying out a practical guide for planting not simply a church, but a living,
growing, reproductive church that both evangelizes the lost and edifies the believing.
Attention will be focused on chapter 17 – Feed Them And They Grow.

INTRODUCTION

The author’s focus in this chapter is, having started a good church, what will sustain its growth?

What will keep the church from plateauing at around 200 people?

The growth stage is a very important stage in the church-planting process. While

numerically growing churches may not be healthy, most healthy churches are growing

numerically. Numerical growth isn’t the goal or mission of a great commission a church; it’s the

byproduct of a great commission mission. We must understand from the very outset that leaders in

general and church planters in particular can’t make a church grow. It is God’s work to grow it. 1

Cor. 3:5-7.

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 This chapter covers 6 church growth factors that will help churches to continue healthy

growth and minimize growth inhibitors, which are: Leadership for growth, vision for growth,

staffing for growth, Mobilization for growth, Assimilation for Growth and Organization for

Growth.

Leadership for growth

Leadership is a crucial factor for church growth. Leadership begins with the senior Pastor or point

person on the team. If the person isn’t in favor of growth, then it simply will not happen. These

leaders must possess certain qualities and temperament.

1. Gifts: Several spiritual gifts naturally facilitate growth and are found in most pastors of

growing churches. These gifts includes: the gift of Leadership (They are strong servant-

leaders Rom 12:8), Faith( This gift helps Pastors want the church to grow and believe that

it will. It helps overcome fear of failure and helps to take risks for Christ’s sake, 1 Cor.

12:9), Evangelism (a leader who strongly desires to see the lost people come to the savior

and pursues the same will grow churches. Eph. 4:11.

2. Be Rancher. Church leaders must function as ranchers more than shepherds. Most

shepherds function as home visitor, marry couples, bury the dead, and preach on Sunday

mornings. It limits to Pastor and church to a certain number of members. The rancher sees

that it is done by others. Ranchers minister through people and train them to do so.

Ranchers believe in the abilities of others. He believes that he himself is dispensable. They

know that they can’t control all that happens in a church. Ranches are always at the

cutting-edge of what’s happening in Ministry whereas the shepherd maintains the status

quo.

Vision for Growth

If a church is to grow, then the people who make up the church, and lay leaders in particular, must

have a strong vision for growth. If they don’t, it won’t happen, no matter what the Pastor does.

There are negative growth factors that hinder the church from growing like that church planting

team should know and prevent from surfacing in church: A Family atmosphere( As good as a
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family atmosphere may be, it hinders church growth because members only love and care about

themselves. It’s all inreach with no outreach), a comfortable Community (this is a level of

personal comfort in people. They just do enough and nothing extra), A powerful Person (this

people or person have desire to control much of what happens in the church. They strongly resist

any efforts toward church growth.

However, there are positive growth factors that must be considered also: Cast a Single,

Clear Vision( Casting a clear, significant vision is crucial to facilitating a positive attitude toward

church growth, because it provides direction and motivation), Implementing small Groups ( The

church that implements a robust network of small groups at the very beginning avoids the problem

encountered in the family clan church), Mobilize Lay Army( This encourages church growth and

brings about a change in attitude concerning the pursuit of personal comfort.

Staffing for growth

The people who make up the team that is supposed to lead the church to growth is crucial. Two

questions are important: How many people should be on the team? Who are they?

HOW MANY?

The staffing of the church must not be inadequate and also must not be too much for the growth

vision.

WHO ARE THEY?

Who make up the staff team are critical to church growth. The source of staffing should begin with

the congregation, because most of them have caught the vision of the church. Outside congregation

is to be looked at also because they tend to bring new ideas to the team.

Some criteria should be considered when selecting these staffs. Personal character is key.

Does this person have a walk with God? A person of character forms the foundation upon which

ministry is built. As character goes, so goes the ministry. Secondly, they must own the vision and

core values. Thirdly, we must look for people whose gifts, talents and abilities are different from

but complement our own. Lastly, the team member must be loyal to the Pastor. Loyalty doesn’t
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mean being a clone of the Pastor nit respecting the pastor. It’s impossible to work well with the

leader that you don’t respect.

Mobilization for growth

Fourth growth factor concerns the mobilization of the people in the church. The Pastor or point

person has the ultimate responsibility for lay mobilization. This must be his responsibility until he

has trained someone else to do same.

A staff specialist who functions as a mobilizer must be on the team. The goal of this staff

person is to train laypeople to make over the church’s lay mobilization program.

A trained and gifted layperson can also serve in this position, who can accomplish ministry related

tasks far better than those who are pain to do so.

HOW TO MOBILIZE THE LAITY

A good assessment program consists of three phases: The first is Education phase, where the lay

people receive biblical and practical instruction on spiritual gifts, passion, temperament and so

forth. The purpose of this phase is to help them discover their unique divine design. Next phase is

consultation phase. Here laypeople meet with either someone from the staff team or a trained lay

leader who helps them analyze and synthesize the results. The purpose of this stage is to make sure

people have correctly analyzed themselves, answer any questions and discuss possible ministries in

the church.

The last phase is the mobilization phase where the consultant helps believers discover

where they can minister either within or outside the church body. The lay people are assigned to a

specific ministry that will train them for that particular service.

It’s important to institute this mobilization program early in the church growth process.

Assimilation for Growth

An important factor that is often overlooked in terms of church growth is assimilation. Most newly

planted churches will attract people through the front door and eventually will allow them exit
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through the back door. Assimilation focuses on ways to involve people in the church so that there

will be fewer people who leave. To achieve this, there must an atmosphere of acceptance (people

must feel accepted by the atmosphere created the church), new comers class (the purpose of the

new comers class is to tell people what the church is all about, what it expects from those who

want to be a part of it, and to answer any questions) and a new member’s class (this allows new

comers graduate to become a member of the church. They commit to the vision, join a small group,

go through assessment process to become involved in a ministry of the church, and support the

ministry financially and otherwise.

Organization for Growth

One key factor affecting church growth that’s often missed is the general organization of the

church. The church leaders must be fully engaged in the church administration. They should have

been trained and know what to do as at when to do them. No one should think that to minister to

people, church leaders must first go to college and then to seminary. Therefore, when they’re in

need of ministry, they expect the pastor or atleast a staff professional to call on them.

In a world that's quickly moving toward urbanization, we must abandon the rural ministry

model for a more practical, relevant model that focuses more on biblical principles. Probably the

best model is one that puts most of the administration in the hands of the staff and places the

ministry in the hands of the laypeople.

The principle. Scripture indicates that the entire body of the church is to be involved in the

ministry of the church. First Corinthians 12-14 clearly teaches that all believers in the body of

Christ have spiritual gifts and are necessary to the life and vitality of the church. A healthy,

growing body is one that places a balanced emphasis on all the gifts and the involvement of all the

people in the ministry of the church.

The lay ministries are constantly lauded and given high visibility in the church. The key

slogan is "Every member a minister." The second is an ongoing program of assessment so that

laypeople can discover their "tools" and places for ministry (their ministry "niche"). The third is

that the church must not start ministries until God raises up qualified laypeople to lead and staff
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them. The fourth is that these lay leaders have the authority to lead their ministries with only

minimal rules and outside interference.

THE BOOK’S CRITICISM

STRENGTH

1. The author has taken time to outline in details, the qualities or characters that are
expected from the leadership of a church that is interested in seeing their church
grow.
2. The author was explicit on the major factor that is responsible for church, and that
is the “GOD FACTOR”.
3. The author really helped us to know the qualities of the kind of people that should
be expected on a church growth team without mincing words.
4. The book is very practical and easy to understand.

WEAKNESS

1. The only weakness that I see in this chapter is, the part that talks about temperament on

Page 343, wasn’t explicit enough. It is an important part of the quality of a good team head

but justice wasn’t done to it properly.

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this chapter is to stress some of the more important factors and some that are often

overlooked in terms of church planting and growing it.

In our contemporary times, this chapter helps us to understand that bringing people into

the church’s growth team shouldn’t be based on bias, sentiments or “man know man”. Competent

hands must be recruited and properly trained to run with the vision of the set man in honesty and

loyalty.