Jonathan Herron

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5 Keys to Growing Your Church in 2023

5 Keys to Growing Your Church in 2023

Why are the things that USED to work not working now?

Why are most churches NOT growing right now?

 

1. The Great Reset happened - and it impacted almost every church. Culture shifts - pandemic, politically, racial strife, migration out of cities.  People are rethinking everything.
   
   
2. America is becoming more post-Christian.  Rise of the Nones.
   
   
3. You’ve shut down or throttled back your digital presence.  This gets rid of your discoverability.  Or it’s all about Sunday only.
   
   
4. What you offer digitally is the same as what you offer in-person.
   
   
5. The message isn’t the draw it used to be.  Scarcity creates value and the message isn’t scarce since it’s online.
   
   
6. Hype isn’t cutting it anymore.
   
   
7. You’re focused on the wrong audience.

So how do you grow your church in this environment?

 

Key #1: Renew yourself and your team.  A lot of pastors are exhausted.  Lots of grief.  Lack of momentum is it’s own form of discouragement.  Healthy leaders grow healthy churches.  Unhealthy leaders don’t.   What do you need to do to become a healthy leader?  Grieve your losses and process everything you’ve been through.   Healthy at the top, healthy at the bottom.  Aligned at the top, aligned at the bottom.  Healthy people aren’t attracted to unhealthy leaders or organizations.  

 

Key #2: Renew your mission.  Work on your mission until it burns white hot.  Identify a big problem you are trying to solve.  Renew or define the founder/problem fit.

 

Key #3: Make digital and in-person each more distinctive.  Make in-person more personal.  Make in-person a non-downloadable, transcendent experience.  “You kinda had to be there.”  

 

Key #4: Elevate community.  We’re drowning in a world of content.  Nobody should be able to out-community the local church.   Relationships are sticky; they make you stick around!  

 

Key #5: Identify and scale your biggest growth barrier.  Barriers emerge at 200, 400, and 800 attenders:

• 200 Barrier: Pastoral care – scale your pastoral care. The key to pastoral care is having someone who cares.  It doesn’t have to be the pastor.
• 400 Barrier: Staffing – Hire leaders, not doers.  
• 800 Barrier: Governance and push-down decision making.  Staff-led, elder-protected, people gifted.

 

• Identify your biggest growth barrier and how you intend to scale it.

Listen to God & Do What He Says

Listen to God & Do What He Says

They Were On Fire

I’ve always been fascinated by the lives of the earliest Christians who lived two thousand years ago. 

Under the crush of Roman occupation, a new movement was birthed: men and women who worshiped the risen Messiah. 

This wave of radical acceptance and grace-filled lives swept the world and changed human history.

In 1947, J.B. Phillips wrote this description of the Christian movement: 

“The great difference between present-day Christianity and that of which we read in these letters is that to us it is primarily a performance, to them it was a real experience. We are apt to reduce the Christian religion to a code, or at best a rule of heart and life. To these men it is quite plainly the invasion of their lives by a new quality of life altogether.

They do not hesitate to describe this as Christ ʻliving inʼ them. These early Christians were on fire with the conviction that they had become, through Christ, literally sons of God; they were pioneers of a new humanity, founders of a new Kingdom. They still speak to us across the centuries. Perhaps if we believed what they believed, we might achieve what they achieved."

 

The earliest followers experienced the powerful aftermath of Jesus’ empty tomb: thousands of people turning to Jesus as their Master and Forgiver, radical life-change, and rumblings throughout society about this God-man who now lives. 

In addition to keeping the Jewish Sabbath, these first followers of Christ added the observance of the first day of the week - the day that Jesus rose from death to life.  This is why most Christians worship on Sunday mornings. 

According to premiere Christian historian Justo Gonzalez, the earliest communion services did not center on Christ’s passion - they were not quiet, introspective, reflective services.  

Instead, Christians worshiped weekly in loud celebration, understanding that the tomb was empty, death could not hold Jesus, and He was ushering in a new age of victory.  Yes, every Sunday was a party for One! 

It was much later - centuries later - before the focus of Christian worship shifted towards the death of Jesus.  In the earliest Christian community, the breaking of bread took place “with glad and generous hearts” (Acts 2:46).

May we embrace this same infectious enthusiasm first demonstrated by the earliest Christ followers. 

May we worship Jesus Christ with great passion, may we love others with scandalous grace, and may we be outward-focused in our church communities. 

An empty tomb provokes nothing less.