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.