Breaking Growth Barriers

I am copying an entire post from alvaldez74 on the topic.

Nothing groundbreaking but good, basic stuff.

"I pray that this has been a great year for you & your church. I know that 2009 has been a historic year @VOSD & a wonderful year of breakthrough. I truly believe that we have certainly met all of our goals for 2009 & have stepped into 2010 with a driving passion to continue to reach God?s best for our church.

The next 3 blogs will speak to breaking church growth barriers in your church. I will certainly be speaking from a senior pastor?s perspective, but hopefully this information will be helpful to any of my friends who may use this blog as reference. Please feel free to leave a comment or question.

Breaking the 400 Barrier in your church.

1. Develop an identity that speaks to your community. Here is a question. Which ministry in your church speaks loudest to your community? When people think of your church, what do they think of? To break the 400 barrier, it is very important to present the ministry that you feel will cause for people to join you in that mission. Answer the question of: ?Why should I get involved?? Which ministry is your star?

2. Develop/Add more staff to your team. How many full-time minister?s serve your church? In order to break this barrier, staff is vital. It is virtually impossible to maintain a growth pattern without a staff that will serve & support the pastor?s of the church. There may have been times of growth, but in order to sustain growth, staff is vital.

3. Develop another Sunday morning service. For a church of 200-400 people, chances are there are limitations with facilities. One great tension of a growing church is Sunday morning seating, parking & children?s space. If you find that you have hit some of these barriers, an additional Sunday service may be in the cards. Here is a sure fire way to know. If a service is 70% full, it is full, if it is 80% full, it is too full, if it is 90% full you may be losing people. (There is also a way to monitor if your your new additional service is failing or succeeding.)

4. Develop a more quality ministry. As your ministry grows, expectations grow, because word of mouth grows & that is your greatest promotion. When people start to invite others to church, because they have had a life-changing experience, those new people come with a lot of hope. It may be worthwhile to evaluate your ministry leaders, ministry operations, children ministry, etc.

We only get one chance to make a first impression."

Kingdom of God TV

Spirituality as Relational Theology - Confirming the Pastoral Call by Joseph Umidi

I am challenged by the information in Chapter 11 regarding the mismatching of candidates and churches. Tim Dearborn?s research into Graduate Theological education in the Pacific Northwest is disheartening because of the discrepancies between what the seminaries are producing and what the churches are wanting.
We have a similar, if not worse situation in the UK, where theology as espoused by academia has very little in common with the faith of the person in the pew. In fact in a very real sense the theologians in many European countries no longer speak for the churches or the person in the pew.
I was concerned that the top priority for laymen of their leaders is Spirituality, whilst apparently seminary professors are not even looking for it! Alister McGrath at page 136 of his book, ?The Future of Christianity? makes the point;
?Theology used to be? not just objective science, but a personal knowledge of God and the things of God?. Theology is relational not just cognitive.?
In looking for Spirituality in the leaders, church members clearly want relational, not just cognitive theology; in not looking for it all, seminary professors are treading a worrying road! Perhaps this is one reason why the majority of seminary graduates serve small churches while one third of the senior pastors leading America?s megachurches do not have a seminary degree?

Teddy Kennedy: The Dark Side of Discipling

The recent death of Senator Edward Kennedy "Teddy the Terrible" is a parable of the sheer power of discipling. Unfortunately it is enough to make you despair!

Michael Kelly in an article in The Sunday Times (30.08.09) states "the senators amoral upbringing led to a life often wildly out of control".

Once "...the handsomest of the handsome Kennedy boys, with a proudly jutting chin, a Nelson Eddy jaw and Cupid's bow lips under a thatch of chestnut hair..." he became "a "husk", dried up and hollowed out", a "Senator Bedfellow figure, an ageing Irish boyo clutching a bottle and diddling a blonde".

By the age of 57 (in case you hadn't realised - this is young!) the skin on his face had "gone from red roses to gin blossoms. The tracery of burst capillaries (shining) faintly through the scarlet patches that cover the bloated, mottled cheeks" and "the nose that was once straight and narrow is now swollen and bulbous, with open pores..."

In respect of his marriage "He was philandering from the moment he was married". And in respect of political ambitions for the White House - well Chappaquiddick put paid to that.

So in just the few quotes that I've picked out above, we have a picture of physical degradation, moral anarchy, relational poverty, and a toxic mistake that forever poisoned his political ambitions!

What on earth could have caused so much damage to one man? It is like someone aimed a personal nuke at him and fired or that there was some malevolent supernatural force which had decided to hover over his life and persecute him all the days of his life.


Unfortunately, in his case, it seems the answer lay closer to home - "Joseph Kennedy sr flaunted his affairs in front of his wife and children, made crude passes at his sons' dates and well past his middle years was still chasing doxies".

Apparently, this parental pattern was at worst condoned, at best tolerated by those around him so that Teddy "presumably figured that the rules of decency nor of retribution applied" to him.

It seems he never forgot his childhood lessons...

There is another way.

God says, "I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you." Psalm 32:8.

Even if we are part of a family that is personally corrosive and disinterested in our welfare, we have a God who is just the opposite.

Jobs, Vocation, Calling - what are we here for?

Greg Ogden, in his book, "Unfinished Business", his update of "The New Reformation", quotes one frustrated person as saying, "I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job... Jobs are not big enough for people." There is a huge frustration that exists in people because they are not doing the jobs that match their giftings. As Ogden points out, "Though we recognise that in a fallen world there are no perfect jobs, as Christians we are called to express our individual inner design as a means of producing societal wholeness. The workplace provides the context for this to happen" (258).

The bible tells us that God knew us in the womb, that He formed us, that He has created us for good works. There is a clear design element to humanity. It is that inner design and unique self that gives the fundamental shape to our call. The call begins with the "inside job" God has aleady done on us.

Your first step, therefore, to knowing your call in life is to "know yourself".Some of the tools that we use at RVC to "know ourselves" are "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham, (a brilliant book), the five fold gifting test found in "The Apostles Notebook", (another great book), the Colour of Ministry (Natural Church Development), and Temperament Sorter (http://www.keirsey.com/), an on-line personality test based on Myers-Briggs.

I have personally found all the above tools to have been hugely helpful in understanding my own call and giftings.