How a Church Should Grow
Healthy local churches don’t grow the way one might think.
There’s always been something “other-worldly” about the Church: this is the arena where losing your life leads to finding it, turning the other cheek is the key battle strategy, and the greatest in the room are the ones carrying serving trays and serving everyone else.
No, the local church’s true path to health and effectiveness isn’t what you might expect and totally abandons the wisdom you might gain from a business seminar.
After all, a supernatural encounter with the promised Holy Spirit launched the early church, and we rely on the same Spirit to empower us to bear witness today. The growing church must understand the relationship between the three key elements of its growth-excellence, impact, and organization.
Excellence speaks of the quality with which we do things.
Impact is found in the genuine life-change realities people are experiencing.
Organization is the means by which we manage all of them and all we do with them.
Excellence, impact, and organization are the E-I-O of the growing church.
Unfortunately, many churches today think that excellence is the key driver for the local church’s future. Do it well—highest quality—and the crowd will come.
Hire the best musicians. Put on the most amazing Sunday presentation. Do it better than everyone else and the consumers will pour in. When excellence leads the way, quality is job one. Many have found such a focus works. The crowds come!
Unfortunately, such crowds are difficult to manage, and it's extremely difficult to turn consumer crowds into true disciples. Those who strive to provide excellence usually end up feeling exhausted, disillusioned, and burnt out.
Organization is another available focus. Get the right systems in place and you can manage thousands. Systems shape the DNA of the local church: the way we organize people, the way we structure their involvement, the way we follow-up, the way we do whatever it is that we need to do.
I once heard a megachurch called “a machine” for the incredible way they had organized their systems. Such observations caused me to think that the key difference between large and small churches was their level of organization.
But a few more years and wider observations showed me something else more clearly: Jesus intended His Church to be focused on impact.
He told us that the real mission is to make disciples, not build crowds, and then He went out and modeled such thinking every day of His earthly life.
