Does Your Church Have PLANS?

Just this past week, a friend of mine asked me a pointed and direct question: "Is your church growing?"  I was a bit taken aback, but I responded by saying; "Yes, we are growing...we have been tackling many tough topics in our messages on Sunday morning."  "No," said my friend, "Is it growing?"  "Well yes, we had a great leadership retreat last week at a church retreat."  "That's not what I mean," said my friend, "Is your church growing in numbers?"  I figured out what my friend was driving at.  He wanted to know if our church was growing in numerical size.  "Yes, yes it is, I said, but that is not the only growth we are experiencing."

Usually when churches talk about growth they mean one of two things.  They mean growth in terms of Sunday attendance, or growth in terms of budget.  As one pastor once told me, "people vote on your church each Sunday with their butts and their checkbooks."  However, a better sign of growth is a quick acronym that I have recently developed, that measures more than butts in seats, and includes 5 areas of growth:

P = Pastoral Growth

No church can grow beyond its pastoral leadership.  Check that.  No organization can grow beyond its leader.  A pastor must model and lead growth in any church system.  If the pastor has a discipline problem, chances are the church has a discipline problem.  If a pastor has a money problem, chances are the church has a money problem.  If a pastor is learning and growing each week, the church will learn and grow each week.  This past week I did quite a bit of personal growth.  I learned how to build and run Pro-Presenter 5 (a writing program for worship services).  A healthy church needs to have the pastor or pastors leading and modeling growth.

L = Leadership Growth

No church can grow beyond its leadership.  This can involve all kinds of leadership: staff, elders, trustees, deacons, and volunteers.  The leaders of a church must also always be growing.  New ideas, new techniques, new disciplines, new skills, new thoughts, new inspirations.  A healthy church will also have a regular influx of new leaders, new volunteers, new directors, new elders, new deacons.  An unhealthy church generally has the same leaders rotating in and out of leadership each season.

A = Area Growth

You can always tell a really healthy church from the neighborhood and surrounding area around the actual church complex.  A healthy church not only is a great body of believers, but it impacts the surrounding community in positive ways.  The businesses around a healthy church improve.  The streets around a healthy church become more uplifted, are more economically robust, are more improved.  One of my favorite examples of this is South Barrington, Illinois, where Willow Creek Community Church is located.  Once a rural, sleepy suburb of Chicago, South Barrington is now one of the most robust neighborhood communities in all of suburban Chicago.  In a sense, the church brought the neighborhood up.

N = Numerical Growth

A church that is healthy grows numerically.  The book of Acts says that in the first church in history, the "Acts 2" church, "The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved" (Acts 2:47).  If a church isn't growing numerically, day by day, there is a problem.  Just as a healthy child must grow day by day, so should a church.  I have found that the reason that most churches don't grow is not because of a lack of friendliness, but because a church has an emotional or spiritual space that is being occupied in an unhealthy way by a handful of leaders who have always "done it a certain way." All churches are basically living organisms.  If a living organism isn't growing it either isn't alive, or it is being impeded in some unhealthy way from growing.

S = Spiritual Growth

This is the hardest dynamic to gauge.  Spiritual growth cannot be put on a chart and measured like a numeric equation or a set of numbers.  Spiritual growth is elusive and hard to nail down.  However, you know it when you have experienced Spiritual growth.  Have you ever had a really hard day, but you didn't really know why that day was particularly difficult?  Chances are your day had some Spiritual dynamic which made it very challenging to work through. Spiritual growth is hard to measure, but it's real!

So, those are my 5 indexes of a healthy church.

P = Pastoral Growth
L = Leadership Growth
A = Area Growth
N = Numerical Growth
S = Spiritual Growth

So, here's the question....Does Your Church Have....PLANS?

All For Now,
GB