From Church Growth vs. Church Seasons – By Jay Childs
Healthy churches go through life cycles of growth, pruning, decline and blessing. Healthy churches do often grow and sometimes for long periods of time. But healthy churches also plateau, decline and receive pruning from God’s hand. Size is not in our hands. Size is in the hands of the Sovereign one.
Just like personal evangelism, our role is to communicate a message; it is God’s role to bring increase or not. The same is true of church growth.
The real issue is health and witness. The Scripture teaches that faithfulness for a church does not always mean never ending growth but health influence and outreach. Doing and being the church is essential whether numbers are exploding or flat. God has his sovereign reasons and his purposes for each church.
Bible Readers: Less Debt, More Giving - There is a direct correlation between Bible reading, debt and generosity. One survey shows that of people who read the Bible four to seven times per week, 85% donate 10% or more of their income to charitable causes compared to only 40% of those who do not read the Bible. Frequent Bible readers also carried less debt than non-readers.
Youth Ministry Declining – Only one in four teens now participates in church youth groups. The numbers are flat over the past decade according to research from the Barna Group. “A decade ago teens were coming to church youth group to play, coming for the entertainment, coming for the pizza,” says one church researcher. “They’re not coming for pizza anymore. Teens today, don’t see the church as relevant.”
One church in Chester, Virginia responded by turning their group into the “Marine Corps of Christianity.” “Real church, centered on Jesus Christ is hard work,” the youth leaders wrote. Attendance which had fallen dramatically last year has rebounded.
-----------------------------------------
Are you on Facebook? Become a friend of Larry Davies. Larry posts encouraging messages daily.
No comments:
Post a Comment