Musings on Spiritual Matters

Probably most preachers have dreams of growing a congregation.  Some might now, often these guys point to examples of faithful men who produced little fruit.  But mostly if a preacher is honest with himself, he does desire to be involved in a growing work with a church.  It is frustrating to ministers to serve year after year with little growth in the congregation.  Not that these guys are unfaithful, but if we had to pick, we would pick growing the congregation instead of seeing it decline.  The problem is that often most ministers do not know what the best behaviors are on a weekly bases to produce growth in the church.  There are thousands of options to pick from, and often there is a fine balancing act of which ones to focus on the most.  What are the best behaviors for a preacher to produce growth?  I wish I could say I have this down, but that would be a lie.  For me, this is a great question, and one that I am always searching for an answer too.  What makes a preacher effective?  What produces the most fruit for the most time given?  These questions haunt me.  Not that I know much, but here is my thinking so far.

1. Preaching.  Now there are guys who say this as well.  Great sermons produce great churches.  Sometimes these guys will spend countless hours in preparation of a lesson but still not produce positive results.  All the Greek work in the world will not produce a great sermon.  It takes more.  But if you keep your preaching up, this will keep the numbers up.  Added work here will have huge benefits in the congregation.

2. Disciple Making.  You got to invest in leaders.  You have to reproduce yourself in a congregation if you are a healthy leader of God’s people.  This takes time and investment, but if you can help others lead in the congregation, you will produce more results and ministry.

3. Evangelism.  You have to model the passion for this, if not, this spirit can die in a church.  If it does, everything dies with it.

4. Community involvement.  Yes, join a Rotary club or something.  It takes you out of the church bubble and into the town bubble.

Of course these are broad categories, and really do not often much help.  There is so much more on these areas that need to be addressed.  But the search for the best behaviors continue.

Related posts:

1. Elders-Preachers Retreat
2. Hiring Preachers and Being Stagnant
3. Preachers Or Person
4. The Problem with Preachers
5. Praise to Preachers

Tags:

This entry was posted by Matthew on Monday, July 30th, 2012 at 11:36 am and is filed under Church News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.