Loading ...Breaking the 200 Barrier
At the Castle Rock congregation, we are going on a retreat to a old Castle in the mountains (Colorado is so beautiful), and on this retreat we are hoping to develop a vision for the future of the congregation. The Castle Rock congregation is averaging about 220 right now so we are already over the 150 to 200 marker, but for us to continue we must continue to press forward. This is a driving passion of the elders and the ministers of the church. We all have a coherent vision of Castle Rock being a ministrial hub for churches across the USA and the world. Everyone expects the congregation to reach into the 400 to 500 mark because of the healthy, growth, and committment of the congregation, but to do this there will always have to be struggles and changes to take place within the congregation. For us to reach this level of attendance and impact in the world for Christ, we have to break through one of the hardest transitions for congregations. It is typically called the Pastoral to Program shift. But I am wondering if we can do this another way. All the church growth books advocate a program emphasis for breaking the barrier of 200, but one of the core elements of Castle Rock is great programs, but we focus on great relationships. Other churches are not follow the classic model of adding more programs but are developing great ministries to reach out and help out. I am not personally a advocate of adding program after program that usually leads into poor programing, but I rather focus on growing the congregation through strong service and relationships. I would love some advice for the coming retreat on making this shift?
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About The Author
At Waynesboro we went from 160 to the 190’s because of adding more staff (Mitchell who was great and one of the best ministers to ever work with), he developed CSI which was an afterschool program that was highly successful. These two things really pushed us forward. We spread out the leadership within the congregation. Love to hear stories or points on what we can do here in Castle Rock.
One of our “O’s” requires that every two years we review every aspect of our work as to what we need to keep, refocus or scrap! That keeps programs from becoming deified and not effective.
Let me just plug a bug in your ear. Consider also planting a church? I am not the guru on church planting but my hope is that one day a congregation I am serving with will help plant a church planting church. This is one of the reasons why the Independent Christian Churches / Instrumental Churches of Christ are growing as a fellowship.
I know of a couple of their congregations that have gone out to one of their Christian colleges/graduate theological schools and recruited a person with the passion and spiritual gifts for church planting. They bring this person in as part of the ministry staff for 2-3 years where they work with a handful of members from their church who feel called to serve bi-vocationally as church planters and develop a church planting team, vision, mission, etc… and then send them out to plant a new church in the designated target area.
I am mentioning this because as many people as our congregations could potentially connect with the gospel, I am convinced we could connect even more through church planting. Within the Churches of Christ, there is Stan Granberg with Kairos Church Planting (www.kairoschurchplanting.org) and Gailyn Van Rheenen with Mission Alive (www.missionalive.org) who are helping churches plant churches. Both groups sort of work like Missions Resource Network does with people who are going to plant churches in Africa and Asia.
Any ways, just a thought that was running through my head as I read your post. Again, I am glad things are going well there for your sakes, the congregation’s sake, and most importantly the sake of God and his kingdom.
Grace and peace,
Rex
Dale I love those 6 “o”. You to publish them because are so helpful for congregational. I am going preach them in castle rock. Rex, a friend of mine beleives that planning to plant a church will help the church continue to grow.
Matthew,
One thing that planting churches does is help instill in the church ethos the idea of mission. I am more and more convinced that for many Christians in N. America, “mission” is something only for accross seas. I don’t know how we arrived at that thinking but we surely did not get it from reading the Bible.
-Rex
Acts 1:8 “… and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem (across the street), Judea (across the state) and in all Judea (across the nation) and Samaria (where you don’t want to go) and to the end of the earth (anywhere and everywhere).
We don’t see the mission in our own backyard, in our own state, or in our own nation… which has a lot to do with why those 3 places are in such dire need of the Gospel. Throw in the places that we don’t want to personally go to and that leaves you with sending your money to support others at the end of the earth.
Can’t get your hands very dirty writing a check to those across the globe. Working with those across the street/town/state/nation is a little bit scary because we then must take a personal stake in the work, teaching, reaching, healing, forgiving, etc… those who are right here in from of us.
Jimbo
I love the application you gave to Acts 1:8. Great stuff.
Matthew,
Thanks for the kind comments, I truly believe that we had a synergy that worked well together.
My belief is that the focus needs to be on ministries. Ministries are servant led, meaning that people involved in the ministries are growing spiritually and they are in the field sowing seed. Basically, That’s all we can do, we sow the seed and God makes it grow. Seed can be sown in many ways; feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, counseling the hurting, playing dodgeball with kids in an after school ministry, and the list goes on.
In ministry led congregations the community begins to learn the congregation as God intended, they meet Christians, not programs or facilities. The lost are saved through relationships, obviously it requires a relationship with Christ but that most often evolves out of a relationship with one of Christ’s followers.
Castle Rock will experience explosive growth if you can “sell” the congregation on the “every member is a minister” philosophy. You have the base of a large community and you have the support of a caring, determined, Spirit-led eldership; establish the ministries, identify the leaders and get out of the way!
Matthew,
Just some questions that might help you in your retreat. The increase at Waynesboro from 160-190 net 30. Was it due to brand new disciples coming from lost and uncharted backgrounds and if so did the 30 new disciples represent the demographics surrounding the building like race, age, socio-economic groups etcetera. Instead of planning for numerical increase in attendance maybe you and the leadership group should consider how to “Spiritually Prepare” yourselves and the congregation. By spiritual preparation I mean how to engage the emerging post modern culture in spiritual dialogue (Answering their theological questions), how to make significant friendships with people who not typical white middle class church goers, Overcoming Legalism and creating a grace centered culture in the church, creating a come as you are culture in the church. Before you do this weekend I would recommend you read the book “Creating a come as you are culture in the church” by John Burke. It has a lot of questions that would be good for your retreat here is a sample of some of the questions. The opening question is this. What do a gay rights activist, a Buddhist monk, a twenty something single mom, a high tech engineer have in common? They are the future church in America! He illustrates that the demographics in Americas have been changing drastically and quickly and not in favor of the traditional church so new converts will come from our post modern culture that is very skeptical of organized religion.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&ISBN=9780310275015&ourl=No%2DPerfect%2DPeople%2DAllowed%2FJohn%2DBurke
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction: God’s Story in Our Stories 9
Part One: The Struggle for Emerging Generations
1 The First Corinthian Church of America 15
2 Cynical and Jaded: Results of the Postmodern Experiment 29
Part Two: The Struggle with Trust
3 Doubters Wanted: Creating a Culture of Dialogue 51
4 Losing My Need to Pretend: Creating a Culture of Authenticity 69
Part Three: The Struggle with Tolerance
5 Come as You Are: Creating a Culture of Acceptance 87
6 But Don’t Stay That Way: Creating a Culture of Growth 105
7 What about Other Religions? The Tolerance Litmus Test–Q1 125
8 How Do You Feel about Gays? The Tolerance Litmus Test–Q2 147
Part Four: The Struggle with Truth
9 The Humble Truth about Truth: Creating a Culture of Truth-Telling
Humility 167
10 Tribal Truth: Creating the Culture of Incarnational Truth 185
Part Five: The Struggle with Brokenness
11 All God Intended You to Be: Creating a Culture of Hope 205
12 Mental Monogamy: Creating a Culture of Sexual Wholeness 223
13 Recovering an Addicted Generation: Creating a Culture of Healing 243
Part Six: The Struggle with Aloneness
14 Nobody Stands Alone: Creating a Culture of Connection 267
15 The Family I Never Had: Creating a Culture of Family 285
Part Seven: The Struggle Forward
16 Life or Death? Creating a Culture for Emerging Leaders 303
Joe,
We grew in Waynesboro the old fashion way through converrsions. If you knew Waynesboro you do not get move in growth, just move out decline but we beat it by converting people. We focued on spiritual growth and not how to grow the church.
That is good Matthew. It will be interesting to see how many of those new converts really become disciples and are still attending or growing spiritually in a few years. Remember the great commission is make disciples not just drag as many as possible to the baptistery. We recently did two studies of new converts one was with the Crusade in Dallas which was wrote up in the Christian Chronicle that claimed 400 baptisms another was with a church in central Texas that claimed 350 baptism of new converts in two years. In a nut shell only 15-20% were still attending a church with “church of Christ” on the sign outside the building after three years. 5% left the churches of Christ for other churches. Out the 15-20%who were still attending only a few about half (50%) could really point to significant on going personal transformation. So I would suggest that in your retreat you not only talk about conversions but making disciples. By disciples I mean transformed people that are being spiritually transformed constantly. We also learned that the conversions were predominantly white middle class so they did not proportionately represent the diverse culture in which we find ourselves. When the church is disproportioned to the surrounding demographics the Gospel becomes more for one type of people and less for others. It is also counterintuitive to the Gospel that is for “ALL” people. So I hope your retreat considers more than just dragging people to the baptistery and getting more members. There are a lot of church buildings standing empty because that baptized many but made few disciples. Some issues besides the conversions is the mass exodus of young people from organized religion and the absence of all the people who are remaining single well in to their forties.
Most of the people that I baptized in Waynesboro are still faithfully attending. This says more about the goodness of the church there than about me. We do not believe in the get them wet evangelism. In Castle Rock one of the ministers does a lot of follow up study with every family that is reached too.