10 Principles for Church Growth (Pt. 2)

Principle #2: WORSHIP

For starters, it really needs to be something that the church truly understands and that is that worship is not something that only occurs on Sunday mornings. Sunday morning is only a culmination of a week long, 24/7 experience of worship.

Worship is our life. It is all that we are offered to our heavenly Father every day we are alive. What happens on Sunday morning is different in that it is a celebration experience. It is the time that we all gather together to celebrate who God is and what He has done in our lives and to remember the sacrifice of His Son and His death on a cross. Worship on Sunday differs only in that it is no longer an individual experience but a corporate one.

And a growing church understands this basic principle of worship in a corporate environment: That we gather to celebrate and NOT to fellowship. Smaller, unhealthy churches try to replace worship celebrations with fellowship. The corporate worship experience is Not a fellowship experience. It isn't about US...it is about HIM, our heavenly Father.

When a church tries to accomplish fellowship when we are supposed to be focused on God, we lose out and a church that does this will NOT grow. Some of the most intense battles I have faced have not been about different musical styles, they have been about taking away a fellowship focus on Sunday morning and replacing with a celebration experience.

When we moved to two services, some of the arguments I heard were: I don't see anyone I know anymore. Well, as long as you see Jesus...does it really matter. Besides, if you want to see those people, then give them a flipping phone call and don't wait till Sunday morning to do what you probably should have done beforehand.

Fellowship is supposed to take place in small groups or in Sunday School or on your own in individual relationships throughout the church. But if you think the only place it should be done is on Sunday morning (and a lot of people do) then you have missed the point of the corporate worship experience.

Another note about worship being a reason that a church will grow is this...when we gather and celebrate Jesus as One Body, we better worship God with our very best efforts together. And if we offer lousy singing, lousy services, lousy preaching then we will never grow. God deserves our VERY BEST. Anything less means we do not take our faith very seriously. God is worth the best that we can offer in singing, preaching, and even ambiance when it comes to our corporate experience.

Choices 2

A little Photoshop Americana Tribute:

I did this in Photoshop yesterday as I am thinking ahead about Memorial Day and also will do a two-part series in July on "God and Country."

10 Principles for Growing a Church (Pt. 1)

Years ago I read Bob Russell's book When God Builds A Church. I remember being really motivated by this book to implement all that I learned. In the book he shares 10 principles that I want to outline over the next few weeks that I believe are critical to the process of building a church as well. I am only sharing his principles but I will share how I see it working out in a real world scenario.

Principle #1: TRUTH

It may seem like a funny place to start but I know more and more that you can't do anything with God unless this is the first step in the process. We live in a day and age when people in the culture no longer fear God. That is solely because churches and pastors have stopped proclaiming the truth of God's Word.

Bob Russell wrote: Truth without love is dogmatism. Love with truth is sentimentality. Speaking the truth in love is Christianity. How true!

We need to balance our approach. We need to speak clearly on issues that our culture would rather us not even speak on at all but we need to do it in a way that earns our hearing. So we need to do it in love. That is hard.

What the church needs now more than ever are not the latest three point steps in living a fulfilled life. We need more than veiled pop-psychology, we need God's sometimes offensive, even abrasive but always relevant truth spoken from our pulpits. We need to use a lot of Scripture when we teach and help people to crave God's Word. We need to instill a desire amongst our people to want more from God's Word.

We need to clearly proclaim that man's ultimate problem is sin. And without Jesus Christ's transformational grace applied to his life then man will spend eternity in a very real place called Hell. We need to have the same mindset as Paul did about preaching in 1 Corinthians 9:16.

What we need right now in the church, now more than ever, is churches that have preachers who will believe the truth, teach the truth and apply the truth. There is no possible way for a church to grow without this element. It is the foundational step to growing.

And it is something that I see as the MOST important step in the process of growing a church.