Carey Nieuwhof is not a United Methodist. Nope, he’s the pastor of Connexus Community Church in Ontario, Canada which is part of a network of churches that have been influenced by Andy Stanley’s North Point Ministries. And yet, he’s a voice we should be listening to because again and again Carey posts pithy articles on church leadership and evangelism that are worth thinking about. Today (which you have have already read) he unpacked the 8 reasons most churches never break the 200 in attendance mark:
You know why most churches still don’t push past the 200 mark in attendance?
You ready?
They organize, behave, lead and manage like a small organization.
Think about it.
There’s a world of difference between how you organize a corner store and how you organize a larger supermarket.
I wonder if these churches who do not want to grow have any vision or mission statement that defines what they are about and a leader who can teach, enable and enpower the vision. Apparently these churches are looking to their leader to do everything and have no concept of the ministry of lay persons.
I was in a church many in teh 1980s that was about 150 members with an ASA of 50 or so when we started going there (due to a job relocation). We more than doubled to about 350/140 over the next few years and completely remodeled the interior of the church which was aboutt the ugligest lavender and linoleum you ever saw with donations. After that, I expressed to the rector that our church was poised to grow and should should be 1000/400, and he told me to not even go there. He was quite happy where we were. We left shortly thereafter. Point being, don’t always blame the laity. There are plenty of just plain lazy clergy who don’t want to do the work necessary to cultivate growth. BTW, that church has struggled ever since and my prediction is it will eventually close its doors. On the flip side, I had a promininet lay person tell me that my Evangelism efforts were (1) a waste of time and (2) un-Episcopalian, saying “Everyone who ought to be an Episcopalian already is one, or will figure it out on their own.” Note that person didn’t think evangelism had anything to do with Christianitry or the Great Commission. TEC is an extension of the country club to her. And as a fair disclaimer–I left TEC in 2011, and am now part of PEARUSA which is a church planting/evagelistic body.
I surfed through a maze of hyperlinks to get to the original article. To the right of it is another intimidating list of points in the style ‘Five Reasons wby your Church is …’ and on and on. What is it about evangelicals and lists? Leaving that one aside, I was left with an impression of managerialism. Perhaps it works. But does it set too much of the tone of the church where it is applied? Where is the untidiness, the unpredictability of the Holy Spirit?