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NEW this month!

Wow,  we are really blown away by God's goodness!

More pastors than ever before have visiting our site last month (January 2010) and found help for their ministries

New - You can try a 3-month Coaching Project with Dr. Bill Miller

• Church Growth Factoids:
  
  • What is your definition of Church Health?
• Lots of new Blog Posts:
  • New Blog Topics - Goals & Productivity
    
• Coaching:
  • New Tools for your ministry: Time Analysis
  • Current hot property:  "Leadership Track"
    And it's FREE!

• Sermons:  "Maturity: How to Measure Up to God's Standards"
   

CHURCH GROWTH FACTOIDS:

Take a look at these new Factoids

Factoid: CHURCH HEALTH STATS

For a church it might be that health for us is an annual growth rate of 5%, with half of that growth coming through evangelism, annual offerings of $1,000 per person (based on average Sunday morning worship attendance), 40% of adults in small-group Bible studies, and average pastoral tenure of at least nine years.

Source: (Anderson, Leith. A Church for the 21st Century. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1992, p. 128.)

Leith Anderson lists five factors which he considers necessary in a definition of church health.  These factors are:  1) Attendance Growth;  2) Conversion Growth 3) Financial Commitments; 4) Small Group Participation; 5) Pastoral Tenure.

Let's look at why each of these might be important definitions of chuch health:

1st - Attendance Growth
If you want a healthy church, you must have people.  If people are satisfied and happy, and feel like they are getting some spiritual benefit out of your church, they will tell others about it. 

Proverbs 14:28 says:  "A large population is a king’s glory, but without subjects a prince is ruined."

2nd - Conversion Growth
I am very glad to see him include this.  There is no point in just "shuffling the saints".  We want to add to the Kingdom of Heaven by seeing people trust Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  Conversion growth is a critical measurement of success.  But the fact is that many churches do not count conversions, because the results would be pretty embarrassing.

3rd - Financial Commitment
Jesus said, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also"  (Matt. 6:21).  If people are not willing to give to the cause of Christ at your church, then something is wrong. There are two possible reasons:  first, their hearts are not fully devoted to Christ; second, they have some doubts about the spiritual impact of your church.  Both would be negative factors on church health. So financial commitment is a good measure of church health.

4th - Small Group Participation
Why is this one here?  It is really in the context of small groups that people have a chance to learn and practice the 'one another's' of Scripture.  This is where the love in your church can grow and bloom.  Small group participation (or some regular group involvement) is a good measure of the health & well-being of your congregation.

5th - Pastoral Tenure
This one might seem surprising, but it makes sense that if the main shepherd can be there a long time, he can provide long-term care for the flock.  In a study of the twenty largest churches in America, in all cases except one, that pastor of each church had been there for more than 20 years.  The one exception was a pastor who had been there 13 years, which is still a long time.  So pastoral tenure affects not only church health, but also church growth.

These and other Factoids can be found at ChurchGrowth Factoids

HighPower Thoughts  Blog

(What I'm learning right now in the areas of Ministry Coaching, Simple Church, Church Growth & Church Health.)

Recent Posts:

Productivity Series: 3, How to write a SMART Goal, and Why
Productivity Series: Goals & the Focused Life
Productivity Series: The Power of Goals
Getting Things Done: The System & the Software

• Check out the Blog here.

Coaching

NEW Resources:   Time Satisfaction Analysis

WHAT DRAINS YOU EMOTIONALLY?

If you want to make the best use of your time, you need to take a look at all of your activities, and identify those which drain you. Then find a way to diminish your energy drainers, and power up those activities which power you up!

Download the “Time Inventory & Analysis” and find out where all that time is going.  (TimeAnalysis.pdf)

Other HighPower Coaching Resources can be found here.

Software News

SermonBase Message Planning Software

Tip: How to Locate a Sermon with specific Qualities

Example: On Saturday night, recently, I was informed that the Guest Speaker for the morning had fallen ill. I needed to have a sermon ready for Sunday morning. So I was looking for one with the following qualities:

Completed;

w/ PPT;

w/ Fill-in-the-Blank notes;

By using SermonBase, I had record of all of that. I could simply do Search…, then identify possible messages, and find those that had the “FileFolders” filled in w/ a PPT, and Blank Notes. Success!

Shepherd Care Group Software

TIP: How to see all of your small groups at once

ALL FLOCKS VIEW
is designed to let you see all of your small groups and discipleship classes at once, and quickly jump to any of them. How: From the Flocks screen, click on the mini-tab “All Flocks”.
You will then see every group in your church. This “portal view” has a scroll bar to view any extra groups that are there. To examine one of your Flocks in greater detail, just click on it’s name. The left side of the Flocks screen will immediately jump to the selected Flock. From there you can see every detail about that Flock.

Family Faces Church Directory Software

Tip: How many families can you put into FamilyFaces?

Answer: A lot! Our church of 700 is using FamilyFaces with no performance hits yet. Because FamilyFaces is made using Filemaker software beneath it, it is very robust and fast.

HighPower Library -- Free software for Pastors

Click on HighPower Software to download your software Demos today.

Seminars

For a list of both our on-site seminars and our “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) Seminars, click on HighPower Seminars to learn more.

Sermons - New Sermon Available

New Sermon: “Maturity: How to Measure Up to God’s Standards” (Eph. 4:1-16)

From Ephesians 4:1-16, this sermon addresses the topic of Spiritual Growth.

Specifically, What are the three parts of Spiritual Growth?

It also ties in the relationship between the individual Christian’s spiritual growth and the overall maturity and growth within the Body of Christ. It is a very thorough exposition of Ephesians ch.4.

HighPower Sermons