THE TWO HALVES OF CHURCH GROWTH
Most people only focus on half of the church growth equation, and therefore get less than stellar results. If you can focus on both halves of church growth, you will see your attendance numbers rise.
Everybody knows, and focuses on getting more VISITORS to your church. People may do outreach programs of various types, or spend money on advertising, or developing such exciting events that the positive buzz just keeps new people crossing the threshold into your church. And that is all great and necessary and important. But that's only the first half of church growth.
The second part, is not about increasing the number of visitors that come to your church, but about increasing the FREQUENCY of attendance by your REGULARS. You see, for many Americans now, "regular attendance" means only 2 or 3 times a month. Some even view themselves as regulars if they show up once a month at the same church. In fact, in one article I read by Lyle Schaller, he stated that a large percentage of Americans consider two different churches to be their "church home". For example, they may go to one church for the preaching and worship service, and go to another church for the youth program. Yet both churches consider them to be 'regulars' and mark them as such on the rolls. And then each church wonders why their attendance is not any higher.
In one large suburban church where I served, the attendance was averaging about 800. But when I checked the database for a list of regulars, it came out to be 1200 people! So their entire consituency as a church numbered 1200, but they only had about 66% of that constituency show up at any one time. This brings a lot of wrinkles into program planning. That means that if you wanted to make an announcement that you wanted the entire church to hear, you had to make sure you stated it for two weeks, and thereby have a better chance of all your 'regulars' knowing what's going on.
So if more of your regulars show up at the same time - that is, if you increase the frequency of attendance - you will increase your average attendance. For example, if those other 33% of that suburban church were to show up every week, they would be running an average of 1200 instead of 800.
So how do you increase frequency? Here are a few ideas:
1. You have to increase ownership. You have to help everyone in your congregation to feel the importance of their attendance each week. First for their own sake. They need to grow spiritually. They need to meet with the Lord. They need to worship and praise and fill their lives with joy. They need to serve somewhere.
2. Teach in sermon series. Emphasize the connection of all the messages together. Give a little intro tease for next week's message, and explain why it is critical that they come back for more.
3. Sign more people up to serve more frequently. In many churches, when people are making sign up lists for services like ushers, communion servers, coffee preparers, cookie bakers, etc. they sign up a huge crew of people, so that people 'don't have to do too much'. So they get signed up for something like once every three months. That doesn't do much for encouraging frequency does it? But if you pare those lists down, you increase the frequency of times people must show up to fulfill their obligations, and then you help them to develop healthy habits.
We need to realize that as church leaders, as shepherds, we are here to care for the people. And that means helping them to "flee temptation". People are tempted by the world to do many other things each week, rather than worship. But the Lord commanded us to rest once every seven days and to come into His presence for worship and prayer. When we help people to develop healthy habits of service or attendance, we are enabling them to overcome the natural lethargy of the human condition and to make a commitment to something that is true and good and noble (Php.4:8).
And that is the real reason to pursue church growth. Numbers are a by-product of a healthy church of regular attenders who know how to worship.
In Christ,
Dr. Bill
Everybody knows, and focuses on getting more VISITORS to your church. People may do outreach programs of various types, or spend money on advertising, or developing such exciting events that the positive buzz just keeps new people crossing the threshold into your church. And that is all great and necessary and important. But that's only the first half of church growth.
The second part, is not about increasing the number of visitors that come to your church, but about increasing the FREQUENCY of attendance by your REGULARS. You see, for many Americans now, "regular attendance" means only 2 or 3 times a month. Some even view themselves as regulars if they show up once a month at the same church. In fact, in one article I read by Lyle Schaller, he stated that a large percentage of Americans consider two different churches to be their "church home". For example, they may go to one church for the preaching and worship service, and go to another church for the youth program. Yet both churches consider them to be 'regulars' and mark them as such on the rolls. And then each church wonders why their attendance is not any higher.
In one large suburban church where I served, the attendance was averaging about 800. But when I checked the database for a list of regulars, it came out to be 1200 people! So their entire consituency as a church numbered 1200, but they only had about 66% of that constituency show up at any one time. This brings a lot of wrinkles into program planning. That means that if you wanted to make an announcement that you wanted the entire church to hear, you had to make sure you stated it for two weeks, and thereby have a better chance of all your 'regulars' knowing what's going on.
So if more of your regulars show up at the same time - that is, if you increase the frequency of attendance - you will increase your average attendance. For example, if those other 33% of that suburban church were to show up every week, they would be running an average of 1200 instead of 800.
So how do you increase frequency? Here are a few ideas:
1. You have to increase ownership. You have to help everyone in your congregation to feel the importance of their attendance each week. First for their own sake. They need to grow spiritually. They need to meet with the Lord. They need to worship and praise and fill their lives with joy. They need to serve somewhere.
2. Teach in sermon series. Emphasize the connection of all the messages together. Give a little intro tease for next week's message, and explain why it is critical that they come back for more.
3. Sign more people up to serve more frequently. In many churches, when people are making sign up lists for services like ushers, communion servers, coffee preparers, cookie bakers, etc. they sign up a huge crew of people, so that people 'don't have to do too much'. So they get signed up for something like once every three months. That doesn't do much for encouraging frequency does it? But if you pare those lists down, you increase the frequency of times people must show up to fulfill their obligations, and then you help them to develop healthy habits.
We need to realize that as church leaders, as shepherds, we are here to care for the people. And that means helping them to "flee temptation". People are tempted by the world to do many other things each week, rather than worship. But the Lord commanded us to rest once every seven days and to come into His presence for worship and prayer. When we help people to develop healthy habits of service or attendance, we are enabling them to overcome the natural lethargy of the human condition and to make a commitment to something that is true and good and noble (Php.4:8).
And that is the real reason to pursue church growth. Numbers are a by-product of a healthy church of regular attenders who know how to worship.
In Christ,
Dr. Bill
Labels: Church Growth, Church Health
posted by Dr. Bill at
7:11 PM
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