Health Archives - Page 2 of 2

The Myth of Inevitable Church Growth

June 26, 2013 / 5 minutes of reading

A healthy church does not inevitably mean a growing church. I used to believe that it did. After all, I’ve read about the “truth” of inevitable church growth in every church leadership book written in the last 30 years. I even taught it myself.

I don’t believe it any more. It’s a myth. The reason I no longer believe that numerical growth is inevitable for a healthy church has to do with one problem that kept presenting itself…

The evidence stubbornly refuses to back it up.

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We’re Pushed to Build Bigger Churches – Who Catches Us When We Fall?

June 3, 2013 / 5 minutes of reading

The push to build bigger churches continues full steam ahead in many (maybe most) American denominations. In the past few weeks, I’ve received several cries for help from Small Church pastors because of the damage this push is causing. Today I’m posting two of those messages. One was a comment on this blog. The other was a

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What If We Made Disciples and Left Church Growth to God?

May 6, 2013 / 5 minutes of reading

We’re often told that one of the reasons so many churches remain small is lack of faith. But I wonder… could it be that the reverse is true? Might our obsession with bigger and bigger churches be rooted in a greater lack of faith?

Have we been afraid that God might not do his part (building his church) if we’d simply be faithful to do our part (making disciples)? Is it possible that the glut of church growth books, seminars and classes in the last few decades been our attempt to help God out?

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Big? Or Healthy? If You HAD to Choose…

April 24, 2013 / 3 minutes of reading

Church health and church growth are not mutually exclusive. There are plenty of large, healthy churches that do both – and way too many unhealthy small ones that do neither. But one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other. Not all healthy churches grow big. And not all big churches are healthy. In more than 30

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3 Surprising Misunderstandings About Church Turnarounds

April 8, 2013 / 4 minutes of reading

Why do you want your church to turn around? There are a lot of good reasons to do so. Among them, you might want to see your church move from: Unhealthy to healthy Inward-obsessed to outward-focused Stuck in the past to excited about the future Unloving to loving Uninviting to inviting Legalistic to joyous Shallow

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If the Apostles Didn’t Teach Church Growth, Why Do We?

March 18, 2013 / 4 minutes of reading

Why does everyone want to be like the first century church? From what I can tell, it wasn’t that much different from today’s church. They had large and small churches. Healthy, sick and dead churches. Churches with strong leaders, weak leaders and sinful leaders. They worshiped God imperfectly and fought over theology. Some churches gave

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