"What was the secret of your church's growth?"  I was often asked this when I was the pastor in Napoleon.  I think every pastor and congregation would like to see their church grow.  We all realize that there are people around us that need to know Jesus as their Savior and we want to see people saved and discipled.  

At Napoleon, we never chased growth.  In other words, we never did things for the purpose of growing.  What we tried to do was create a culture of health in our church and then growth became a natural by-product.  This may seem overly simplistic but we thought, "Let's be a church people would want to attend.  If we do that, then people will attend."  Like I said, I know that sounds simplistic but that's what we did.  We had worship services where people experienced the presence of God and we created a culture and opportunities for people to love one another.  Another important thing is that we kept at it!  We didn't give up even when we got tired or discouraged.

I received an email this week from Dr. Bob Broadbooks, the director of our USA/Canada Region.  They talked to pastors of churches who have seen significant growth over the past few years.  What was interesting is that they didn't list complicated strategies.  In fact, they were very simple and things churches of all sizes can implement.  Richmond Southside took in 75 new members last year.  You would be shocked to hear their strategy.  It's pretty simple, but very powerful.  I'm copying and pasting Pastor Langford's reply to the question, "How."  Hopefully there will be something that will encourage you and spark some thought.

1.  Defined Target - We have worked diligently to help our congregation own a field of outreach. We are located in the center of Chesterfield County, Virginia. We have identified the unchurched demographics of our county and determined that we are called to reach 2% of that unchurched group. This translates into 3,670 people. By determining this as our responsible target, we began to pray and seek ways to reach this targeted group with passion and diligence. This has created an atmosphere of focus, and our broader base of leadership is wrestling with the question, "How will we reach this segment of people we are responsible for?" To make this easy for people to grasp, we have encouraged our people throughout the year to pray for their "two." The question is, "Who are the two you are to reach for Jesus? We seek to reach 2% for the church, but as an individual, who are your two?"
 
2.  Focused Prayer - We are leveraging our electronic media to encourage people to pray. In the fall/winter we did a daily email, Facebook, and church app prayer initiative encouraging people to pray daily. The first prayer initiative was called "Fear Not" and challenged people to not fear, but to trust the Lord. I believe this deepened our church's sensitivity to trust God and prepared our people to be ready to receive the vision God was birthing in our leadership. We repeated this type of prayer emphasis this fall with "Prayer 1600," where every day at 4:00 pm, or 1600 hours, we wanted our people to pray for our ability to reach an additional 250 people for Christ. This is to keep the vision to reach our 2%. I don't think we can underestimate how prayer has contributed to this wave of momentum we are experiencing.
 
3.  Go and Tell - This year we have been encouraging our people to think a bit differently about local evangelism. Over the years, we have been really good at "come-and-see evangelism." You know, have a big event, encourage our people to invite their friends to "come and see," or hear about God in the venue or event. While these methods still have merit, we as a leadership team have strategically moved to have only three big "come-and-see" evangelism events where we work hard to reach people, then focus on connecting those who we gathered. These events are: Easter weekend, with a huge Family Fun Fest and Easter weekend services; Summer Neighborhood Bible Clubs; and a Fall Trunk or Treat. Each of these events has a very defined invite and next-step strategy. Since we have narrowed these events to three specific times per year, we can begin to teach and get people to think about our Go and Tell outreach strategy.
 
This past January, I preached a message as a part of our vision series "Upon This Rock" about going to the Well. We have been helping our people to understand that many of the people who are a part of the 2% or 3,670 unchurched number would never come to our church or even attend our outreach events. So rather than asking them to come to us, we must go to them. Just as Jesus went to the well in Samaria, where He started a conversation, looked for an open door, spoke the truth in love, then waited to be invited into the woman's home town, we too must go to our "Well." We are in an all-out effort to help people know what their Well of Evangelism could be. We are asking our people to identify this through a question: "What do you like to do and where do you like to go that unchurched people gather?" Make this your well of evangelism, make this a place where you find your two.
 
Through this effort we have had people get excited and start what we call Outreach Wells. We had one woman start a mom's workout group and call it her well. Another started what he calls baseball church, where on weekend baseball tournaments, we take the church to the people at the games. I look forward to see how God will use our Wells of Outreach in the coming days. See message here: https://vimeo.com/119385495.
 
4.  Focused Assimilation - We have a steady flow of first-time visitors, and we are working diligently to ensure all who are new know their next step. Our online campus is a key resource in this pursuit. Every week we collect communication cards and follow up with a call and an invitation to pizza with the pastor, where they hear about the vision for the church. We also encourage them to find a small group and consider church membership as a next step.  At every step of connection, we have a communication strategy to invite and thank them for being a part of our church. This has created a nice pipeline to new people taking our membership classes on a monthly basis.
 
May God bless you this Advent Season,

Dave Lutz

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Tom Duncan

ps. I have also attached a sheet of testimonials in case you are interested.

Click HERE for the testimonial sheets  

 

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Church Planting Essentials (CPE) is a three-day church planting "basic training."

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