You ever notice how the typical church, and church planter, are always trying to find ways to reach new people in their community?\u00a0 So what drives them?\u00a0 A desire to fulfill the Great Commission or the need to overcome the financial shortfalls related to the recession.\u00a0 If we are honest, probably a little of both.<\/p>\n
Although it won’t resolve financial dilemas, discovering long term growth is not outside our easy grasp.\u00a0 I am not talking growth through outreach but growth through securing what we have been developing for many years, our children.<\/p>\n
Churches spend hundreds if not thousands of hours ministering to children.\u00a0\u00a0Tens of thousands of dollars on childrens ministry programming\u00a0and then watch them go out the door somewhere between 16-18 years of age as Biblical illiterates, Theological midgets, and Philosophical idiots<\/strong>.\u00a0 We want to have large ministries so we focus on the large group events while losing the individual.\u00a0\u00a0 Lots of them!<\/p>\n So, if we want to have church growth, why don’t we PLAN to keep a few.\u00a0 I am not suggesting we PLAN to lose anyone but reality tells us we need to\u00a0make a special effort\u00a0to keep some.<\/p>\n Last weekend I spoke in a seminar in Wisconsin on the subject of ‘Student Ministry That Transforms The Church”.\u00a0\u00a0 The attendees shared their youth group leadership experience.\u00a0 They mentioned\u00a0that their youth are unchanged and the parents don’t seem to care.\u00a0 Most of their youth actually express ungodly attitudes and actions.\u00a0 We concluded that unless things change, they will lose their youth and\u00a0spend many hours in frustrating fruitless ministry.\u00a0 So, I suggested they just quit.\u00a0 Quit doing the same ole, same ole, and try\u00a0working with the parents and get the church leadership involved.\u00a0 What? No youth group meetings?!\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n So, what has this all got to do with church growth?\u00a0 How about if we aim to keep just a few more youth than\u00a0we lose.\u00a0 Bingo<\/strong>, church growth.\u00a0 Sounds stupid, well then, just keep doing what your doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You ever notice how the typical church, and church planter, are always trying to find ways to reach new people in their community?\u00a0 So what drives them?\u00a0 A desire to fulfill the Great Commission or the need to overcome the financial shortfalls related to the recession.\u00a0 If we are honest, probably a little of both. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[57],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":563,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}