Go Big: Lead Your Church to Explosive Growth

One of the things I have learned about church growth is that while it doesn’t depend on me, it depends on God, but God does not send people to churches who are not ready to handle them. One of the things that we have concentrated on in the last year at Beginnings is creating a healthy community. When I arrived, there were some dysfunctional and unhealthy things that were happening. Until those things were dealt with, until you are healthy, it is incredibly difficult to grow. Healthy systems grow (churches or bodies), but unhealthy systems die.

One of the things I decided I wanted to do some reading on this year was church health/growth. Go Big by Bill Easum & Bil Cornelius is up that alley. Easum is a consultant and Cornelius is the lead pastor at a church that has grown incredibly fast. It was a great read.

Here are a few things that stood out to me:

• People develop the habits necessary to create the future they want. Another way to put this is, you get what you expect and believe will happen.
• Always lead your church like it is twice the size it is currently.
• If you want explosive growth you have to:  (1) Lead as if your church is twice its size, (2) Ask for explosive growth to happen and position yourself for it to happen, (3) Bring in lots of new people from outside your church, (4) Retain the lion’s share of those new people, (5) Equip and motivate the new people to invite their networks.
• You don’t attract who you want, you attract who you are.
• Too many churches look at small groups primarily as a place to learn or share. We don’t see them that way. We see the goal of small groups to be equipping leaders who will lead other small groups in the future. The growth of people is always the goal.
• Knowing everybody is not the definition of a healthy church. In fact, it may be the definition of an unhealthy church.

One of the things that blows my mind is when a well-meaning Christian asks me, “Are you just about numbers? Shouldn’t we worry about the people hear and not those outside the church?” This question comes from a place of fear, but it is also saying, “All those people who don’t know Jesus can go to hell and it doesn’t bother me.” It should bother us, it should break out hearts that millions of people lay their heads down each night and have no idea what God can do in their life, that should destroy us.

I asked this question a few weeks ago in a talk, but it is worth repeating. Imagine if the person who led you to Jesus said, “My church is big enough. If invite John to my church, the pastor might like him better, my church could get too big.” Where would your life be right now if the person who helped you find Jesus had that attitude? Then how can we have that attitude when it comes to our family and friends who don’t know Jesus.

I was talking with someone a few weeks ago and they told me they did not want to be part of a large, growing church, so they were thinking about leaving Beginnings because we about reaching people. Here is a reality, if you don’t want to be part of a large church on earth, you will hate heaven. We are talking millions of people! But I looked at them and said, “Thanks for telling me, I hope you find a place that you can be a part of and buy into the vision 110%.” It is hard as a pastor to watch people leave because of the vision God has given us, but as a leader, I know that it is the reality of reaching people.