At the end of January, every church in my denomination receives an annual church questionnaire. This questionnaire helps my denomination to study conversion or new birth experiences, baptism, weekly attendance, growth rates, scope of influence, church planting efforts etc… to see if we are successful in building God’s kingdom.
If you study or research churches, you know that everybody relies heavily on the above metrics to determine successful or failing churches. And everybody knows that this is not necessarily a perfect way to measure churches. That’s because, “sometimes exceptional churches have humble results in terms of size, growth, and influence while sometimes unhealthy churches know all the right formulas to give the appearance of spiritual success.” However, “these matrices are our most reliable, efficient, and accurate way to gauge churches in research studies.”
– please look for the lists in the next posts… but let say this in closing –
1. It is important for every church leader to learn from other churches
2. It is important to use one’s time wisely when studying other churches
3. It is important to never forget prayer, sound biblical preaching and teaching, and reliance on the Holy Spirit’s power and direction to help you impact lives.
4. It is important to not be driven to get big mega church… But be driven with passion to turn sinners into fully devoted flowers of Jesus Christ.
Quotes/List
via – Church Relevance
- Outreach magazine’s 2011 100 Fastest-Growing U.S. Churches
- Outreach magazine’s 2011 100 Largest U.S. Churches
Walter Bright 