Think Small, Go Home, Give Up
We’ve had a lot of exciting growth in our church over the past year. I’m looking forward to all the things God will do in and through our church this upcoming year, but I think the key to any church success can be summed up by saying think small, go home, and give up.
Think Small
There are two ways to approach thinking small. The first is to think of the smallest members of our church, the kids. And trust me, Christine would love to talk to you about how kids ministry is the most important ministry with the highest long term success statistics. But I want to really talk about the other take. We are not a small church. I don’t know. If you’ve realized this or not but we are regularly worshiping over 300 on Sunday mornings and are trending towards 350 in average worship. Not only does that mean we are in all statistical categories a mid-large sized church but we are also bigger than 90% of churches in America. Whether we like it or not, it is impossible to know everyone and everything that goes on inside our church. It might feel like you can get lost in the crowd, which is exactly why we need to think small.
The average person, no matter what size church they go to, can recognize and name about 60 people from their church. You have to become intentional if you want to know more than that. I’ve found that the best way is to start small. Instead of thinking you can talk to everyone in a worship service, try focusing on just your section in the sanctuary. Turn those roughly 50 people who sit in your section of the room into your primary church family. Learn their names, ask about their dog. Whatever. It’s easier to make connections with a smaller group of people than trying to connect with every single person in our church.
But small groups are by far the best way to stay connected to a group of people from the church. We also firmly believe that spending time in a small group is a key factor in growing in your faith. When you get sick or go through a crisis, it’s your small group who is able to come along side you, pray over you, and even get a meal train going. So while we’re experiencing this kind of growth in our church, the first step is to think small.
Go Home
The christian life is not just about the couple of hours you spend on our campus each week. In fact, it’s primarily lived out through your time at home and where you work. There are countless resources about that, so I won’t bore you with another guilt trip. However, I do want to throw out a possibility. What would it look like if you opened up your home to a small group? What if after church you invited the new family out to lunch, or maybe better yet to your house for lunch? And let’s get really radical for a second, what if you actually talked to your friends and neighbors about coming to church with you? It doesn’t have to be anything special, and in fact there’s the perfect opportunity coming up. “Hey, I don’t know if you have any plans for Easter but our family’s going to the 8:00am service and we’ll save a seat for you if you want to join us.”
Give Up
They’re some of the most famous opening words of any Christian book, “It’s not about you.” When I talk about giving up, there’s a lot going on. None of it matters though until you come to the realization that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. If you have gotten to this point in the blog, I’m guessing you consider yourself a Christian which means you have already been found and saved. There are thousands of people in Navarre who can’t say that and Jesus came for them. So the first step in giving up is to know why you’re giving up. It’s so that we can get out of the way and let Jesus be God.
So we give up the notion of our preferences being the most important thing. We give up the idea that someone else should do it. We give up our time and our money to help fulfill our church’s mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We give up the idea that it is about us.
If you want our church to grow, think small, go home, and give up.