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DOES SIZE MATTER? PART 1 OF 2

by Jeffrey Hagan  
9/15/2014 / Christian Living


Introduction:
If your church or ministry is healthy, stop worrying about growing in numbers. Maybe God isn't calling your ministry to be large. As a pastor once said to me, tongue in cheek of course, "Get out of Numbers and into Acts."

Too often we think something is wrong because our ministry or church isn't growing. I have heard and read over and over again through conferences, books and articles that if your church or ministry isn't growing in numbers then something is wrong.

Church "Growth":
Of course I never wanted to run a ministry that has something wrong with it. I still don't want to. So, I went to conferences on church and ministry growth. I read books on how to grow your ministry. And, I tried to apply most of the principles presented.

Guess what? They didn't work.

Pastors of fast-growing churches, and leaders of fast-growing ministries, seem to always be writing blog posts about the A, B, C's of the things churches must be doing wrong if they're not experiencing growth in their numbers. So, I've read a bunch of blog posts giving 5, 7, or 10 Ways to Get Your Ministry to Grow, and then applied most of those suggestions to my ministry.

Guess what? Those didn't work either.

So I prayed more frequently, prayed for longer periods of time, and prayed more intensely. Guess what? Still nothing.

Then I started hearing about pastors and churches that stopped trying to grow in numbers, but just focused on principles of church health. As soon as they started doing that, without even trying to "help God grow the church," they increased in number substantially. This helped me relax a bit and stop worrying so much about church or ministry growth. I focused on getting healthy instead and guess what? That didn't cause us to grow either.

After a while I eventually forgot all about the church-growth movement and decided to go back to the source of it all. I read and studied the growth of the church in the book of Acts. I did this repeatedly. I taught it, wrote papers on it, and preached on it as well.

Guess what? Not a thing happened.

My Light Bulb Came On:
At this point I really started looking at the people I was teaching, counseling, and ministering to and I asked myself something that not a single one of the conferences, books, articles or blog posts ever mentioned

I said to myself, "Jeff, if you completely take growth in numbers out of the equation, would you consider this ministry a healthy one?" You know what? The answer was simple and surprisingly clear. Yes, yes it was healthy. What is being done is producing some of the healthiest believers I know.

This brought to mind another question, "If a church or ministry is healthy in every way (as much as fallible people can be) except for growing in numbers, is there really something wrong?" No! It doesn't mean something is wrong.

All of this concern and it ends up that my ministry wasn't doing anything "wrong." It was just small. If that's the case if a small church or ministry can be healthy then maybe growing in numbers isn't an appropriate gauge on which we should determine the health of a ministry as we have made it out to be. When I had this "Aha" or "Light Bulb" moment, I realized a healthy ministry that keeps on being healthy gets even healthier.

What About You?:
How about your church or ministry? Whether you are a pastor or not you have some sort of ministry going on in your life, or at least you should. Have you struggled with your thoughts the same way I, and so many others, have? Have you gauged it by numbers? Have you been trying to fix a church or ministry that might not having anything wrong with it? Is it possible your church or ministry is simply meant to be small?

If you factor out numerical growth, would your church or ministry be considered unhealthy? If it's unhealthy, then take care of the problems regardless of numerical growth.

If it's healthy, stop beating yourself and your ministry up for not growing in size. Perhaps that is not what God is calling you to do and be. And that is no typo, you read that correctly. Despite what we've been told over and over again, individual congregational growth is not a biblical mandate. If a church or ministry is healthy, but is not growing in size, then there's nothing wrong. It's just small.

What About Your Church or Ministry?:
So, is your church or ministry healthy? If we take numerical growth out of the picture, what are the signs of a healthy ministry?

Doesn't it seem odd that we even have to ask that question? Any ministry leader should know the signs of a healthy ministry, regardless of what size it is. But we've been so bombarded with a "growth in numbers" attitude and approach to church health, we may need to reset our brains, hearts, and even our spirits to start seeing ministry health through means other than numerical growth.

Conclusion:
Here's an idea for you if you want some ideas about how to determine church or ministry health, besides numbers. Simply do a Google search for "signs of a healthy ministry" or "signs of a healthy church" (or something similar). Then, read some of the numerous blog posts and articles that will pop up. While you go through those lists just ignore all of the points that have any relation to numerical growth and pay particular attention to everything else. Then ask yourself if your church or ministry is practicing most of those NON-numerical signs of health? If so, then you have a healthy ministry. There's nothing "wrong." It's just small.

By Rev. Jeff Hagan, DCE, DMin, (ThD)

Jeff Hagan is the President of True Grace Ministries and Theological Institute. Interested? www.preacherjeff45.wlxsite.com/truegracetheolgical

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