Last time, I wrote about the five observations I made of
five successful churches. A number of people have made comments on other social
network sites and also to me privately that these churches must have all been
Mega-churches. This was not the case some of those churches had just started
their journey others had been going for some years. The breakdown in size of
those churches - at the time I made my observations, was as follows. Two had
congregations of between 150 and 250. One had a congregation of 600, another
with 1200 and the last with a congregation of 2000+. The churches were
successful because they had the five things I observed in common. All the
churches had been operating for between 5 years to 15 years, and all were
seeing rapid growth. All these churches have continued to see growth. So there
is hope for those churches that have been stuck on a congregation size of
40-50. I believe fervently that a church leader can build a large, vibrant,
healthy, contemporary church with God’s help and intervention. As long has he
or she is willing to learn and give the sacrifice that it will take to grow a
congregation.
I remember as a new Christian being invited into a Christian Coffee shop in the town where I grew up. It was clean and tidy, the table tops were all brightly painted in different colours, but mainly yellow and scattered on top were a random selection of Christian tracts. Fish symbols and Christian posters proclaiming that there was but 'One Way' to heaven were everywhere. The music playing out of the stereo was The Bill Gather Trio or Dolly Parton singing Gospel. The crockery, was a mixed assortment of coffee mugs, donated by keen supporters of this outreach to the unsaved sinners and ungodly people living in the city. The coffee was a local brand heavily mixed with chicory. In all the years the Coffee Shop operated, I never saw a non-Christian go in and I never heard of a person coming to faith through having coffee there. I never really understood its purpose. Fast forward to today, when I was asked recently, to advise on helping a local community church open a c...
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