Wow! What an Awesome Opportunity!

Avoiding theTemptation... 

The temptation is to see a need and meet it the same way others have met the very same need in times past.  However, times and methodologies change.  In the 1970s and '80s the "church growth movement" became the voice calling for renewal in the Church.  This movement promoted the principles to become a multiplying church.  In that time, one image shared repeatedly in the classroom was that the church was a living organism and should naturally grow.  Any living organism that stops growing begins to die. People asked, "What should a growing church look like?" Three basic attributes defining a growing church emerged.

First, the growing church was building buildings.  Large parcels of land, along with hundreds of thousands of square-foot facilities, became extremely important to the church.  Statistics proved that when a building's use reached 80 percent of capacity then no one else would come. Therefore, churches began to build bigger, nicer buildings.  Facilities alone now account for 20 percent of church expenditures in almost every church in the United States.  Land, facilities, and maintenance together account for a combined average of between 40 to 60 percent of church expenditures in almost every church.  In addition, 54 percent of churches in the United States currently carry a debt because of the facilities they possess.  Every year in the United States, we spend more than $10 billion on church buildings.  The amount of real estate owned by institutional churches is worth over $230 billion.  The church believed the adage "If you build it, they will come."

Second, the growing church was characterized by large budgets.  Reggie McNeal, Director of Church Health for the SBC in South Carolina wrote in his book,The Present Future, that Christian churches in America spend $1.5 million for every person they lead to the Lord Jesus Christ.  So churches have ballooned their buildings and their budgets.

Third, a growing church began to be measured by bodies, attending bodies.  It was a matter of filling up a sanctuary, packing the pews.  After 9/11, church attendance across America hit an all-time high; 47 percent of people said that they were attending church regularly immediately after 9/11.  That is the highest percentage in the past 100 years.  There has been, however, a slow decline ever since then.

BUT, has the church made real inroads into the social decline of our society?  Has the church made a significant difference for the sake of Jesus Christ in the lives of lost people?  The American church is struggling, to the point of being anemic.  While the church is doing more than it ever has, it continues to make less and less difference.  Of the 43,000 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, less than two hundred have had at least 10 percent growth each year for three consecutive years.  Less than 1 percent of churches are expanding by what is called "conversion growth."  C. Peter Wagner, longtime professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary, said, "There is no county across the nation that has had a net growth in Christianity in the last two decades."  There is no county in America that is more Christian today than it was twenty years ago! Now more than ever, we need to avoid the temptation to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.

We need a methodological change!  We need a change that is Scripturally consistent, forward thinking, economically sound, gospel centered, Jesus modeled, and strategically simple.  What if there was a church in Hall County, Georgia committed to this kind of change?

What if there was a community of faith that was...

     · Committed to radically obeying Jesus and making disciples?

     · Committed to developing leaders from within the local community of believers?