Last night I visited with a pastor and church leaders who want to see their church grow. In my presentation, "Releasing Your Church", I addressed two critical issues for smaller churches that want to grow. I heard Bill Hoyt describe these issues while attending a RED's meeting several months ago.
According to Hoyt, a culture of empowerment, not control, must be established. In addition, a smaller church must become extremely outward, not inward, focused.
This church is already doing some great things through outreach events such as "Community Days." However, they like many churches have difficulty seeing those people actually attending their services and becoming assimilated into the life of the church.
One church leader asked about what kind of events they should have that would reflect an outward focused church. I admitted that this was a hard question for me to answer because I am not familiar with their local culture. Instead, I suggested that it was important to lead their congregation through a process of understanding the difference between inward and outward focus and why this shift is so important.
Do these issues resonate with you? I will write more about these issues in a future post. In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts and reflections.
By the way, two excellent books that address the issues mentioned above:
Winning on Purpose, by John Edmund Kaiser (Great resource about church governance)
Effectiveness By the Numbers, by William R. Hoyt (Valuable resource about how to measure results)
~ Jim
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