How does a Reformed church grow?

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shackleton

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With my background, the way a church grows is pretty much the "Rick Warren" way. The first thing I think of is go door to door, talk to people and invite them to a bible study. Now with a new Reformed perspective I am wondering how a church should grow according to biblical standards.
Upon visiting many Reformed churches I am noticing that most have 100 or less people in them, even in large metroplotian areas. First of all, how does a new church plant get to any number, 25, 50, 100+. How many people are ideal before the pastor becomes overwhelmed and can't effectively pastor?
 
Grow? What's that? My pastor says he's writing a book, Pastoring a small reformed church, and keeping it that way.
 
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With my background, the way a church grows is pretty much the "Rick Warren" way. The first thing I think of is go door to door, talk to people and invite them to a bible study. Now with a new Reformed perspective I am wondering how a church should grow according to biblical standards.
Upon visiting many Reformed churches I am noticing that most have 100 or less people in them, even in large metroplotian areas. First of all, how does a new church plant get to any number, 25, 50, 100+. How many people are ideal before the pastor becomes overwhelmed and can't effectively pastor?

I am not aware of any reformed rules against going door to door or talking to people or inviting them to a bible study. I don't think these three things should be considered PD distinctives. PD distinctives are things like less preaching and deregulated principle of worship. :D
 
From what I can gather from my time on the PB, Reformers see evangelism taking place within the church by an ordained minister. I'm not buying that but wouldn't that be even more impetus for brining people into the church so that they may hear the gospel? If that means door-to-door, street preaching or any other similar attempt, should it matter?
 
By grow I mean 0, church plant, to any one other than the pastor and his wife and kids. Not Joel Osteen, this is what I was used to.
 
Erick,

Dr. Scott Clark just posted on his blog about this here.

Good article. I don't suppose you know where is kansas city that is? That is my home town and some of those names sound familiar.

Like he stated in the article, most of the churches around here are what I term "Walmart" churches, they move into town and put all the "Ma and Pa" churches out of business. When asked where their church growth came from they state that it is not new converts, it is people who left their small 100 or less member churches, and went for the glamour of the big church. One pastor of a growing chruch stated that he was frustrated that no one was getting baptised even though their church was growing exponential. My wife and I called his church "The American Idol" church, because that is what it reminded me of. It was a lot of mediocre singing and mediocre preaching, but I guess that is what people wanted.

Another point from the article. I come from a Pentecostal background. Since leaving I have visited a fair number of churches trying to be "hip" with good music. They are playing the good music, but act like they either don't know what to do or are to scared they will speak in tongues, so they just stand there and clap. It reminds me of the move "The Jerk," where Steve Martin is adopted by a black family and he is standing on the porch stomping and clapping out of time with the music. Maybe non-Pentecostals should stick with hymns. :D
 
Hi Erick,

It was, by turns, Hope Reformed, Walnut Creek Presbyterian, and now, Northland Reformed Church. When I was pastor, we were at 3901 N. Wayne, just west of I-29/I-35 and Russell Road about 5 minutes (or less) north of downtown KCMO.

Cheers,

rsc


Erick,

Dr. Scott Clark just posted on his blog about this here.

Good article. I don't suppose you know where is kansas city that is? That is my home town and some of those names sound familiar.
 
Erick,

Dr. Scott Clark just posted on his blog about this here.

That was an amazing article, thank you for linking to it. I especially like "What about evangelism? Rather than making it something that we "do" it is something that we are." Come to think of it, I have benefited immensely from everything Dr. Clark has written on his blog and on PB. :)
 
I am no "expert" on church growth. But I do pastor a Reformed church that I planted with the help of two other elders six years ago.

The three of us pastors moved to California with no prospective members, no core groups, no demographic work, or anything else the "church growth" manuals advised us to have. We just felt that God wanted us to start a biblical church, our home churches agreed to support us, and few other churches agreed to support us financially as well, and off we went.

Growth has been slow but steady.
In six years we have trained and ordained two more pastors who now minister with us on our pastors' council. We have another pastor in training.
We've knocked on doors, mailed mailers, made phone calls and visits, kept a good website, bought radio and newspaper and yellowpages ads, and anything else that we could think of to announce to people our existence.
But most of all, we have found that God has just blessed us in spite of us.
We have about 150 members and about 250 people visit our church regularly.
I am usually shocked when anyone visits the second time.
I preach expositionally (recently been two years in John), we have a strong biblical counceling ministry, we have many bible studies for all ages (kids and adults), we have a warm and loving fellowship of members, we have a healthy process of church discipline, we evangelize and baptize those who repent and believe in Christ, and have a very decent worship team of musicians and singers who sing a lot of music from "In Christ Alone" to hymns to stuff written yesterday.
People are attracted to our strong leadership, distinctly sound doctrine, friendliness, and high view of all things spiritual.
Though I have an accent from my Southern Louisiana roots, I dress casual on Sundays, preach from the ESV, and often use very Calvinistic and Reformed terminology. The people find it... "refreshingly miserable.":lol: That is actually a quote from a guy who said, "I am so tired of churches that just preach these feel good happy face sermons. Your sermons are refreshingly miserable. They address the reality of this world."
Like I said, I am surprised they come back.
But the church just continues to grow both numerically and spiritually.
And I would be remiss if I didn't give worthy due to the strength of the pastors at our church. God has surrounded me with men much more equipped than myself. There wisdom and fortitude, patience and love as pastors makes our church a "safe-haven" for many Christians who are extremely suspicious of the "tossed about" churches of our day.
These men, all equal in authority, share responsibilities, keep one another accountable, and know their sheep.
I don't know if I am just the eternal optimist, but I believe if you build it biblically -- God's people will come.
:2cents:
 
A Reformed Church grows like this...
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my two cents:

1. articulate/emphasize law and gospel so that every "man" can understand....this may require us to give up words that make us comfortable in our reformed sense of identity like "propitiation" and "John Calvin"

2. teach people the drama and power of the sacraments

3. charge ruling elders with getting into people's lives to disciple rather than administrating

4. be a blessing to the local community, in the name of Jesus, in tangible, earthy ways
 
Well, having been in several Reformed churches that did not grow (numerically for sure, and the spiritual growth was lacking in many areas as well), I can say one thing that many Reformed churches (Presybterian that is, I have no experience in the Reformed baptist world), big and small, seem to have a problem in the friendliness area. You walk in and you don't feel welcome. If you don't feel like there is the possibility of fellowship, it's unlikely you'll return and stay. This is not a church growth method--just simple common sense and principles of biblical fellowship that would be good for Reformed churches to make more of a habit.

Note: My experience is obviously limited to just that, my experience. This is not to say that all Reformed churches suffer from this. But I have come across many that do.
 
Dr. Clark wrote in the article:

We don't need two years, we need twenty, but that's a different post.

If that's a different post, please write it soon!

Why do we always assume that a Reformed church should always be growing? If a church is faithful in it's ministry, why do we think there's something wrong if it doesn't grow? It's funny how we can criticize evangelical and Purpose Driven churches who are "all about the numbers", but if we always assume that a church should be growing, and that there's something wrong if it isn't, then we are no different. Is there no pastor who can stomach being committed to the same congregation of people for more than a few years? I've seen a pattern in more than a few churches claiming to be "Reformed" where they start up, get going for a few years, and then the pastor panics because he doesn't see any growth, thinks he's doing something wrong, and starts changing things around (like the worship and preaching), and gets to the point where he is willing to drive away committed sheep for the sake of new people. What, does a pastor get bored? Is he not capable of ministering to the needs of the same people year after year? Is he incapable of running more than just the first two miles of the marathon? Is the congregation worth nothing more to him than his car, which he'll trade in for a new model in a few years?
 
Could someone please paste Dr.Clark's article on PB? in China we couldn't gain access
to blogspot.

Google should send their PR people to Beijing more frequently.
 
:ditto: can't get to it...

Anything on blogspot or wordpress doesn't show up in China. Posting in its entirety would be great!

Xie xie, xiong di!
 
Dr. Clark wrote in the article:

We don't need two years, we need twenty, but that's a different post.

If that's a different post, please write it soon!

Why do we always assume that a Reformed church should always be growing? If a church is faithful in it's ministry, why do we think there's something wrong if it doesn't grow? It's funny how we can criticize evangelical and Purpose Driven churches who are "all about the numbers", but if we always assume that a church should be growing, and that there's something wrong if it isn't, then we are no different. Is there no pastor who can stomach being committed to the same congregation of people for more than a few years? I've seen a pattern in more than a few churches claiming to be "Reformed" where they start up, get going for a few years, and then the pastor panics because he doesn't see any growth, thinks he's doing something wrong, and starts changing things around (like the worship and preaching), and gets to the point where he is willing to drive away committed sheep for the sake of new people. What, does a pastor get bored? Is he not capable of ministering to the needs of the same people year after year? Is he incapable of running more than just the first two miles of the marathon? Is the congregation worth nothing more to him than his car, which he'll trade in for a new model in a few years?

While I am sympathetic to what you are saying, I come from personal experiences with churches with this attitude, and it was very damaging both to the church and to me.

What I don't mean: Growing in numbers should be the priority of the local church, and the pastor should adapt whatever he has to in order to gain that goal.

What I do mean: Churches should be passionately committed to their mission in the world--to extend the kingdom into the world. Whether or not this results in huge numerical increases is not the point. But in my experience (which is limited, granted), I have found that Reformed churches who take the above philosophy are not engaging in God's mission in the world as they should.
 
http://dannyhyde.squarespace.com/th.../idea-lets-try-every-way-but-christs-way.html



Idea: Let's Try Every Way But Christ's Way?

Posted on Wednesday, August 29, 2007 at 08:24AM by R. Scott Clark in Recovering the Reformed Confession, The Mission: Reaching and Teaching | Comments Off
Thanks to a link by Justin Taylor I read an article by Nancy Morganthaler this morning that is disturbing on so many levels I hardly know where to begin.
I begin with confession: I tried and failed miserably "to do the church growth thing" in various ways in a my congregation in Kansas City from 1987-1993. We were a small congregation and I had the impression that I had been called as the Assistant, then Associate pastor and then as pastor to "grow the church." So I tried to do and get the congregation to do as much of the "church growth" stuff as we could do. I became an "Evangelism Explosion" trainer and taught classes in EE. I did it myself, knocking on every door in our community more than once. We handed out fliers. By the way, thank you to those who went out on a cold St Patrick's Day, getting your hands green because the ink wasn't dry on the fliers. Thanks to Mark Hanson for standing in supermarket parking lots and getting chased out (!) with me. We did Project Jericho, bringing teenagers down from South Dakota and Wisconsin to see the city and do more door-to-door evangelism. We tried VBS. The kids worked so hard and they couldn't help but cry when no one showed. I read Tim Keller's book on diaconal ministry so we tried that. I spent two years meeting some "colorful" folks, leading bible studies and delivering food and medicine, but only a few people came to church out of it. I did "The Phone's for You" - it's a long story and
oldphone.jpg
I met some interesting people on the phone -- it was back when people weren't yet ready to murder telephone solicitors--but no one came. We did Today's Good News -- a telephone answering message that generated calls via an ad in the personals. We sent out 400 newsletters every month (that you Malinda for folding and sorting them!) to those who had left their addresses on the machine. We sent out evangelistic audio cassettes with a mini-documentary about the church on one side and a modified EE presentation on the other. A few people came. We held bible studies all over the metro area. Our motto was: "If you'll hold it, I'll teach it." For a while we did a weekly radio show on one of the local Christian stations. If the web had existed we would have tried that. We tried, and failed, to plant another congregation. We remodeled the church building. The congregation had bought an old Standard service station and remodeled and in about 1990-91 we remodeled (thanks to everyone who helped and especially to Ed who did much of it by himself!). By the time we were done, the place looked really nice. I pushed for the addition of contemporary worship music -- the congregation pushed back. We had a brief song service before the stated service. We watched videos produced by the Christian Business Men's Association on friendship evangelism. Despite all that (or because of it?) when I left the congregation in 1993 we were about the same number as when I came. It was, to some degree, a different group of people, but the numbers were more or less unchanged. Almost as a providential rebuke to all of that busy-ness, the congregation later sold the building (it's now a really nice looking used car lot), went into a temporary location and later built a nice facility out by the airport where the size of the congregation doubled.

What does it all mean? I tried to adapt "the Reformed message" to all the different methods being retailed then by the church growth gurus. I was desperate. Whenever pastors get together they discussion three things: buildings, bodies, and budgets. I didn't have any of them. The question, which I've asked many times, "How is your congregation doing?" was code for, "How many people have you coming in the front door?" (Don't get me started on "front door" v. "side door" v. "back door," oh my.) The one thing I didn't try was being confessionally Reformed.
Were there practical problems? Sure. An old service station is a bad place to try to plant a congregation, but the truth is that we were, like most Reformed congregations, a commuter church organized around doctrines and practices, not an amorphous neighborhood church and we were probably never going to become a neighborhood congregation.
One of the biggest problems is that we accepted the premise that "church growth" or "church planting" or even "church re-planting" can be "done quickly." No, it can't, not if we're going to plant and grow confessionally Reformed congregations. We don't need two years, we need twenty, but that's a different post.
Second, I know nothing about Nancy Morganthaler. I haven't read this sort of literature in a long time. I haven't looked at it much since I went off to grad school in '93. From what I can tell, based in this piece by Morganthaler, the more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same. Apparently there was some sort of "revolution" in the 90s where evangelicals told themselves that they could win the unchurched simply by having cool services where people were blissed out. So they hauled in equipment, got rid of the suits and ties, and played watered down versions of pop music. Apparently it, like crack cocaine, worked briefly but now the high has worn off and they're looking for the next big thing.
It turns out that all the "unchurched" people who were supposed to be coming to the new and improved, even more hip seeker-senstive services, weren't. I could have told you so. To give credit where it's due, Jim Dennison told me in 1985 that all the "growth" that folks were touting was nothing more than "sheep shifting." He was right. When I was trying this stuff the average American congregation was less than 200 and most of them were less than 100. I don't know what the numbers are now, but the trend then (and Morganthaler's essay suggests it's only continued) was to see smaller congregations folding and feeding the mega churches.
Morganthaler' answer is to abandon the "worship" community. She's closed her once cutting edge website and she's now touting the emerging emphases.
Same old song, new chorus. It's a false dilemma. We don't have to choose between worship and evangelism. We can have both, but in doing both we need to be faithful to our principles and trust the Lord of the church for the outcome.
What did I learn in Kansas City?
1. I'm not the Holy Spirit. That should be pretty obvious, but the pressure to "grow the church" is powerful and it's easy to forget that only the Spirit softens hearts and raises dead sinners to life and draws them to Christ.
2. Don't confuse the law with the gospel. I can't tell you how many times I preached the gospel from Exodus or John or 1
charliebrownfb.jpg
Corinthians only to contradict everything I had just said by putting the congregation under the law. Remember when Lucy moved the football just as Charlie Brown tried to kick it?
3. Be confessionally Reformed. We tried being re-packaging the Reformed faith in contemporary evangelical garb. We failed and we're not the only ones. In the years since I've seen a lot of congregations try the "contemporary" thing. It's a little sad. Middle class (mostly white) Presbyterian and Reformed congregations just don't do the P&W thing very well. We're not hip. Even if we've worked out a rationale for it, we still have a memory of another kind of worship and maybe even a conscience that there's something strangely wrong when a Reformed service is indistinguishable from what Rick Warren or Mars Hill or the local AoG is doing.
The tragedy of trying to be what we aren't is not fundamentally that we can't do it well. It's that we shouldn't be trying; that in so doing we've shelved the very thing we have to offer a lost world: a community gathered around the Gospel and the sacraments. Our worship services, if we conduct them according to our principle (see Heidelberg Catechism Q. 96 or Westminster Confession ch. 21) are inherently evangelical and evangelistic. Every Reformed worship service announces the law and the gospel. It declares salvation and rest and righteousness in Christ. The sacraments are the gospel made visible. In true worship, we are called and drawn by God himself to meet and worship the living God in Christ his Word. What else do sinners fundamentally need?
What about evangelism? Rather than making it something that we "do" it is something that we are. There's nothing new about this view but it's still true. Evangelism is what we do on the Sabbath, in worship.
Yes, but what about evangelism? Oh, you mean "witness." Christ's people are called by the Word to give witness to the faith and to their faith. That has to occur in the daily lives of Christ's people as they interact with their friends, loved ones, neighbors, and co-workers. It means showing Christ-like love in concrete situations and it means speaking the truth in those situations whenever the opportunity arises.
Will it work? Yes and no. It probably won't "work" (as the gurus define effectiveness) but see principle #1. We're not the Holy Spirit. Will God the Spirit accomplish his purposes as we trust him and worship and witness according to his Word? Yes. I guarantee it. Will you like it? Next question. If we're still just sheep-shifting, and all the gimmicks really haven't made a dent in reaching the lost, then perhaps, just maybe, we confessional Reformed folk should try one more thing: being ourselves.

 
I think that Reformed Churches need to starting stealing Evangelicals away from their churches. Many Evangelicals are just waiting for the scales to fall from their eyes to see what true holiness and fear is. Calvinistic churches and Christians tend to live in a closed community shut out from the greater Christian community. Those who come to Calvinism usually stumble across it by reading some book.
 
While I am sympathetic to what you are saying, I come from personal experiences with churches with this attitude....

Sorry, I wasn't very clear; that's not the attitude I was suggesting. I wasn't saying it should be either/or, but both/and. Reformed churches are to gather, defend, and preserve God's elect (Heidelberg Q. 54). What I am saying is that there is a widespread plague in American Evangelicalism, that includes many churches that are called "Reformed", that are willing to sacrifice the latter two for what they think will accomplish the first. Their attitude is "do what you have to do to grow the church, even if it means getting rid of the faithful sheep you already have charge over."

I also challenge the assumption that we should always see Reformed churches grow if they are faithful to their charge (including the charge to gather).
 
Sorry, I wasn't very clear; that's not the attitude I was suggesting. I wasn't saying it should be either/or, but both/and. Reformed churches are to gather, defend, and preserve God's elect (Heidelberg Q. 54). What I am saying is that there is a widespread plague in American Evangelicalism, that includes many churches that are called "Reformed", that are willing to sacrifice the latter two for what they think will accomplish the first. Their attitude is "do what you have to do to grow the church, even if it means getting rid of the faithful sheep you already have charge over."

I think we are in agreement then. I'm not a fan of some Reformed churches that I visit that are barely distinguishable from any evangelical, but I guess my experience makes more just as sensitive to the other side of the spectrum. But you put it well.

I also challenge the assumption that we should always see Reformed churches grow if they are faithful to their charge (including the charge to gather).

I think I would say yes and no that. Yes, because in principle I agree with you. But no, because I think oftentimes Reformed churches don't grow precisely because they forgot the both/and and don't embrace the whole spectrum of their mission. But that does not change the general principle.
 
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