Growing a Church
We often assume that a church is a public institution with doors open wide. We assume that anyone who wishes to enter is welcome and there is a place for them in our large loving family. Churches are often operated as private institutions that serve those who are already there. New people, especially those who differ from the current members, may find the church to be less open than we would like to believe. Nobody thinks of or really wants their church to be a private club. We all wish for visitors to feel welcome and to like us. And, hopefully, they will come back and join in our religious life.
We need to examine the church programming as a whole: every committee and every church activity, to see how it could be an opportunity to serve a wider group.
We need to look at the worship service, including the sermon, announcements, sharing of concerns, readings, hymns, the children’s focus and the choir. We need to examine
the Religious Education program for adults as well as children. We also need to
look at social functions, caring concerns and social action activities as part of the whole church effort.
Every committee needs to begin by coming up with SAM goals. The goals needed to be Specific, Attainable, and Measurable. We need to put down Specific numbers. Exactly how many members do we seek to gain? The goals that we set needed to be Attainable given the amount of time, money and effort that we were willing and able to expend. And we needed to be able to Measure how close we came to success.
We need to begin keeping track of the number of people who attend every activity from worship to the book club.
And, of course we need to look at how we can publicize church activities to the surrounding neighborhood.
If it wishes to continue to be a club that serves only the needs of those already
there it will do that and only that, however, if a church and its committees work
actively and intentinally on making the church a truly welcoming community it will
indeed grow.