Five Reasons Churches That Start Small Stay Small
For sure, there are more than five reasons (I outline eight related but different reasons why churches never grow past 200 here).
But just know there is no silver bullet.
Doing these five things is no guarantee your church will grow.
But the opposite is true.
If you don’t pay attention to these five factors, there is a very good chance your church won’t grow. At least not substantially or sustainably.
1. Big hopes … but small strategy
There isn’t a single leader who’s planted a church (or started anything) who hasn’t had big hopes.
The challenge is that often those hopes have no strategy to back them up.
Or if they have a strategy, it’s a strategy that isn’t designed to take the community past 100 or 200 people.
You can’t operate as though you were a church of 500 when there are 50 in the room, but you have to plan for the day when there will be 500, not 50, in the room.
Some questions:
What’s your strategy to reach your community?
What’s your organizational chart look like at 50 people, 100, 200, 500, 1,000?
How will your role change as your church grows?
How will your team change and develop as you grow?
How will your structure change and adapt?
What will you NOT do as you get bigger?
What will you DO as you get bigger?
Those are all strategy questions. And many leaders haven’t sat down with their team to answer them.
As a result, you start small and often stay small.
It doesn’t matter how big your dreams are.
Strategy trumps intention. And hope is not a strategy.
If you want to read more on the relationship between mission, vision and strategy, read this.
2. Underfunding
I understand poorly funded ministries.
One of the churches I started at had a $4,000 annual budget. And no, I’m not making that up.
I also completely understand that vision always precedes resources and people. That’s a great thing. You should always have more vision than you have money and people.
But here’s what’s true: I’ve seen well-funded church plants flop and shoe-string plants thrive.
You can start on a shoe string, but often churches never make it past that.
Ultimately, if your church is going to thrive, it’s going to need the resources to accomplish all it can.
And that’s where most ministries languish.
You need to figure out how to raise money that goes beyond just paying the light bill.
I’ll share the single resource that has helped us the most.
If you want to develop a strategy to raise more money for everyday ministry, you might want to check out The Giving Rocket program. We’ve used it at Connexus and we saw 25 percent growth in regular giving in one year.
If you struggle with the idea that ministry should be adequately funded, take 18 minutes and watch this Ted talk by Dan Pallotta if you haven’t already. Although Dan doesn’t come at it from a Christian perspective, his angle is a huge paradigm shift for just about everyone. So good.
Regardless of how you tackle it, adequately funding your mission is critical for long term health.
