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5 Wrong Motives for Church Growth

3. Insecurity

Sometimes insecure people want their church or organization to grow because it makes them feel better about themselves.

Insecurity and pride are closely linked. Why? Insecurity can lead to an obsession with self the same way narcissism can. The insecure person thinks about themselves constantly and will use others to make them feel better, which of course, is always a mistake.

Pride, competition and insecurity should drive you to God (and perhaps to a Christian counselor), not to more.

Insecurity can lead to an obsession with self the same way narcissism can.

4. Organizational preservation

Too many churches want to grow simply so they can stay afloat.

You’ve heard it more often than anyone would like to admit:

We need some people to help pay the bills.

We just need more butts in the seats if this is going to work.

We are so short on volunteers that we really need to get some new people in the doors.

People who join your church will soon see that you value them for what they can do, not for who they are. As a result, they won’t stick.

Cruel as it sounds, churches that want to grow simply to keep themselves alive probably should die. They’ve lost the mission.

5. Because you simply want to grow

Other churches don’t need to grow to stay afloat, but instead, they want to grow simply because, well, they want to grow.

The logic goes like this: Healthy things grow, right?

So we should add a campus, or add a service, or embark on a building campaign to make more space. Well, maybe.

But that healthy ‘thing’ should already be growing, to the point where you need to make a move or it just makes sense to make a move.

Expanding so you’ll start growing is like saying you want to get married so you’ll fall in love. No, you get married because you’ve fallen in love.

Usually, a church should expand because one of two things is happening:

  1. There’s not enough room for people who are already coming.

2. You’ve got a thriving ministry in one location and you want to bring it to a new location.

Expanding for the sake of expansion is not a growth strategy; it’s actually an implosion strategy.

What often happens when you expand because you want to expand is that you will end up with more debt, more complexity, more stagnation and more confusion.

What Do You Think?

So those are false motives I’ve had to wrestle with and I’ve seen many other leaders struggle with.

The truth is, I do want the church to grow. Why?

The best and perhaps the only great motivation for growing a church is that we want to see people move into a life-giving relationship with Jesus.

That’s exactly what we all should be doing.

Do you see any other false motives?