Stop Trying to Grow Your Church

 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47 NIV)

The wise Qui Gon-Jinn from Star Wars fame once wisely stated, "your focus determines your reality." If we focus on the wrong things, we very well can accomplish the very thing that winds up killing our churches. Today, I want to help us set our focus on the things that are aligned with God's movement and purposes. 

 For so long, many well-meaning pastors have become convinced that the size of your Sunday morning attendance is the best way to measure your success. This is simply not true...and, not healthy. Size doesn't determine health. 

Think of this, babies could be tiny and healthy or huge and unhealthily. What doctors want to measure is their ability to thrive, not simply their size. Or maybe think this way, a good fight draws a big crowd. That doesn't make it healthy.

Classis de las Naciones is a disciple making, church planting Classis. It is at the very center of everything we do and who we are. We are not focused on the attendance of our congregations, well at least not as a measurement of success. 

1. Your focus should be on disciple making, not on growing the size of your church. 

In the 2nd Chapter of Acts, we see that it is GOD who adds to your numbers. We see the disciples doing what they were trained by Christ to do: Teaching, fellowship, miracles, unity and generosity were the markers of what the first church was all about. As they followed those focuses, God continued to add daily to the numbers those who were being saved. 

Question: Is your congregation filled with the same people who were attending ten years ago with very little new believers? If so, you need to re-focus.

2. Church Plants Don't Begin with Church Services or Buildings

I hear from people called to plant churches every week. In general, what I hear is requests for big dollar amounts and buildings. The focus tends to be on models of churches rather than disciple making. This is completely backwards from the focus of Jesus. 

When Jesus took his disciples to Caesarea-Philippi, he told them that "I will build my church upon this rock." Again, it's Christ that builds his church, not us. Before he ascended, he charged us to "make disciples of all men..."and while statistically we know that new churches are the best way to draw new Christians, we simply put the cart before the horse when we start with financing, buildings and worship services. I'd say that a new planter shouldn't aim to start worship services for at least one year - or until they have a sold worshipping body already built through disciple making. 

Our Classis process is simple: 

1. Sense and Discern Your Call 

2. Begin to make disciples - probably through small groups. 

3. Multiply disciples.

4. Once you have 30-100 disciples, aim to launch worship services. 

You may feel called to plant a traditional church, but maybe you are only gifted to multiply 30 disciples, if we were to aim towards the model before seeing your gifts, then we are hurting you. We would rather wrap the model around your gifts rather than to watch you fail to meet an unrealistic goal to fill a building. 

3. A Church That Multiplies Disciples Is Unstoppable

If you read church history, you'll see an obvious pattern. The church that focuses on discipleship multiplies like wildfire. Once a church stops multiplying, it begins dying.

The church in China, where being a Christian is illegal, is exploding. There are good estimates that there are over 365 million Christians in that country which is 300 million larger than the US today. Because of the oppression, the only thing they can focus on is teaching Scripture (often by memory because it's too dangerous to hold paper copies), baptizing and multiplying new disciples.

When we lose our focus, even to who is showing up to a service, we spend too much energy and money on the wrong things. 

I don't believe the size of our congregation impresses God, I think our obedience does. Let us obey the standing order of our Savior to go and make disciples while we trust our Heavenly Father to bless us with adding daily to our number those who are being saved. 

Posted 23rd June 2021 by Classis de las Naciones