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How to Produce Church Growth
Paul Jang  2008-03-23 13:06:08, hit : 3,987


How to Produce Church Growth

The work for church growth must start from receiving the vision through the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, namely Holy Spirit (Acts 10:9-16; 16:6-10; Eph. 1:17; John
14:26). When a vision comes from the altar of God, it transforms the people who are in the presence of that vision (George 1993, 44). The church without vision dies because it cannot be led by God. The Bible says "Where there is no vision, the people perish" (Prov. 29:18 KJV). "Lake of vision or purpose afflicts many people" (Spader and Mayes 1991, 185). " Where there is no growing, there is dying" (Schuller 1986, 164). "Where the pastor has a vision for growth he becomes the key to growth" (Pointer 1984, 66).

The problem of dying churches is not a lack of ability but a lack of vision (Barna 1988, 80). What is vision? Some defined a vision as an ideal and unique image of the future (Kouzes and Posner 1987, 85). But vision is more than a mental or spiritual picture as a consequence of the personal experience of God's extrordinary contact.

Vision includes the driving force behind the activity of a motivated leader or group of people. Vision includes, therefore, even a possibility. Of course, this is not
naturally possessed by every one, but a gift bestowed on
some people. (Barna 1988, 81). Pastor must have such a vision and see the possibility of growth through the grace
of Holy Spirit. Roy Pointer has called these insights "Church growth eyes" (Pointer 1984, 68). Robert H. Schuller has insisted that pastor has to accept posibility thinking as such, and defined the possibility thinking as follows:

Possibility thinking is maximum utilization of the God given powers of imagination exercised in dreaming up possible way by which a desired objective can be attained. Possibility thinking is also called faith, the kind of faith Jesus Christ was talking about when He said, "if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'move...,'and it will be move; and nothing will be impossible to you." (Matt. 17:20 RVS; Schuller 1986, 76)

Therefore, he does dare to say "nothing is impossible!"
(Schuller 1993, 58). Accordingly pastor must believe in God's power beyond man's. "God never performs a miracle until you've committed youself to something beyond your ability," said Robert A. Schuller (Schuller 1985, 126).

And then the pastor must show the vision to his people of the church, and develop the vision. The pastor also must have the desire for his church to grow (Cho 1978, 17, 18), and have a growing confidence through the vision (Cho 1986, 121). The pastor must make his people recognize the vision. After this, the pastor has to make an effective plan for church growth. Planning is one of the key for success (Wright 1985, 189). Without a plan, the pastor cannot attain church growth because there is no target of church growth which the congregation can see. The pastor as leader has to help his key people to see the big picture (Safire and Safir 1991, 32).

With this plan, pastor has to motivate, enhance and
mobilize the people involved for church growth. Because the pastor alone cannot carry out all of the heavy work of his ministry to make the church grow, laypeople need to be motivated so that they will undertake their share of the work (Cho 1981, 136; Cho 1985, 13). Jethro pointed out that Moses could not handle his work alone (Ex. 18:18). Moses, therefore, had to do his main responsibilities, and the remaining tasks were done by other people (McConnell 1983, 88). Assigning work to ten laymen multiplies a pastor's time tenfold (Flynn 1966, 15). John C. Maxwell, therefore, says:

Most of us need to be motivated before we will stretch. It's not something that comes naturally. We need to learn how to stretch and motivate ourselves, but we also need to know how to motivate others and help them to reach their potential. (Maxwell 1988, 40)

"We must motivate members to keep them participating in worship and ministry because motivation is a key to continued success in the local church," said Michael Hamilton (Hamilton 1981, 106).

In addition, the motivation for church growth must emerge from the desire to bring lost souls to Christ as Savior but not as personal satisfaction and ambitious fulfillment (Sullivan 1988, 22). The pastor must enhance the people to move, and cause shock desire waves of church growth to rise to the other people. Paul Y. Cho said,

The desire waves of church growth having been
overflowing out of the preacher will rise and saturate
into the heart of the members of the consistory, of the
council, and of the laypeople. (Cho 1986, 126)

The pastor has to involve the people motivated and enhanced into the church growth movement. Without their paticipating in the movement, the movement itself is of no use. The pastor has to rise such desire waves of church growth throughout the whole church.
Using this principle, Rev. Paul Y. Cho, senior pastor
of the Yoido Full Gospel Central Church in Seoul, Korea has grown his church to the biggest church in the world, a membership of around 370,000 by 1984 (Cho 1986, 126) and of around 510,000 by April 1986 (Hunter 1987, 128).

As mentioned above, church growth is related to three factors: pastor, laity, and program. These cannot be separated from one another. The pastor's leadership, laypeople-mobilization, and programizing -- these are the keys to church growth. Dr. Chin Hwang Chung emphasizes:

Even though a pastor delivers dynamic sermons to his people, preaching alone would never match the rapidness
in church growth achieved by the multiplication method.
In other words, the key to church growth is mobilization
of laymen. (Ro and Nelson 1983, 319)

When the laypeople have been mobilized, pastor must start a church growth movement through the people mobilized, for instance, an evangelism, a social work, an education or a training for church growth. In a sense, a mobilized membership may be a more important factor in church growth than even a strong pastor (Reeves and Jenson 1984, 24). Tracing the history of church growth, it has been known that there are two kinds of movement: church movement like a revival meeting for ministry and parachurch movement for mission or evangelism have run parallel.

Today parachurch organizations have developed and communicated a discipleship to the church (Jenson and Stevens 1981, 130). In this sense, it is no doubt that the
parachurch movement has contributed to the growth of church
even though it has often made a few mistakes. In many cases, many churches have introduced and used the discipleship training method for their church growth. It has also been successful especially in Korea as well.

Laypeople mobilization is for sharing ministry. In the light of the Scriptures, the work for the Lord's church must be shared in the ministry because all believers have been the holy priests (1 Pet. 2:5; Patterson 1988, 516), and the members of the body of the church the head of which is Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 6:15; 12:12-27; Rom. 12:4-5; Eph. 4:25; 5:30; 1:22; Col. 1:18). Especially, Paul, the Apostle says:

And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and
some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for
the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the
ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till
we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto
the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
(Eph. 4:11-12 KJV)

As a result of people participation, the early church prospered and thrived (Hogue 1977, 78). C. Peter Wagner has asserted that pastors must share their ministry with their laity for church growth. He says:

A third price that pastors must pay if they expect
their church to grow is to share their ministry. This
must be done with other program staff as well as with
laity. (Wagner 1984, 55)

Another aspect of the ministry is sharing love with other people. Love must be shared to all people, even to sinners. Ministry in its purest form is touching other people's lives with love. In other words, ministry is love in action. Every believer, therefore, has to take part in Christ's ministry (Wagner 1989, 107-109).

Through the lay ministry, every church can grow. Of course, church can grow through other ways, but qualitative growth as well as quantitative growth can be accomplished through the laypeople having been trained.

Lastly, the results of church growth need to be evaluated according to the biblical and theological perspective. Is it truely sound for the growth of church to have been done? In other words, is it in accordance with the will of God? Is it satisfactory enough both in quantitative growth and in qualitative growth?

No matter how good it seems, it must have a biblical and theological foundation. In this point, C. Peter Wagner claims seven theological nonnegotiables: (1) the glory of God, (2) the Lord Jesus Christ, (3) preaching the gospel, (4) the authority of the Bible, (5) sin, salvation and eternal death are eschatological realities, (6) God wills all to be saved, and (7) His people's responsibility for saving souls, and the Holy Spirit's work for their accomplishment (Wagner 1987, 39-40).

In conclusion, church growth must comply with the will of God and exist His glory whatever it is.





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