{"id":34038,"date":"2022-09-10T21:12:31","date_gmt":"2022-09-11T02:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/why-is-your-church-not-growing\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T21:12:31","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T02:12:31","slug":"why-is-your-church-not-growing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/why-is-your-church-not-growing\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Is Your Church Not Growing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent edition of his &#8220;Church and Culture&#8221; blog, pastor James Emery White suggested 20 possible reasons a church might be plateaued or in decline. He writes:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Healthy churches, their veins coursing with the power of the Holy Spirit, are meant to grow! Maybe not all at the same pace, amount or regimen; but grow they will. Which leads to a simple question: You don&#8217;t have to ask yourself how to grow your church. You have to ask yourself what is keeping your church from growing.<\/p>\n<p>Read through the list; if your church isn&#8217;t growing, I believe there is a reason. Maybe one of these is why:<br \/>&#8226; You aren&#8217;t praying for growth.<br \/>&#8226; Your location is counter-productive.<br \/>&#8226; You have unresolved divisions, tensions and discord within the staff and\/or congregation.<br \/>&#8226; Your lead communicator does not have the spiritual gift of communication.<br \/>&#8226; You are methodologically, stylistically and strategically out of date.<br \/>&#8226; Your leader(ship) does not have the spiritual gift of leadership.<br \/>&#8226; You are watering down the message of the gospel.<br \/>&#8226; Your church structure stifles leadership, innovation and front-line decision-making.<br \/>&#8226; You have not taught, challenged or led the church to provide adequate financial resources.<br \/>&#8226; Your atmosphere is one of condemnation, exclusion, awkwardness or rejection instead of understanding, sensitivity, acceptance and grace.<br \/>&#8226; You are not attempting to connect with the next generation.<br \/>&#8226; Your mentality is oriented toward the already convinced and those in-house, not turned outward toward the skeptic and the unchurched.<br \/>&#8226; You do not pay attention to, sufficiently fund or appropriately staff your children&#8217;s ministry.<br \/>&#8226; Your front-door services and events are designed in such a way that people intuitively do not invite their unchurched friends to attend.<br \/>&#8226; You haven&#8217;t effectively strategized as to how to break through your next growth barrier, which tends to exist at around 70, 200, 500, 800, 1,200 and 1,800.<br \/>&#8226; Your mindset is that you have to do everything, be at the center of every Yay-God! story, and micro-manage&#8212;so your leadership becomes a bottle-neck.<br \/>&#8226; You are an 8 on a scale of 1-10, but instead of hiring 9s and 10s, your insecurity leads you to hire 6s and 7s.<br \/>&#8226; Your shoe is telling your foot how big it gets; meaning land, parking and seats.<br \/>&#8226; You do not make it easy to connect with others and get plugged in to ministry.<br \/>&#8226; Your vision has not exceeded your reality. (Click here to read the full article.)<\/p>\n<div style='clear:both'><\/div>\n<div class='the_champ_sharing_container the_champ_horizontal_sharing' data-super-socializer-href=\"https:\/\/www.preaching.com\/articles\/why-is-your-church-not-growing\/\">\n<div class='the_champ_sharing_title' style=\"font-weight:bold\">Share This On:<\/div>\n<div class=\"the_champ_sharing_ul\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style='clear:both'><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent edition of his &#8220;Church and Culture&#8221; blog, pastor James Emery White suggested 20 possible reasons a church might be plateaued or in decline. He writes: &#8220;Healthy churches, their veins coursing with the power of the Holy Spirit, are meant to grow! Maybe not all at the same pace, amount or regimen; but &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/why-is-your-church-not-growing\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Why Is Your Church Not Growing?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}