What is required to help congregations grow?
A study finds that pastors are more effective leaders when they spend time in Christian community with their peers, writes David L. Odom.
A study finds that pastors are more effective leaders when they spend time in Christian community with their peers, writes David L. Odom.
Growing churches don’t focus on growth as such. They focus on mission.
Maybe the new, counter-intuitive formula for church growth is this: be a stark alternative to whatever the dominant culture offers.
I grew a church big by being placed near a new housing development and bumping into a good-looking, gregarious couple that had just moved in.
The usual story is of a pastor who staunches a church’s decline by introducing “contemporary” worship. But Macedonia Baptist in Pittsburgh capped its growth with a return to “traditional.”
There may be churches that don’t care about growth. But these can’t possibly be Methodist.
A new vision of a historic tradition. A Baptist church in Washington, D.C., with a history of commitment to social justice leverages its real estate assets to help revitalize the congregation and engage community partners.
Purpose-driven approaches to church growth say we should ditch the denominational label. This is exactly the wrong way to go.
I became a Methodist on purpose. But church growth strategies want me to leave the label behind.
Last week we posted Tom Arthur's questions as a young pastor in a start-up congregation modeled on megachurches to his elder, Michael Jinkins, about his "Letters to New Pastors," which assumed a very different pastoral context. Here is Jinkins' reply.