TL;DR: Explore materials on church health, church growth, church planting, evangelism, congregational analysis, and Donald McGavran’s principles for healthy, growing congregations. Resources include articles, presentations, surveys, assignments, and study guides for pastors, students, and church leaders.
Donald McGavran, former missionary to India, examined the principles and patterns behind healthy, growing churches.
Church leaders must look beyond simply implementing programs to identify and apply principles that foster healthy, sustainable congregations.
Pastors and other church leaders are challenged to move beyond a passive “cruise ship” mentality and embrace active ministry marked by spiritual engagement, compassion, and love for others.
People interested in studying church health and growth can find a wealth of resources, including videos, presentations, and articles that tackle topics ranging from spiritual growth strategies to demographics and evangelism tactics.
“I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” — Matthew 16:18, 2011 NIV
This church health and growth class focuses on developing healthy, growing churches and planting new ones. Rather than offering a list of programs to implement, the course explores questions such as:
Why are some churches healthy and growing while others are not? Is this simply random, or are there lessons to be learned?
Are there reproducible principles or patterns that church leaders can prayerfully use in a variety of congregations?
The course draws heavily on the foundational work of Donald McGavran, whom many have called “the father of the Church Growth Movement.”
“Most of us go to church expecting it to be a cruise ship. ‘Provide me with this program and that program. Cater to my every want and need.’
“But Christianity isn’t supposed to look like that. It is supposed to be a battleship fighting the powers of darkness, and that isn’t pretty. It can be really messy loving our neighbor and having compassion on the forgotten ones of this world.”
The Gray Matrix
builds on the Engel Scale. Developed by Frank Gray of FEBC, the Gray Matrix helps us
visualize where individuals stand spiritually. It therefore points out the need for different
strategies to reach them. It also helps us understand and validate different types of
evangelism. | PDF
Religion
statistics:
Statistics on membership in various “religions, churches, denominations, religious
bodies, faith groups, tribes, cultures, movements, ultimate concerns, and such like.” It provides
country-by-country religious indexes and statistics about the largest religious communities in
countries and U.S. states.
“Reaping isn’t all there is to evangelism. In fact, reaping isn’t even the hard labor. Any
farmer knows that. It takes one day to harvest what you’ve watched over and nurtured for months.
What’s more, believers often reap a harvest they haven’t sown. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow, Paul said. Paul handed off some souls to Apollos.
God gave the increase. The soil must be prepared, the seed sown and the plants nurtured, and then
comes the harvest.”
