7 Myths About Church Growth

Introduction

And I need to offer a couple of points of clarification from this morning. My engineers in the audience have already confronted me about how important pie is. And I was just trying to be funny. I know it has value, but it doesn’t have much value in the life of a preacher on a regular basis, especially during football season. So, engineers, point well taken. Young people, understanding pie, can have some benefit out there in the business world. The second thing is Paul Newman is dead. I had him making a movie, and that’s how much I was paying attention to this particular segment. It was Robert Redford, I believe. He is still alive, and he used to be this handsome hunk of a guy that people talked about, but now he’s very aged.

I’m sure he appeals to some people still. But yes, it was Nick Knowlte and Robert Redford. But the Paul Newman point makes my point. Cool Han Luke, if that’s the right movie, is with us no more. So we are all rapidly headed toward demise. Did I take care of every mistake I made this morning? Is that enough? And I segue from that to talking about spinning a yarn and telling a tale. Myths. There are so many myths. And myths are used of different kinds of things, like Paul Bunyan and Babe, the big blue ox. I hope I get all of these right. And Pecos Bill would be another. But they’re myths of all kinds, and what we mean by myth is that which is to be distinguished from fact.

Just stories, legends that people tell. Well, I want to take that concept of myth and bust the few tonight as it relates to the subject of church growth. I think there’s some false notions about churches that are growing. That since we have experienced growth, those of us that have been around here for half a dozen years or more have seen quite a few changes where we have filled the building. We’ve added actually a few in the front by putting up the privacy panels. We have seats in the back that weren’t there six years ago. And there’s talk of expansion somehow so that we can accommodate everybody who wants to attend, especially on a Sunday morning. If only we could totally fill the building on Sunday night also.

1. God Isn't Interested in Numbers

That would be ideal. And my lessons a little bit in that vein tonight. Well, we’ll talk about some myths related to the subject of churches that are growing. I want to look at them, seven of them very briefly with you tonight, and I will be done. Myth number one. When some people talk about growing churches, they seem to be thinking that, well, God isn’t interested in numbers. And that’s a myth. And the Bible proves that to be so. God is very interested in numbers. Have you ever noticed in the Old Testament there’s a book called Numbers? God’s interested in numbers. But even when you come to the New Testament, numbers are a big part of the growth of the church in the book of Acts, right?

Most of us can probably roll off the tongue. Acts chapter 2, not 38, but the other verse. Verse 41. There were added that day about 3,000 souls. And if you go on reading in the book of Acts, the number of the men came to be about be about 5,000. Another number in the book of Acts chapter 4 and verse 4. And Acts chapter 5, the growth continues. It says in verse 14, and all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women were constantly added to their number. So why is there an emphasis on numbers in the book of Acts? I think it’s a very simple thing to explain, isn’t it? God cares about the salvation of souls. Each number represents a soul.

Each number in this local church, if you are counted as a member of the Decker Prairie Church, but even if you were just attending, you are a soul that needs to be numbered among God’s saved people. Now I don’t determine that. God’s word determines that. Those who submit themselves to the will of God are then added to the church by the Lord. It’s not just about local church membership, but ideally, if all of this happens in accord with truth and the way God wants it to happen, if you have been baptized into Christ and you join others in doing that in a local church, and we are truly and indeed God’s people, then the more of those kind of people we can add to this work, the better.

Because numbers represent souls. And how valuable is a single number, a single soul. If you had to show the benefits or the value of a single soul, what text would you go to in the New Testament?

Luke 15. Luke 15. Parables of lost things. The parable of the lost sheep. There were 99 still in the fold, but the shepherd goes out after just one. The prodigal son story, just one. God cares about lost individuals. Numbers matter in every family, even a family the size of the Olympics. They get picked on a lot because they have eight kids. But they don’t load up into the wagon, our beloved vehicle out here. They don’t load up in there on Sunday night and start looking around. Well, we got seven, we’re good. Well, they do now without this. But when Desi was still in the fold, if they would look back there and say, Well, we’ve got six out of eight, we’re doing pretty good. What about the other two?

I remember the night we left Brett asleep on the pew at the church building in Eastside in Baytown. And we did as we were talking a long time, as happens here, and we were outside, the lights had been turned off, the door had been locked, and we’re standing outside talking, and the next thing we know, our attention is directed to the door where there our son stands in the dark trying to get out of the building. We forgot about our son laying there. You know, you need, you care about all your children. Each child is important. Now we’re not interested in numbers for numbers’ sake, and we’ll have more to say about that. It’s not just about the ability to boast in our figures. Hey, how’s the work doing in decorative prayer?

We’re doing great. We’re busting at the scenes. The numbers are wonderful. It’s something that we wear as a badge of pride. We’re a part of a thriving, growing church in number. Well, there’s more to it than that. Again, it’s not just about being recognized on the role of a local church. The firm foundation of God stands having this seal. That the Lord knows those that are his. 2 Timothy 2 and verse 19. And again, he ultimately decides all of this. And he says, let everyone who names the name of Christ, and that’s what’s involved in being his child, we acknowledge Jesus as the king. We don’t just do that verbally, but in our lives. Let everyone who names the name of Christ, what does that person do according to 2 Timothy 2 and verse 19?

2. You Must Sacrifice Quality for Quantity

Naturally, logically, reasonably, persistently, diligently. Is that enough? Adverbs. Abstains from wickedness. That person who names the name of Christ orders his life in accord with the precepts that have to do with Christ’s covenant with his people. And so it’s not just about numbers, but God is interested in numbers because it has to do with every soul. Myth number two. That when you grow, you must therefore sacrifice quality for quantity.

My question is, why can’t you have both? And that really should be what we’re striving for. Not just numbers, not just quantity, but quantity and quality. Again, individuals who have named the name of Christ and who are extent on abstaining from wickedness in their lives or submitting themselves to the king. What did Jesus say in Mark chapter 1 and verse 17? I will make you fishers of men. Again, he’s concerned about numbers. We all understand the concept of fishing that some days are better than others. It’s sometimes not an easy thing to catch fish. And we’ve had that experience with sharing the gospel message. But if you fish, do you want quantity, not quality? Now I’m not much of a fisherman, but I can tell you about one time when I caught 16 fish in about 30 minutes.

Right after it had rained. I was standing on the shore of a large lake, and maybe one of the last times I’ve ever fished or fished successfully. I caught about 16 fish in 30 minutes, and they were all bluegill about like this. You throw them all back. They weren’t worth eating.

What if we did this in our families? You have one child. How many of us are middle children or down even further? Third, fourth, child. I know the Olympics is only one firstborn there. Seven to follow. What if the parents had said, no, we’re stopping with just one because we want quality and not quantity. A lot of us would need to be here.

So what kind of reasoning is that? Here’s the point. Quality with God’s blessing will translate into quantity most often. If he gives the increase. 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 7. People will want to be a part of a thriving work where worship stimulates, where instruction motivates, and where there is leadership and compassion among the people. And with quantity often comes greater quality. I don’t know if you notice that about our singing. Our singing was good six years ago, but I tell you, our singing consistently stirs me more now than it did six years ago because of the blending of all these beautiful voices and these beautifully written hymns. And I noticed a Wiggington connection in our song service today. Did you notice that? And Reagan saying what has become my favorite song, you are my strength.

3. Growing Means Compromising God's Message

I love that song. So that’s a myth. Another myth that I want to deal with is number three, that some people believe that if you’re growing, that must mean that you are compromising God’s message. A lot of people believe that growth is impossible. If we’re standing for the truth, then we’re not going to be growing because people don’t want that out there. I mean, okay. We live in a society that is very secular, that is very saturated with false religion. Yes, it is a maze out there. There are how many denominations? 20, 30,000, whatever the number is. And it’s hard for people to find truth in that maze. I understand that. But as we talk to people one on one, we might just find some people, as we have done here, who are interested in studying the Bible and who are interested in what God says.

We’re going to find some people. I don’t know how many we’re going to find. I don’t know how many we’re going to baptize in the next year. But what are we to say that the word of God doesn’t have any power? The word of God is powerful. Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12. And if a person has the right heart, according to Luke chapter 8, the parable of the sower, then he’s going to produce the fruit of God’s kingdom. The good and honest heart. Once he embraces the word. Some 30fold, some 60fold, some 100fold. So if we plant the seed, plant the word, which is powerful and can transform lives, they’re probably good and honest hearts out there. How many in our area? I don’t know.

How many opportunities are we going to have? I don’t know. But who says growth has to require compromise? I wonder the people that say this, well, they’re growing over there. They must be compromising God’s message. I wonder if they’ve ever stopped to think about why they’re not growing. That perhaps that church is growing and they’re not growing because there’s something about what they’re doing that doesn’t draw people to them. Perhaps it’s not the worship that’s stimulating or the instruction that’s encouraging and helpful. Perhaps it’s not a body of compassion and love and caring. This myth impugns the integrity of God’s people who may just love the truth. And furthermore, you may not know everything that they’re doing. It’s amazing how some local churches know what another church is doing.

4. Churches Grow at the Expense of Other Churches

They know everything about their work. And they’re not there. They don’t listen to the sermons. I remember a time when so it well, you know, does Tony use scripture in his sermons? That kind of question was being asked. I put out an outline at that time with every sermon that I preached at that time. Now all sermons are on the website. But I put out an outline that had passage after passage after passage after passage, and it was, it would not be very difficult to just hand somebody an outline and say, Well, do you see for yourself? The kind of preaching that’s done there. But there’s just a suspicion about a church that was growing. And then myth number four. Churches grow at the expense of other churches.

We talk about this as the shifting of the sheep. People change from one congregation to another. Is that the only kind of growth that we ever experience? Not in this place. But sometimes that happens. Some of you have come to us from other congregations of the Lord’s people. So that’s not real growth. Well, it is if the people who come to us find themselves growing as a result of the change. That they’re being benefited from something that they perceive to be lacking where they were. And somebody says, well, I don’t know if Christians ought to shift around as much as they do. Well, I guess that depends on the circumstances. But again, if they feel like that they can grow here and they’re not growing here, I think a change might be necessary.

And some might leave us who feel that way. And maybe some have.

And so is that necessarily a bad thing? You know, we could talk about this in relation to the churches of the New Testament. You know, we’re growing here at Decker Prairie because Sardis closed its doors. Back in the first century. Ephesus. None of those churches we read about, the churches of Asia Minor, the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3. To my knowledge, there’s not a congregation in any one of those places anymore. At some point, because of economic conditions, because of spiritual conditions, whatever they were, and I tell people all the time, one of the reasons that there are people, more people living out here now. We’re not the Hicks in Decker Prairie anymore. The woodlands is growing. People are coming this direction. I mean, roads are being built, something’s going on out here.

And when you bring people to a given area, that’s going to bring more Christians. That’s going to be, okay, I’m not going to drive 45 minutes to worship with the brethren that I used to worship with. I’m going to come here. I can grow spiritually here. Brethren move. Those first century churches, I don’t know where all those people went, but I don’t believe the church disappeared. I’m a part of a kingdom that will never be destroyed. And as long as there are people who are hearing the truth, some will embrace the provisions of the kingdom. I believe there’s always been people who belong to the Lord ever since the first century on this planet somewhere. Did they move around? Absolutely. Again, economic conditions, spiritual conditions. People leave and go from one church to another.

Now I’d like you to stay. I think we have a great thing here. In fact, sometimes I say, I don’t know, it’s a secret anymore, that Decker Prairie is the best kept secret in the Houston area. This is a wonderful congregation. And I love it when people come to us and they find something refreshing. They feel like that this is a caring and compassionate group who are trying to be God’s people. Trying to follow truth. I love that. But that doesn’t mean it’s always going to be so.

Again, if people are leaving us, then we need to be asking ourselves the question, why? Is it something that we could have done better? Is it some failure on our part, some area where we need to improve? It may well be.

But does it have to happen? And listen to this. Have you ever been visiting a congregation that only has 30 to 50 people who are a lot less friendly than this group. I’ve heard of people who’ve walked into buildings, nobody greeted them, hardly anyone said hi, and they walked out and, you know, Mary, a thank you for coming. It’s not about size, per se. Yeah, well you may have to work a little bit harder to be the kind of body God calls us to be, the more that we grow. It’s sometimes difficult to incorporate new members into the body. If we get satisfied with a certain number of friends or our circle of friends in a local congregation. And let me just say another thing about pictures that I’ve seen on Facebook.

Even groups of people. The group’s never the same. I think that says something very positive. That different people are being included. And that’s going to be a challenge because we tend to get comfortable with a certain number of people. We need to work outside of our comfort zone and realize that when somebody comes to us, they are an outsider. They don’t feel a part of the group like you do. And so we need to do what we I need to be personally responsible. It’s not just the preacher’s job, it’s not just the elders’ job. We need to see ourselves as responsible. We cannot help everyone to feel at home in the body, but we can help someone or several some ones. Larger does not have to equal less friendly, but the larger we become, perhaps the harder we’re going to have to work.

5. If You Do Have Faith, You Will Grow

And focus on that part of our reach to other people who come to us. Another myth. That if you do have faith, you will grow. I think growth is likely in our times. I see people obeying the gospel. I know of works where people are obeying the Lord. I was in Washington, D.C. several years ago. Actually, it was a Centerville, Virginia church. And they’ve had all kinds of opportunities. For some reason, that area of the world brings a melting pot of people from all over the country, a lot of people that become isolated from their families, and they’re curious about religion. I mean, all kinds of different people. I was astounded at how many studies they had ongoing in a place like that. I think of Washington, D.C., and I think of the worst kind of liberals.

But actually, the gospel is doing well in places surrounding Washington, D.C. And so I know that there are churches, even in our area, and we’ve experienced some growth, who are teaching the gospel, and people are coming to a knowledge of the truth, and who are coming from without. They’re not family members, and that’s great. That’s real growth. When our kids put on the Lord, that’s real growth. Don’t ever discount it. It’s important. Parents, that’s one of our jobs to try to rear our children to know the Lord. That’s important growth. But when people come from without who have no association with anybody in the body and they’re taught the truth, or a family member has been taught the truth, and they teach another family member and they obey the truth.

That’s a wonderful kind of growth. But it is not a guarantee. You may talk to a hundred people and not convert a single one. May we hone our skills in the attempt. I want you to think about maybe the first person you tried to teach the gospel, and you looked at that after it was over. You know, maybe you sat down with them, you had a discussion with them, you worked up toward this, you’ve been praying about that, and may I recommend that you pray about the souls you’re trying to teach. And you had this discussion after you walked away, you said, Man, I wish I would have said this. I wish I would have, I totally botched that. I didn’t have a good answer for that.

But I’ll tell you what happens, and I can tell you, that’s been my experience. And it still happens. I have sermons like that. Where I wish I could go back and do that over again. And you’re going, I wish you could go back and do that over again. But you talk to people and you learn in this process of teaching. But there’s not any guarantees. I remember a study back in Beaumont years ago where we studied with a young couple and they obeyed that night. And sometimes that happens. You study with people one time and they’re ready to put on Christ. And then I studied with his brother, and he thought the same thing was going to happen. And I can tell during the whole study, he’s going, something’s not right here.

Well, it doesn’t always work that way. He didn’t obey the gospel that night. Sometimes it takes people time to decide if they’re going to choose the Lord or not and choose his ways. That there may be stumbling blocks in their thinking, that there’s someone else in their family or someone else that is taught didn’t have. And things that they have to work through. Sometimes they obey the gospel, sometimes they never do. But if we’re going to say that because we’re we’re trying to teach people, we’re giving efforts in being fishers of men, and that we are people of faith, that we prayed to God about efforts to evangelize, that we’re necessarily going to have positive results, then we’ve just judged the likes of Noah, who apparently preached for a hundred years and was only able to save his three sons and their wives and his own wife.

6. God Only Expects Faithfulness

Those were ungodly times. And our times are becoming increasing, increasingly ungodly. And so let’s be thankful that there are still people who are interested in hearing this message that can save their souls. One final thing. Well, God only expects faithfulness anyway. Well, properly defined, that’s that’s not a myth. I mean, God only expects people to attend, is what some people mean by the word faithfulness. Okay, that’s, I don’t know where we got that in terms of faithfulness. They’re faithful brethren because they attend all the time.

Our goal is to bring people to faith and trust in the Lord and his word, as we talked about this morning. It’s not just about, I believe in Jesus, and then start sitting on a pew. And if I sit on a pew three times a week, check mark, I’m going to heaven. It’s about faithfulness in our lives. Not just what sometimes brethren regard as faithfulness making all the assemblings. Those should be a springboard to faithfulness in our lives. This is not an end in and of itself. And sometimes we start thinking about the Lord’s Supper as well, it’s that thing we have to do on the first day of the week. It better be more than that. Or we’ll drink condemnation to ourselves. Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, we need to be discerning the Lord’s body and his blood as we partake of the supper and realize how that’s supposed to have an effect in our lives as a result of this memorial.

Conclusion

What does this memorial mean tomorrow? It means I need to live my life in such a way because of what the Lord did for me. We’re supposed to be thinking about what this memorial means in regard to the way I’m going to think tomorrow and the day after that. Faithfulness, this, what we’re doing today is just one small part, hopefully a springboard to faithfulness in our lives. People who in the midst of crisis will turn to prayer rather than despair. People who will respond to crises in the lives of brethren with an attitude of service and help. True faithfulness cannot be separated from fruitfulness. Now, I’ve said all of that. These are some false notions people have about church growth. Let us be thankful as the Decor Prairie Church that we have grown as we have.

And that the people that are coming to us for a variety of reasons, some coming from without, some coming from within the body of Christ, from other congregations of the Lord’s people. But I get excited when the people that are coming to us are people who are committed to the Lord. They’re not attracted by a building. They’re not attracted by a flashy preacher, because you don’t have one of those. Like Ezekiel. He was to them like a sensual song. I’ve always wanted to hear Ezekiel preach a sermon. He was good. But though he played well on an instrument, his preaching was compared to that. It says, they hear your words, but they do not do them. As good as he was as a proclaimer of God’s message.

People weren’t really responding in their lives. And when I see people responding to the message, when I see people growing as Christians, when I see people coming to us who are committed to the Lord, not just in assemblies, but in their lives. What a blessing it is. And when I see our wholehearted participation in worship, that we’re not just going through the motions, that we’re not just, you can see this. That they’re not just singing the songs because we’re supposed to sing four or five or six when Scott leaves or seven. But people are really invested in worship of God. That we come to this place and our thoughts get outside this building as we go to the throne of God. That excites me. And that’s the kind of people we want to be.

And that’s how we want to grow. The people that come to us, we want them to be that kind of people. And it starts with the quality of this group and the kind of people we are. And if there’s someone in this audience tonight who’s not yet in Christ, we want to encourage you to embrace the message of God to salvation. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the long promised gift of the Holy Spirit. Salvation in Him, Jew and Gentile, regardless of your societal position, you can have all the blessings that God intended for the saved. Can we assist you? Come now and stand as we stand and sing.