Every time I come
back from a missions trip I’m fired up about the Church in America. Any attempt
to bring people to church is commendable. As in the Church in Asia, if we
follow God’s ways, our churches will explode.
We do so many
things to attract people and often with very little results. I know pastors and church leaders have good
intentions but when we’re building God’s House, we’ve to use His blueprint.
Today let’s discuss how to make your church grow.
Check your motives. Why is often the answer to how! If we
get our motives right, we’ll find God on our side to attract people to His
House. The main reason for a church to
exist should be to worship God corporately and win souls to Christ.
Anything less than keeping the focus on God will stifle our church growth.
Focus on praise and worship. Teach your congregation to come to church
to worship God. We need to shift our thinking from, “What I’m going to get” to “What
I’m going to give to God.” When we go to God’s House to give for what He
has already done this week, we’ll find more of God’s blessings following us. Where there’s a heart full of praise there’s
little room for complaints. Gratitude should be our attitude for going to
church.
Meet the needs of the people. A church is not a place to display God’s
perfect saints. Church should be more
like a hospital where the broken-hearted, hurt and lost people find love and
hope in Christ. The Church in Asia is thriving in spite of severe
persecution and hardships because every believer going through rough time is
prayed for personally. One of the best
ministries you can establish in a church is a prayer ministry team who will
take time to pray for the lost and hurting people.
Minimize the money talk. Commercialism is rampant in today’s
modern church. Problem is the more we
talk about giving money to church the more we turn people away from it. Begging,
pleading and manipulating people to give more every week isn’t very inspiring. People
know it costs money to pay staff, electric bills and maintain a building. A better way to encourage people to give is
to tell and show them what their money is doing to change people’s lives.
Feed, not beat the sheep. Not your church; but many churches
focus on preaching messages that are condemning and loaded with guilt trip. We
all need correction and exhortation from time to time. But if we preach rules
and laws as staple then we’ll lose people. Sinners know they’ve sinned. They
need to know that God still loves them and they can return to Him. Facilitate
people to encounter God! Preach the
message of hope, healing and personal empowerment for daily living. Jesus
said, “Feed my sheep.”
Promote community. We have a need to belong. God made
human beings to live in community. Our
churches should have small groups where they can interact with each other, know
their names and do life together. When
we serve each other in homes, we add value to each other and make them feel like
belonging to the family of God.
Talk about world missions. There’s a severe drop in churches that
are talking about reaching the world. Those who are talking are not doing much
about it because they feel it’s a drain on their finances. Yet, just the
opposite is true. If you want your church
to flourish, put world missions on the forefront of everything. The dearest and
closest thing to God’s heart is the salvation is mankind. When we challenge
our people to reach the world, we invite God’s favor into our churches. Last
but not the least, support Israel!
“Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means
'rock'), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell
will not conquer it” (Matthew 16:18 NLT).
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