Growing a Healthy Church

On Tuesday I attended a "Growing a Healthy Church" seminar in St. Paul put on by our District Office. The seminar covered the basics of what a healthy church should be doing. Surprisingly, many churches are not doing what the Bible says should be our primary task: Making disciples.

We should be working at reaching those who do not Christ and helping them become mature reproducing followers of Christ. As one person put it, "The task of the church is to turn atheists into missionaries." If all we are doing is educating, edifying and entertaining believers and their families, we are not doing what the Lord wants, nor are we a healthy church.

The seminar talked about measuring the number of people that become Christians through the ministry of the church and go on to be discipled by the church. The teacher urged us to focus on that number. "How many people are becoming disciples through the ministry of the church?" Most churches that are growing are growing because of transfer growth rather than conversion growth.

How many people should a healthy church be reaching? They suggested that churches should expect 10% conversion growth. That is, a healthy church of 100 should see 10 people come to Christ and become integrated in the life of the church each year.

That sounded like a lot to me until I started putting it in perspective. If every family in our church committed themselves to and were successful at leading one other family to Christ every 10 years, that would give NAC a 10% conversion growth rate. That sounds very doable to me, how about to you?

Do you think it is reasonable for you lead another person to Christ in the next decade? If not, what is standing in the way? Let's remove the obstacles and go for it!