As you welcome the new members and celebrate the changes, do not neglect the longtime leaders who have served this church in good times and bad. The first defections from a growing church are often people who have served for years but who now feel they are being pushed out.
Membership in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont churches together grew by 1% from 2017 to 2022. Every other area saw a numerical decline for Southern Baptist churches.
When a church focuses on the person as a whole and not the transactional relationship often, they see Christ in the person and not the person inside the local church, which begins to tare the veil of developing relationships to become pew warmers.
When you find that you’ve stopped growing, you’ve probably exhausted the capacity of leaders in your organization. Is your staff ready to lead at a higher level? Are your volunteer leaders ready to duplicate their teams with a second leader?
