5 Common Church Growth Barriers and How to Break Through Them
Improve the quality of your service in the following ways:
- Tweak your transitions.
- Set up feedback and develop evaluation mechanisms.
- Visit larger, growing churches and benchmark against what they are doing.
- Attend cutting-edge seminars and leadership conferences.
Jeff Gunn, pastor of CrossWalk Lutheran Church in Phoenix, saw incredible growth when he was able to overcome this worship service barrier. A few years ago, Jeff started a new congregation in a long-standing community that was being transformed by new development. As a strong communicator, he grew the church to 100 people in no time. But Jeff didn’t have a worship leader. In his Sunday services, he was cueing up and playing recorded music.
When Jeff made the decision to improve his services by bringing in a worship leader, he quickly broke the 125 mark and grew to more than 200 people. As he’s learned, sometimes you have to get out of your own way and do what needs to be done to create a quality experience for your attendees.
RELATED “DEAR SMALL CHURCH PASTOR”
Growth Barrier No. 5: Staff
If your congregation suddenly doubled in size, would you have the necessary staff members to serve them? To keep your church moving forward, you will need to hire people on faith, so you’ll be prepared to receive the harvest God wants to send you.
Hiring staff is truly a faith issue. Many pastors want to put off staff hires until they have the money in place to support the positions. Sounds like a practical plan, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work. You will never have enough money in advance to hire the staff you need.
To overcome this barrier, change your perspective on what it takes to hire a new staff person. Say you need to fill a position that would require a $48,000 salary. Don’t look at it as a year-long position. Instead, think in three-month blocks. If you approach the new position as a three-month, $12,000 risk, instead of a $48,000 risk, you will be more comfortable filling it. Then, if the staff person you hire is good, the position will begin paying for itself after three months.
When you approach staffing with a faithful heart, you’ll be much more prepared to handle the growth God brings you.
