Use Every Member to Grow a Healthy Church

In our church, we have focused on loving people and accepting people, and being warm and welcoming when we have people come. We treat everyone the same—like they belong here and like we want them to be here. We are very intentional about that. We have very strong guest reception and guest greeting; we have large teams of people who are involved in that. Their focus is to make sure that everyone who walks in the door feels like they belong here. That’s the number one thing that everyone says as they come out of our church: that they’ve never seen such a welcoming church.

We feel that everyone in the congregation should be equipped to disciple. It’s a command that we have from Jesus, and we believe that every individual should be discipling. So we are emphasizing that every single day.

This material was originally recorded as part of the  Renovations Project. It has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Gauge church growth by renewed disciples and engaged youth

The temptation is to measure by numbers, and we’re a growing church. We have growth in our numbers, but we believe that success is measured by the numbers of disciples that we make. If we’re constantly discipling, and we’re bringing people who have not been in church for years back to the church, we feel like that’s a successful and healthy church. We found in our church that we were bringing people into the church who hadn’t been in church for some 50 years sometimes. It was amazing to watch people come back to church. And I think that’s really one of the things that we need to be thinking critically about now, because all of our churches have challenges in keeping membership. I believe that it’s really all about bringing people back who haven’t been in church for a long time—people who have been turned off by church or have been hurt by church. All of those are really targets for making disciples. 

One of the other key components of a healthy church is engaging youth. That’s where a lot of churches struggle, but it’s probably the most critical in terms of longevity for the church. I’ve seen this in my own family and in other friends’ families where it only took one generation to lose their children. For us in church leadership, that was a key component that we knew we had to engage youth and maintain the youth. That meant doing everything possible to make that comfortable and fun and educational for them. 

Related: What do teens really need and want from youth ministry today?

We found in our own experience in starting a church that we started with people our own age and older. We recognized quickly that that’s not sustainable, and that the most important thing is bringing the younger generation in. We wanted to not lose our children and grandchildren in the process. We brought in a pastor who was comfortable with change and was willing to drive change. Even though it felt hard to those of us who were in the council and who were providing the leadership for the church, it was necessary.

We worked hard to do that in a loving way. To our surprise, we did not lose people in the process, but we gained a lot of people. We went from a church of about a hundred people to a church of about a thousand people. We are constantly looking for things that aren’t working anymore, things that need to be changed, and then we’re willing to do that implementation. 

Related: Change is vital in the church

Seek out business people and retired people in your church

I think that business people are such a huge resource in a church, and they are untapped and overlooked. When we were involved in and running our business, we wanted to do kingdom work, but we had no idea how to go about doing it. We would serve on an occasional church committee, but we didn’t know how to go outside of that. We were regularly asked for money, and I think that’s a legitimate thing, because business people can contribute their money. But along with that business, people really want to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty, and they want to be involved in missions. One of the things we found in church leadership was that especially our younger generations want to not only be involved in missions, but also to be active in it. They want to do more than just give their money. 

I can only speak from personal experience about being a business person and wanting to be involved in kingdom work that it’s so important to be asked. There are times, especially as you retire from your business, when you feel like you’re not able to contribute anymore. It’s so important to be asked, and to feel like there’s a need that you can meet. So for us, from a personal perspective, that was what was important to us: being asked to get involved. We were just sitting back waiting, and we found that a lot of business people are doing the same thing. They’d like to be involved but just don’t know how to do it. 

Incorporate women in church leadership

I may be a little biased about women in leadership in the church because I feel like they’re such an untapped and important resource and good, strong managers. We need to cultivate women leaders. But if I was speaking directly to women, I would say, don’t be afraid to step up and don’t be afraid to have a voice in providing direction for the church and providing leadership. Women have so much to contribute. In terms of working with people, managing people, and understanding what is important for driving the church, I think women are critical. I would encourage women to step up and want to have a voice in that process. 

My advice to men about incorporating women is—and this comes from my business experience—when we had our management team in our business, we encouraged them to have a well-rounded group of leaders. We pushed especially to have women in management and in sales; that was unusual for our industry. We felt that women had more capability than men did in some cases. We encouraged the male leaders of our organization to incorporate as many women as they could into their teams or into their divisions or into their departments, to be able to get those qualities out in the organization. 

Related: Building God’s Church Together Bible study