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Sermon Illustrations: Church Growth

The church that doesn't want to grow is telling the world: We are having such a good time over here, the rest of you can go to hell. Kong Hee

Spurgeon said, "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down. By faith the walls of this church will be pushed back." The deacons talked to him afterwards and told him he was presumptuous, being only a young man. But during his ministry the walls were pushed back three times.

Cho used to sit in his lecturers' classes and he would constantly have the desire to have the world's largest church. His first meeting had six people.

If you're expecting your church to grow by people having their steering wheel turned supernaturally, you're going to have a very small church. Peter Youngren

If you sell 100 Holdens [an Australian car] and one month later only five are still on the road, what kind of business are you running? Peter Youngren on retention of new converts.

A church that grows larger only by transfers from other churches is not experiencing genuine growth - it is only reshuffling the card deck.¹

Anytime someone says, "You can't measure success by numbers," my response is, "It all depends on what you're counting!" If you're counting marriages saved, lives transformed, broken people healed, unbelievers becoming worshippers of Jesus, and members being mobilised for ministry and missions, numbers are extremely important. They have eternal significance.²

A newborn baby that never grows is an unhealthy baby. You want to see that baby grow into a toddler, a child, a youth, a man or woman. And if it doesn't, you start to get worried. Because that sickness will result in that baby's being a perpetual burden on others.

I have a friend who has a 19 year old daughter who is so handicapped she can't even talk. They will have to look after her for the rest of her life. The only other alternative, if the problem isn't fixed, is that the child will die. The same happens in churches. If a church doesn't grow, it either becomes a problem, or it dies.

Just because something's growing, doesn't mean something's not cancerous. Mark T. Barclay

For those who say that numbers aren't important, imagine this: A couple goes to the beach with their three children. During the course of the day, all of their children go missing. They search everywhere and finally find two of them. The husband turns to his wife and says, "Let's go. Numbers aren't important."

The best marketing principle: someone likes your product and tells someone else about it. Mark Ramsay

The chances of a family attending church if a child is converted is 3.5%. If the mother is converted, it's 17%. If the father is converted, it's 93%.

New construction is always easier than renovation.³

A great deal more failure is the result of an excess of caution than of bold experimentation with new ideas. The frontiers of the Kingdom of God were never advanced by men and women of caution. J. Oswald Sanders

1 Warren, Rick The Purpose Driven Church p50
2 Warren, Rick The Purpose Driven Church p52-53
3 Smith, J.K.A. Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?