I have to keep reminding myself of this image that Ed Young gives with regard to how growth occurs in any organization. At last year's Super Conference at Liberty University and then again at C3 he shared how important these three elements were to every organization's growth.
Our church started in a skating rink. Yes, a roller skating rink. With no schools available and the local movie theater unreasonable in price, we opted for the rink. Each week we brought in tables, chairs, a stage, sound equipment, children's and nursery and all of our signage as well as our welcome center materials and continental breakfast.
I remember going to the rink with our original core team (yes, I said 'original') and heard someone from the core say "I don't know if we should do this... we might have to get chairs." At that moment I silently prayed in disbelief... "Lord? Are you serious?" Looking back, chairs have been the least of our concerns.
One downside to our body meeting at the rink was the lack of nursery and children's space. Once the church got to 70 people or so we couldn't use the rink b/c our nursery was overflowing and more children meant more noise from their area. So.. the move.
We recently moved to a High School. We've not transitioned wonderfully well. I believe several factors have been at play.
1. Our small groups stopped meeting for a while which broke down the intimacy apart from Sunday mornings. Now for some, 'Sunday' is back to being about their needs, not the needs of our local community.
2. The space is almost overwhelming in size for our smaller church. I would have preferred to use a neighboring elementary school but their custodial staff didn't want to come in on the weekends.
3. At the rink we could see what needed to be done and 'pitch in'. At the school we are apart from one another and some things aren't being done as smoothly as they should b/c people who would be glad to help don't easily see the need.
4. We moved at the end of the school year which is a very busy time for many of our people.
Last night our leadership team had a lively meeting about all of this. I believe the meeting was productive, insightful and encouraging. I'm looking forward to implementing some of the changes we discussed. I reminded everyone however that it does no good for us to be the bomb.com church on Sunday morning unless we are active in reaching out to our community.
*It's also no good to invite people in to a wishyouwerethebombbutyouareadud.com church [uncomfortable environment].*
So, here we have it. We've experienced the change. Last night we had a little conflict and I'm sure with other adjustments we may see a little more. We are, however, going to push through the conflict (making adjustments to improve) and prayerfully see God bring on the growth.
Keep us in your prayers. Church planting is fun.
2 comments:
Give me a call and I'll share with you how we have made massive areas smaller. We have become the masters of this. There is nothing worse then being in sme huge place and it feeling empty.
Tally, you are in my prayers. You seem to be experienceing human adjustment to change.
Here at Fellowship, a few years back, we started a sat night service and it grew from about 600 ,the first few weeks, to 150 in 3 months. What happened was people had to adjust life, and that adjustment took a significant amount of time. People desire consistentcy and growth. When we make major changes it throws off both and people have to adjust life. Unfortunately this adjustment takes time.
It seems to me as if your church has had to make the sacrifice of a growth stunt in order to hit a growth spurt. Now that you have more room your whole dynamic has changed and spread you out quite a bit, but I honestly belive that as people adjust life they will begin to plug back in, and now you have room and stability for extended growth. Keep pressing on brother.
Mitch
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