The Narrow Path Ministries

I've been thinking recently about the concept of "growing the church." When I hear most people talk about this, it's in the context of "God is moving and our church is growing," or "this pastor really knows how to grow a church," etc...

My question is, why does growing the church have to mean growing our particular fellowship? Is there ANYTHING in Scripture that necessarily connects the two?

Let's say I was a part of a home fellowship that was mostly homeschoolers, and without a youth group or children's classes. Generally, that type of fellowship is not attractive to most. But there are plenty of fellowships in town that generally are what most people want. Why should I care how many people are a part of "my" fellowship? Let's say I tell someone about Jesus and they become a disciple. But they have a couple of teenagers and really think they should put them in a youth group. I would be a part of "growing the church," but I would probably recommend that if that's really what they wanted then to go be a part of such and such fellowship. So our fellowship wouldn't have "grown" but the Church would have grown.

Does that make sense? Am I off base?

rae wrote:

Does that make sense? Am I off base?

yes, and no!

i agree with you. we now equate "success" with numbers. that's one way, sort of, I suppose.

my "church" is in the middle of a building phase and everytime i see it makes me a little uneasy. i am confident that when the project is done it will draw a lot more people in (because it will look considerably nicer than it did before- curb appeal, you know); but my fear is that we will grow a mile wide but only an inch deep. i do believe that ultimately people will be added to the kingdom, but i hate it when the focus is on the building to accomplish this. i'd rather that the word spread that when you walk into our building you can sense God's presence.

TK

I agree with you Rae. It doesn’t matter where you go, as long as you belong to Christ.

A couple of decades ago I actually heard a pastor say the following words in regards to new converts. “If we spend the money and time to reach them then they should come to our congregation and not another”. Yikes!

It’s not our kingdom….it’s Christ’s Kingdom.

One probing question to ask is “are we willing to pray for the growth and effectiveness of other congregations in our city, even possibly at the expense of the growth of our own”? I think if the glory of Christ, His will, and His Kingdom are our primary concern, then we’d have no problem praying in such a fashion.