Reversing church growth

We are blessed enough to have Bob Jackson, an expert in the study of church growth and decline as one of our lecturers. He is very fresh and entertains us with some often quite surprising statistics, one of which we are taking quite seriously in the Marszalek household at the moment. My husband has set himself a year target to learn the drums. This has been on his heart for a long time anyway but it is helpful that according to Bob there is a correlation between a drum kit in a church and church growth. Good stuff!

At the end of the day, it is God's Kingdom we want to see bursting at the seams and it is our hope that growing church attendance figures indicate that his Kingdom is growing but it is also a lot messier than that. God's kingdom will grow in spite of our concerns about filling pews and as the church adapts to suit the times, not it's message, oh no, never, but just the way in which it delivers that message (let me be very clear about that!), I am hoping it will not be a simple case of counting up the bums on our seats on Sunday mornings. Church is spilling over and into other things, places, spaces and times of the week.

I could not help thinking of Bob when reading the article below, brought to my attention by one of the S J newbies (new St John's college ordinands) and I wonder if some of us are sometimes engaging in church reverse rather than church growth.

By Phil Cooke

Flips, all a bit worrying. We need to keep thinking all the time about the way that we do things.