THE MAIN THING
A Few Words on Congregational Development from Canon Donald Vinson
From Koinonia, July, 2008
We’ve had some superb conversations lately surrounding congregational development and church growth in the diocese. We all have more on our “to do” list than can be done in a year, all designed to make our congregations more welcoming, more hospitable, more sensitive to the needs of guests, more attractive, more diverse. At the bottom of it all is a strong urge to help them become more—BIG.
And there is nothing wrong with having a larger congregation. We sometimes make “big church” jokes and disparaging comments, defensively, as if big were bad. It isn’t.
But in all of this, we must not lose sight of the Main Thing—faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even sick congregations can grow, we’ve seen it all around us. They grow into larger sick congregations, until they split and start the process all over again. That isn’t what we aspire to.
If we focus our attention on getting closer to God, into becoming more and more the beautiful and loving creatures and congregations God longs for us to be, we will become more spiritually well. As such, we can grow, because we will be more attractive to other Christians who are spiritually well, or wanting to be. A large measure of that focus will be just paying close and prayerful attention to what happens on Sunday morning, asking the question, “does this draw us and others closer to Christ?”
In essence, that is the difference between church growth and congregational development: keeping the Main Thing the main thing.
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1 comment:
I couldn't agree more. I recently saw a parish profile which did a fine job of advertising itself, but made no mention of Jesus Christ being the reason behind all they do. Jesus calls us to go and make disciples, not go and find pledgers. Whatever we develop as congregations is an expression of our relationship with and gratitude toward Jesus Christ. In today's world there are plenty of other altruistic, social, charitable, cultural groups to join. Folks won't put themselves out to commit to churches unless they are convinced the "perks" of discipleship go those other groups one better.
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