Tag Archives: church growth

Replanting a Denomination: The Growth Cycle

Over the last few weeks, I wrote a series of posts on replanting a church, the idea being to consider how a church might work to change itself to be more nearly the church Jesus wants it to be. Reader … Continue reading

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Reruns: Hiring the Right Preacher

Church Growth: Hiring the Right Preacher, Part 2 Posted on November 29, 2007 Just for fun, you know, I thought I’d take a look at the latest Abilene Christian College data on preacher salaries in the Churches of Christ. They gather … Continue reading

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Church Growth: Andy Rowell Summarizes the Studies, Part 2 (Fertility, Caring for Children)

High fertility rates U.S. Protestants are less likely to belong to “mainline” denominations and more likely to belong to “conservative” ones than used to be the case. Evidence from the General Social Survey indicates that higher fertility and earlier childbearing … Continue reading

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Church Growth: Andy Rowell Summarizes the Studies, Part 1 (Witnessing, Strictness)

Andy Rowell, a Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) student at Duke Divinity School, maintains a blog called Church Leadership Conversations. (I just subscribed.) He recently summarized the conclusions of 7 separate studies on what drives church growth — (1) witnessing, (2) … Continue reading

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Church Growth: Singles — the Missing Ministry

How do we account for the dramatic doubling of the number of secular Americans over the last 18 years? And what are we to do about the exodus of young people from the church? Skye Jethani asks these questions in … Continue reading

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The Future of the Progressive Churches of Christ: Shrinking Churches, Part 5 (the Near-Death Congregation)

Imagine that you’ve been hired as a consultant to a congregation that’s lost so many members that it’s near death. What approach would you take to solving the problem? It’s a tough question, isn’t it? I have an idea or … Continue reading

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The Future of the Progressive Churches of Christ: Shrinking Congregations, Part 3 (Preaching Hebrews)

So what does yesterday’s post have to do with shrinking congregations? Well, not as much as my conservative friends might think, but it does matter a lot. Churches that forget to get around to teaching the boundaries of grace will … Continue reading

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Churches of Christ in Decline: What Went Wrong

In the last post, I quoted passages from the first volume of Alexander Campbell’s The Christian Baptist in which he describes how we planned to unite all Christendom. Over and over, Campbell and Walter Scott, the Restoration Movement’s first missionary, … Continue reading

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Churches of Christ in Decline: Boundary Markers and The Christian Baptist

Alexander Campbell first published his teachings in a periodical called The Christian Baptist, begining in 1823. The following are some excerpts that remain instructive today. First, regarding the “bond of union among Christians.” Passing by, for the present, the various … Continue reading

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What Is a “Church of Christ”?

The point has been well made in the comments here (thanks, CDG) and elsewhere that the numerical decline of the Churches is of far greater significance than the decision of some editor to remove 20 churches from a book that … Continue reading

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