Jesus inspires us to be a faith family with a growth mentality both spiritually and numerically. As we begin year 2019 in ministry, consider you own preferences regarding growth. How do you feel about growth? Does it make you excited? Does it make you nervous. Over the years I’ve heard a lot of varying opinions regarding church growth. Some people find it exciting and then on the other hand, some people find it scary. Venturing into the unknown is certainly a thing that brings out our emotions across a full spectrum. Jesus expected this from his own disciples. They asked questions regarding the details of their mission time and time again throughout the gospels. However Jesus encouraged them to have a growth mentality: both spiritually and numerically. Spiritual growth in the lives of people already following Christ is intrinsic to the Christian life in the teachings of Jesus. Growth in numbers too is built into the life of the early Church. How could evangelism find any success if the early followers of Christ had had an anti-growth mentality? The early Church would not have grown as rapidly as had if this were the case. Instead, the disciples wanted to reach everyone with the gospel. We too want to grow our church by reaching those who don’t trust Christ as savior, by inviting fellow brothers and sisters in Christ into our faith family, and by reaching those who have a hard time walking into the doors of the local church.

Luke 10:1, Mark 6:7, John 1-2, 1 Tim 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9

*Note: Church (capital C) means all believers, while church (lower cace C) means the local church.

As we study the life of Jesus in the gospels, it is clear that he had a perfect passion for ministry the way the Father intended. In the perfect life of Christ is a perfect balance of ministry in which he did all things well: submitting to the FAther’s will, worshiping, praying, believing God’s Word, walking with God, caring about His neighbor, healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead, investing His best in the disciples, telling the known world of the Kingdom, evangelizing all peoples, preaching the gospel, and the list goes on. 

As we read these stories, many Christians have summarized the work of ministry in two categories of relationships; our relationship with God and our relationship with people. To help us to make a distinction of human relationships, let’s go one step further. Let’s look at ministry to people in two ways: to those whom we are discipling and those whom we are evangelizing. Distinguishing Jesus’ life this way helps us to see that He spent most of His time with those who would multiply discipleship and evangelism. In other words, Jesus invested the majority of His life (time, gifts, and resources) in the disciples He was training. But because Jesus lived a perfectly balanced life and ministry, He also invested heavily in  casting out demons, healing the sick, and preaching the gospel to new people. 

One key to growth in the local church today is that we have balanced ministry led by a diversity of gifted people. It’s not uncommon for a church to find success in one or two areas of the missional life, but to do well in all three is the true challenge of our time and culture.

We must insure that we have balance from the get go and have mechanisms in place to gauge that balance in humility and diligence. May we be a church who is known for our Spirit-filled worship, our love for one another, and for our passion for willing the lost with the life-giving gospel.

-5 GOALS FOR 2019-

Christians are all on different parts of the faith journey. We want to be able to invest in lives throughout every step. We will implement a disciple-making system that can:

1-teach a growing believer how to relationally share Christ with others,

2-disciple believers in the knowledge and application of God’s Word,

3-grow believers into growing leaders,

4-move growing leaders into ministry planters/servants.

Numbers aren’t everything, but they can give us some indications of how God is moving in our church. We will strive to grow these ways:

-Lead at least 5 people to faith this year

-Have at least 7 baptisms

-To grow our average church attendance by 20%, from 65 to 78

-Grow tithes and offerings by 7.5%, from ~$129k to ~$138k

-Continue to support the GCF at 15% or more beyond our general fund, at ~$20.7k 

*All metrics are annualized.

We will recruit, coach, disciple, and/or mentor at least 1-2 aspiring worship leader/s with the intention to grow the worship team.

We will continue to update our church building, systems, and processes so that the facility facilitates the ministry with excellence.

We will seek 100% ministry involvement from the active membership of Missionary Alliance Church. 

We graciously challenge all members of MAC to begin or continue to serve in some ministry and in some capacity. You might bake a cake for the youth, volunteer as a chaperone, serve in Awana, teach a Bible study, preach a sermon, clean up after an event, start a prayer ministry, serve on the security team, be a greater, lead worship, serve on the AVL team, etc.