Podcast Episode #357
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We continue our focus on evangelism and churches by revealing five surprising insights that were found in the research on effective evangelistic churches.
Some highlights from today’s episode include:
- If a church is growing, it’s highly likely that it’s growing faster than its community.
- By definition, there aren’t many effective evangelistic churches.
- Church leaders outside of what’s left of the Bible Belt know they have to be intentionally evangelistic.
- Membership is a meaningless stat in many churches.
The five insights we cover in this episode are:
- Over one-third of the churches are growing.
- If a church is growing, it is highly likely to be growing faster than the community in which it is located.
- There is a good representation of churches that are both growing and are evangelistically effective.
- Growth and evangelistic effectiveness are not limited to any one geographic area.
- We can no longer use membership in our metrics for churches.
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Feedback
If you have a question you would like answered on the show, fill out the form on the podcast page here at ThomRainer.com. If we use your question, you’ll receive a free copy of Who Moved My Pulpit?
Resources Mentioned in Today’s Podcast
- EvangelismRenewal.com
- Five Surprising Discoveries about Growing Churches
- Surprising Insights from the Unchurched
- The Unchurched Next Door
- I Am a Church Member
- Dutch version of I Am a Church Member
Actual genuine conversion growth (not from children that already attend church though we celebrate these conversions) or transfer growth?
I wonder how much of this 1/3 of churches are by new conversion growth and how much is “shuffling the deck chairs” from the 2/3 of churches that are shrinking which still means a net reduction in the church of Jesus Christ.
I’m sure Thom tries to use some metric like baptisms to count evangelism versus transfer, but I suspect in many places the growth is more transfer than evangelism. Not always, but often.
I encounter many “marginal” Christians that are more interested in the size and quality of the youth group than anything else. So, large churches attract these people while smaller ones loose.
I attend a Southern Baptist church that I know Thom’s group has interviewed for being part of the effective outreach group. The thing is, I doubt this is really true. The numbers might match the qualifications, but I have no feeling that we are out there “reaching the world for Christ.” We have a long way to go to really be evangelizing.
It’s encouraging to see more positive stats, and know that they’re based on some legitimate research, not put out just because they sound good.
A question on growth that relates to our situation. We’ve been seeing, and actively praying for the disenfranchised to return. These are the folks who got to buys, had an interpersonal problem, of found another reason to leave active attendance at a church.
Do you see any of that anywhere in the research?
Thanks.
As noted by others. I would like to see a study on genuine conversion growth.
With large emerging populations of people from genuinely non-believing backgrounds
there should be some…surely.
Even conversion of nominal Christians to a genuine faith is quite different from reaching those
who have never considered themselves Christian of any sort.