Coming Home

For a week Karen and I joined our daughter Julie and husband Dave Knispel with their two kids Jacob and Lily in Destin, Florida. The sun, sand and love were great. I was also able to play some golf and got a real good score. Being with family is wonderful, especially when the grandkids are around.

But I am back and busy trying to catch up with all my ministry responsibilities, especially meetings to mentor and coach leaders. This is a task I dearly love. It is exciting to see so many young leaders grow in Christ and grow in understanding how to lead their families and the church family.

I am strongly suggesting that all lay and clergy leaders read Lyle Schaller's book, The Very Large Church. As I read it I can see why our years at College Hill were so wonderfully fruitful. Our team was doing the right things at the right time and the result was a powerful move of God. We did not have the right formula for, as we often lamented, to whom can we look for a model? There were few if any very large churches and no one knew exactly why they were growing back then.

Today there are many books based on good research about church growth. Rick Warren and other dynamic leaders have given us insights about the reasons some churches grow and others do not. We brought Lyle Schaller in to consult with us at CHPC in the 80's and he made a profound statement to our question about improvements. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

That comment is heard often nowadays but then it was startling. He also told us that we were almost unique among Mainline Denominational churches. Few were or are growing because they were preaching an uncertain message. Growing churches have a certainty of theology but a changing style that meets local and age appropriate musical needs.

Successful churches then and now have a multitude of services to families, hurting people in the community, children and youth and specialized groups.

If you are interested in winning people to Christ and growing in numbers, read this book. It may make you sick to see how much you need to do to grow or you may get excited to find a new rule book. Either way, spend a few dollars to find out how to grow.