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Week 3: Your Church's Mission Is Already Within Reach

When your congregation leaves its gathering, where do the people go? Some return to farms, offices, classrooms, workshops, or market stalls. Others care for children, visit relatives, search for work, or return to homes where faith is misunderstood. Each person returns to relationships your church building could never contain. That is worth pausing to consider. A church with limited resources may still have a wide network of opportunities to love people and bear witness to Christ. Think beyond bringing people into an activity During this series, we have asked what growth we should notice and whom we might intentionally help develop. Now we consider what those growing disciples are being prepared to do. In Future Church , Mancini and Hartman encourage churches to connect their gathered ministry with the multiplication of disciples beyond it. A helpful application for a small congregation is to ask how our life together equips people for the lives they already lead. Gathered worship rema...
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Week 2: Who Are You Helping Grow? A Simple Discipleship Step for Busy Pastors

Imagine finding an unexpected hour in your week. Would you use it to prepare a little more, catch up on administration, or deal with the task you have postponed three times? For many small church pastors, the answer comes quickly. There is always something waiting. You may also have another job, family responsibilities, long travel distances, or members facing urgent needs. An invitation to make disciples can sound like one more responsibility for an already tired leader. But what if the next step fits inside a relationship you already have? Think about a person before planning an activity Last week, we considered how to notice growth beyond attendance. This week, we turn to the patient work that helps people grow. Mancini and Hartman's Future Church directs attention toward developing people. That emphasis raises a practical question for a small church pastor: Who could I help take a next step in following Jesus? You may immediately think of the most confident person in the congr...
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Week 1: Is Your Church Growing in the Ways That Matter Most?

A pastor can finish a full week of ministry and still wonder whether anything is changing. The message was prepared. The gathering happened. Someone needed a visit. Another problem needed attention. You worked hard, and much of that work mattered. Yet the question remains: Are people becoming more like Jesus? That question can be uncomfortable. It can also bring relief. It invites us to look beyond everything we are trying to maintain and remember the people God has entrusted to our care. Looking beyond the weekly count In Future Church: Seven Laws of Real Church Growth , Will Mancini and Cory Hartman challenge church leaders to move beyond treating attendance and participation as sufficient evidence of disciple making. Their concern invites an honest examination of what our ministries actually produce. Attendance matters because people matter. Welcoming a new believer matters. Noticing that someone has stopped gathering matters. Financial records also help us steward resources respons...
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Your Next Healthy Step: Beginning an NCD Journey - Week 12

Week 12 of the Small Church Guys series: Healthy Things Grow—A Biblical and Global Approach to Natural Church Development For eleven weeks, we have talked about church health. We have explored what it means to believe that healthy things grow . We have examined the eight quality characteristics. We have discussed the minimum factor. We have considered how strengths can address weaknesses. We have challenged the temptation to copy successful churches. We have seen that pastors plant and water while God gives the growth. We have examined the six growth forces that help us understand how living things develop. We have questioned whether more programs actually produce more health. We have walked through the NCD Cycle. And last week, we considered why churches sometimes need an honest assessment. Now we arrive at the most important question in this entire series: What will you do with what you have learned? Because church health does not improve simply because we understand it. Healthy ch...
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