Healthy Things Grow: Rethinking Church Growth - Week 1
Week 1: Healthy Things Grow—A Biblical and Global Approach to Natural Church Development
Church growth may be one of the most misunderstood subjects in pastoral ministry.
For some pastors, growth means increasing Sunday attendance. For others, it means constructing a larger building, expanding the budget, adding staff, launching new programs, or becoming more visible in the community. These things may accompany growth, but none of them automatically proves that a church is healthy.
A church can attract a crowd while becoming spiritually shallow.
A church can increase its income while weakening its discipleship.
A church can build an impressive ministry structure while exhausting its leaders and neglecting its community.
Conversely, a small congregation may possess deep relationships, passionate prayer, generous service, effective discipleship, and a faithful witness far beyond what its attendance numbers suggest.
This does not mean numerical growth is unimportant. Every number represents a person, and every person matters to God. Churches should desire to reach people, make disciples, baptize believers, develop leaders, and multiply ministry. But when attendance becomes our primary definition of success, we can mistake activity for vitality and size for health.
At Small Church Guys, we believe something both simple and profound:
Healthy things grow.
This conviction does not mean every healthy church will grow at the same pace, reach the same size, or develop in the same way. It means that when God-given life is nurtured and unnecessary barriers are removed, that life naturally moves toward fruitfulness, reproduction, maturity, and multiplication.
That is the central idea behind Natural Church Development.
Growth Is God’s Work
The apostle Paul gave the church one of the clearest biblical pictures of growth:
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”
—1 Corinthians 3:6
Paul understood his responsibility. He planted. Apollos watered. Both men worked, served, taught, and invested themselves in the church.
But neither Paul nor Apollos could produce life.
God alone made the church grow.
This passage protects pastors from two dangerous extremes.
The first is the belief that growth depends entirely upon us. Under this mindset, pastors assume that the right strategy, event, program, sermon series, facility, marketing campaign, or leadership technique can manufacture the desired result.
When growth does not happen, the pastor concludes:
- I did not work hard enough.
- I need a better program.
- We need to copy a more successful church.
- I must preach more effectively.
- We need better music, technology, or facilities.
- Something must be wrong with me.
That burden has crushed many faithful pastors.
The second extreme is the belief that because God gives growth, the church has no responsibility to cultivate health. Planning, evaluation, leadership development, structure, and intentional discipleship can then be dismissed as unnecessary or even unspiritual.
Paul rejected both extremes.
He planted.
Apollos watered.
God produced the growth.
Pastors cannot create spiritual life, but we can cultivate the conditions in which that life is nurtured. We cannot force people to mature, but we can build environments that encourage discipleship. We cannot manufacture revival, but we can remove practices, attitudes, and structures that resist what the Holy Spirit desires to do.
The NCD training describes this as a movement away from trying to force growth and toward removing the barriers that inhibit the life God is already producing. Its “All By Itself” principle emphasizes that growth belongs to God: human beings nurture life, but they cannot force it into existence.
The Kingdom Grows “All by Itself”
Jesus illustrated this mystery in Mark 4:
“The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.”
—Mark 4:26–28
The farmer is active, but he is not sovereign.
He scatters the seed. He tends the field. He remains attentive to the conditions surrounding the crop. But he cannot climb beneath the soil and command the seed to germinate.
Life possesses a God-given capacity to develop.
The NCD materials use the phrase “all by itself” to describe this organic dimension of growth. The training explicitly states that we should focus on removing barriers to what God is already doing rather than attempting to force growth to happen.
This is not an argument for passivity. A farmer who never plants should not expect a harvest. A farmer who refuses to cultivate the soil, address disease, remove obstacles, or provide appropriate care is not demonstrating faith. He is neglecting his responsibility.
The healthier approach is cooperation with God.
We plant faithfully.
We water wisely.
We cultivate healthy conditions.
We address the obstacles within our influence.
And we trust God with the growth.
Church Size and Church Health Are Not the Same
One of the most important distinctions small church pastors can make is the difference between size and health.
A church’s attendance tells us how many people are present. It does not tell us whether those people are being discipled.
A church’s budget tells us how much money it receives. It does not tell us whether resources are being stewarded missionally.
A church’s calendar tells us how much activity is taking place. It does not tell us whether those activities are producing spiritual fruit.
A church’s building tells us something about its physical capacity. It does not tell us whether the people inside are growing in love, holiness, generosity, prayer, service, and witness.
Natural Church Development emerged from a search for principles of health rather than an attempt to imitate a particular success model. Its training makes the important observation that some numerically growing churches may actually be declining in health, while healthy churches possess an organic capacity for growth. It also stresses the harmonious interplay of all eight NCD quality characteristics rather than dependence on one highly visible strength.
This should encourage small church pastors.
Your church does not have to become large before it can become healthy.
You do not need the staff, technology, budget, or facilities of a megachurch to begin strengthening your congregation.
Health is not reserved for churches with extensive resources.
A church of 50 can develop leaders.
A congregation meeting in a home can practice meaningful discipleship.
A rural church can build loving relationships.
A church serving in poverty can demonstrate generosity.
A persecuted congregation can possess passionate spirituality.
A church without professional musicians can worship God deeply.
A pastor serving alone can begin empowering others.
The question is not merely, “How large is our church?”
A better question is:
How effectively is the life of Christ flowing through every part of our church?
Growth Is More Than Increasing Attendance
When we say healthy things grow, we must define growth biblically.
Healthy growth may include numerical increase, but it is not limited to it.
A healthy church grows in:
Spiritual maturity
Believers become more deeply rooted in Christ. They understand Scripture, practice spiritual disciplines, obey God, resist sin, and increasingly reflect the character of Jesus.
Loving relationships
People move beyond attending the same service and begin bearing one another’s burdens, offering forgiveness, practicing hospitality, and demonstrating genuine care.
Leadership capacity
The pastor stops carrying the entire ministry alone. New leaders are identified, equipped, trusted, and released.
Ministry participation
Members discover that they are not merely consumers of religious services. They are participants in the mission of God.
Missional influence
The church becomes increasingly attentive to people outside its walls. Members build relationships, meet needs, share the gospel, and serve their community.
Reproduction
Disciples make disciples. Leaders develop leaders. Ministries produce new ministries. Groups multiply. Churches may eventually help plant or strengthen other churches.
Fruitfulness
The congregation becomes increasingly capable of producing outcomes consistent with its God-given mission.
Natural Church Development reframes church health as a biblical and organic process rather than the outcome of adopting a program. It also warns that visible activity can hide weaknesses elsewhere in the church’s system.
Stop Comparing Your Field to Someone Else’s Field
Comparison is especially destructive for small church pastors.
A pastor serving 70 people in a rural community may compare his ministry with a church of 7,000 in a major city. A congregation in a developing nation may compare its resources with churches broadcasting polished services online. A bivocational pastor may judge himself by the output of a leader supported by dozens of employees.
But those churches are not cultivating the same field.
They do not have the same:
- Culture
- History
- People
- Resources
- Opportunities
- Challenges
- Leadership gifts
- Community needs
- Political realities
- Economic conditions
Faithfulness cannot be evaluated by imitation.
Natural Church Development intentionally moved away from following a single success model and toward identifying transferable principles that contribute to health and growth.
That distinction is essential.
A model shows how one church expressed a principle in its context.
A principle can be applied in many contexts.
For example, empowering leadership is a transferable principle. But the way leadership is developed in Singapore may differ from how it is developed in South Africa, Brazil, Germany, India, Guatemala, Australia, or the United States.
Loving relationships are essential everywhere. But those relationships may be expressed differently in a highly individualistic culture than in a community organized around extended family or tribal relationships.
Need-oriented evangelism matters in every nation. But the needs experienced by an affluent suburban community will differ from those of a refugee settlement, an isolated village, a university city, or a community affected by war.
The principle remains. The expression changes.
The principles of health are transferable, but their application must be contextual.
NCD Is a Global Church-Health Conversation
Natural Church Development is not simply an American church-growth strategy.
Its framework emerged through theological reflection, observations from nature, and international empirical research. The training describes NCD as effective across cultures and denominations precisely because it is principle-driven rather than model-dependent.
The training materials report that NCD has been used in 70 countries, that more than 90,000 churches have been profiled worldwide, and that NCD books have been published in 40 languages.
That global reach matters because the Church of Jesus Christ is not confined to one nation, language, denomination, worship expression, economic system, or ministry tradition.
The global Church includes:
- Historic congregations and new church plants
- Rural churches and urban churches
- House churches and congregations with large campuses
- Pentecostal, evangelical, mainline, charismatic, and independent churches
- Churches worshiping in freedom and churches gathering under persecution
- Congregations with abundant financial resources and churches serving amid severe poverty
NCD does not demand that all these churches look alike. It helps them examine whether the essential qualities of healthy church life are being nurtured within their own settings.
That is why this conversation belongs to pastors on every continent.
Healthy Churches Have the Courage to Look Honestly
Rethinking church growth also requires a willingness to evaluate our assumptions.
Sometimes churches respond to declining attendance by changing a service time.
They respond to volunteer shortages by making more announcements.
They respond to weak evangelism by scheduling another event.
They respond to financial challenges by preaching another giving message.
Those actions may occasionally help, but they may also address symptoms without confronting underlying causes.
The NCD coaching process is designed to be more than a one-time program. Its training describes it as a mindset of continuous growth in which healthy churches practice deep self-reflection rather than merely adjusting surface-level activities.
This requires courage.
A church may need to ask:
- Are we spiritually alive or merely religiously active?
- Are our people becoming disciples or simply attending services?
- Are leaders being developed, or is the pastor doing nearly everything?
- Are our structures helping ministry happen or making ministry harder?
- Are people experiencing loving community?
- Are we serving those outside the church?
- Are our strengths hiding significant weaknesses?
- Are we willing to change practices that no longer produce healthy fruit?
These questions are not accusations. They are invitations.
Healthy evaluation is not about shaming pastors or criticizing congregations. It is about becoming better stewards of what God has entrusted to us.
A Better Question for Your Church
Many pastors are asking:
“How can we get more people to attend?”
There is nothing wrong with wanting to reach more people. But that question may be too small and may lead too quickly toward programs, promotions, or imitation.
Consider beginning with a deeper question:
What would need to become healthier in our church so that the life God has already placed within us could flourish more freely?
That question moves us from pressure to stewardship.
It moves us from comparison to discernment.
It moves us from manufacturing growth to cultivating health.
It moves us from copying another church to understanding our own congregation.
It moves us from blaming the community to examining the conditions we can influence.
It moves us from asking, “How do we become bigger?” to asking, “How do we become healthier and more faithful?”
This is where a genuine church-development journey begins.
One Healthy Step This Week
Gather your key leaders and discuss the following questions:
- How have we traditionally defined church growth?
- Which parts of that definition are biblical?
- Have we confused attendance, activity, or visibility with health?
- Where do we currently see evidence of God-given life in our church?
- Where does that life appear to be restricted?
- What might we need to stop forcing and begin cultivating?
- Are we willing to examine our church honestly, even when the answers challenge our assumptions?
Do not attempt to solve everything in one meeting.
Listen carefully. Pray together. Notice where leaders agree and where they see the church differently.
The goal is not to leave with a new program.
The goal is to begin seeing the church through the lens of health.
Healthy Things Grow
Pastor, your church does not need to become someone else’s church.
It does not need to adopt another congregation’s personality, worship culture, ministry calendar, or organizational structure. It does not need to look North American, European, African, Asian, Latin American, Caribbean, or Australian to prove that it is healthy.
It needs to become increasingly faithful to Christ within the people, community, culture, and calling God has given it.
You cannot create life.
You cannot force spiritual growth.
You cannot manufacture the work of the Holy Spirit.
But you can plant.
You can water.
You can cultivate.
You can identify obstacles.
You can strengthen healthy conditions.
You can cooperate with what God is already doing.
And you can trust Him to give the growth.
At Small Church Guys, we believe healthy things grow—not because pastors learn how to manufacture life, but because God has placed life within His Church.
Is Your Church Ready to Become Healthier?
Small Church Guys helps pastors and leadership teams understand Natural Church Development, identify barriers that may be restricting congregational health, and develop practical next steps appropriate to their own culture and ministry setting. Whether your church needs help beginning the NCD process, interpreting an assessment, developing an implementation plan, or receiving ongoing coaching and support, we would be honored to walk alongside you.
Connect with Small Church Guys and begin identifying your church’s next step.
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