Three pitfalls of growing churches today on the Church Revitalization Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the Malphurs Group team, where each week we tackle important, actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now, here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ Mathieu. Welcome to the Church Revitalization podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by my friend and cohost, AJ Mathieu. Let's go. AJ, I feel like we had to, like, dust the
dust off of our microphones. Yeah. And our pot I mean, this means nothing to to listener and viewer who hasn't missed a beat, but we we recorded a bunch because we were really busy. And now we're having to get back in the swing of things, you know, knock the rust off. Yeah. It feels good, though. I like it. I like, I like recording. I like the talking.
I like the topic. Yeah. I do too. You know, a couple couple of weeks away from recording recording has prompted us to think of maybe a different kind of topic for us, which is talking about growing churches. We're often talking about plateaued churches, declining churches. How can we help you navigate that? How can we help you, you know, avoid that? And so it dawned on us, you know, because we see these things too, there are churches that are growing, and there are some problems.
Mhmm. So it's not just it's not just the declining churches that have problems. You know, which if you're a declining church right now and you're thinking, gosh, I wish I were a growing church, then all my problems would go away. Let me just tell you. The problems don't go away. They just they just shift a little bit. Yeah. That's true. And, you know, a word that we use
often is the word health. And so we we talk about healthy growth, healthy churches, and there are things that grow that are unhealthy. You know? Cancer grows. Weeds grow. So the growth does not equal health, and we want it to. Not always. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can. We want it to. And so that's why, yeah, it's just kind of maybe the the other side of a of a coin today talking about growing churches that may have some unhealthy
aspects that, we can we can be aware of. And so, yeah, maybe you're listening today and you're like, yeah, my my church is doing pretty well. This would be something for you. Maybe your church is you know, you're attempting to get growth started, a new growth trajectory started, and these will be good things to keep in mind so that as you begin to grow, you can think, are we in any of those three areas that those knuckleheads on the podcast talked about? We'll
see. Yeah. And if your church isn't growing at all and you're and you're depressed about it, then this can just be a little bit of, like, schadenfreude for you, and you can try to rub it in the face of growing churches. So there's something for everybody today on the podcast. We're here to puff you up. That's right. Or or tear you down depending on your situation. So we can we can dive right into it if you'd like. Alright. Well, let's do that.
We've got three things for you today. And the first one that we wanna talk about as a a pitfall in a growing church is the pitfall of complacency. So it becomes, a comfortable position especially maybe if you've experienced a season or a long time or forever of not growing and then you are in a in a growth phase to think, okay. This is this is all we've wanted is this. And so we're it's we're on
easy street now. We're on autopilot. And the problem that we see, the pitfall that we're talking about in the area of complacency in a growing church is one in which we don't want to. Either either we avoid or we we choose not to or we don't even think about investigating our current health. How well are we actually doing? And so this this is something that we need to be careful of, the if it's not broke, don't fix it mentality. And we're not saying fix things that aren't broken or
change for the sake of change. What we are saying always be aware, and make sure that that we're not just, you know, riding something that is not going to be sustainable. Yeah. I I have actually had this conversation with a church that I was working with where the numbers were, you know, seemingly all up into the right. Not every number, we can talk more about that in the next point, but, you know, some of the some of the key ones that people pay attention to were up into the right.
And so the the the question I got from this strategic leadership team member was, why are we even having these meetings? Why are we even having these conversations? Everything is going well. And you you shouldn't only go to the doctor when you're sick. You should also go for your annual well visit. You know, you should go for that annual physical because you'll learn something. If nothing else, you'll get a baseline for what's normal for you so that when something
does happen, you can go well to an average to some other church. This might look good, but compared to our baseline, this is actually bad, and that could tell us something early. So it's important to not get complacent. It's important to continue to be reflective, self reflective, so that you don't miss something. I think that you can become blind to the small cracks in things where you just don't you just don't notice things anymore, but people do. People
do start to notice. AJ, it wouldn't be a return to the podcast without me weaving in a little bit of Disney Disney application. I thought you were leading up to a good toolkit plug. No. We're we're talking to the corporation. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get we'll get to a toolkit plug later. Healthy churches toolkit dot com can sign up free for seven days. No. I was thinking about how, you know, it's easy for Disney because their their revenue is
up into the right. But, actually, their overall theme park attendance has is static or declined the last couple of years. And it's easy to go to the shareholders and go, but look, we're we're still making more money. Well, but you're just raising prices, and the experience isn't wasn't what it has always been. You know, they're they've gotten notorious over the last few years, although to be fair to them, they've started to fix this. Small things break on
rides, and then they just don't fix them. Like, little effects that used to be really cool, and they'd surprise and they're they're what make a Disney ride a Disney ride. Like, these little things that you go, this thing used to spray water or this thing used to smell like oranges or this thing used to you know, all those or the animatronic used to actually move, you know, and now its mouth is, like, you know, not quite what it working the way it's supposed to. Yeah. And they just they cut
corners and go, well, but, you know, the ride still works. Mhmm. So why spend thousands of dollars to fix this thing? And maybe on one ride, it doesn't matter, but it accumulates to the point where people go, wow. If I'm gonna have to spend this much money and the things don't even work, why would I wanna do that? And so it's easy to become blind to those small cracks that in individual instances aren't that significant, but in the aggregate, people do notice. People go, I
don't wanna be a part of that. The same thing is true in your church. If you used to be great at community, you used to be really good at connecting people, you used to be really good at following up with people, you used to be really good at care, you used to have really good, you know, solid biblical teaching, and now you've kinda moved to stuff that's a little
bit more fluffy because it's a little bit easier to swallow. All of these things, any one of them on their own might not seem like that big of a deal, but in the aggregate, it can actually go back and hurt you. So it's easy to think the growth will just continue. Everything will always be up into the right. But without serious self reflection, those small cracks become big ones over time, and then it's much harder to fix them. And so that complacency is a
trap for growth. So that's my, you know, I I think it's a fair enough analogy for you. Let's let's go ahead and move on to to our second point because I we've got a couple of, I think, segue options here. So our second one our second pitfall is having a lack of awareness about what's behind your growth. And so I think we've got probably more maybe to unpack or talk about here. Totally. And the complacency is kind of a
setup to it. You know, I mean, continuing in your sort of business, not analogy, but, you know, just parallel connection points. Yeah. I mean, if all you're measuring is profit margin, you can achieve that in a lot of different ways without even growing your customer base. You can lower, you can increase prices, you know, increasing your margin. You can lower
costs that increase your margin. It's kinda the we're actually talking about the opposite in the church because we're talking about, like, increase in the customer base, if you will, to carry this over into the church space. There's more people coming. But is it what what is our you know, if you wanna maybe think about what exactly is the the profit margin in the church,
well, we will be talking about discipleship and maturity. You know, I mean, and so we might increase our customer base, but our profit has decreased and our profit in the church is that maturity. Are people growing as disciples? Are they becoming disciple makers? And so we have to have an awareness of what is really going on in our midst. There's
more people here, but why are they here? And if we don't know the why behind why they're here, and may maybe even more importantly, the why behind why they're staying here, then you're you're dancing
on the edge of the cliff, I think. So if you've not done anything different or maybe you've done something different, but it was perhaps just a little bit more outward looking, like we built a new building or, you know, we changed location, or we had, you know, maybe a kids camp or something, and now we've got, you know, like, some splash growth happening. But the underlying the undergirding framework for the church hasn't changed, you can't attribute people
staying to connection, then this is a potential pitfall. And we can get into the depth on this, Scott, because, you know, I mean, we in a in a healthy church, we got a lot of good things happening. And there's reasons behind why we're doing it. You know what I mean? We're intentional about discipleship. We've got great preaching. We've got biblical preaching. Great. Cool. But we're also telling people that they need to be engaged more. They need to be engaged in serving.
We've got great places for people to serve. We've got great quote unquote discipleship. The whole church is discipleship. But we've got we've got bible studies. We've got small groups. We've got Sunday school classes. We've got intentional fellowship things happening in which people are really getting invested in one another and in God's word. If we don't have these pieces, you might be headed for a pitfall
in growth of in your church. I don't disagree with you at all. I think, you know, as far as the things that you can measure, you know, Sunday morning is the main thing that people when they when they say we're a growing church, that's the thing they're hanging that hat on is how many people are showing up for worship on a Sunday morning. But, you know, as you said, you may not be able to identify exactly why there are more people there,
and you should you should be curious about that. You know, if you in the last six months and and like you said, if not if there's not, like, a big obvious thing, you should be curious about why there are more people there. You know? Did some other church down the road close and people will need another option, or did some church split? And now, you know, so you've got an influx of a 50 new people from some church down the road. You know, that's not
necessarily a sign that your church is doing awesome. It's just you got lucky because a 50 people decided to go your way versus someplace else. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm just saying you should know that. You should know that that's where all these people came from. Or it's just caught on or more people have moved into your area, and so more people are looking for a church, and you know, there are 200 new homes in your community and and so people are showing up your church on
Sunday. And what I what I get disturbed by when is when there's just a lack of curiosity as to where is this growth coming from, not to discount what the Holy Spirit's doing. The Holy Spirit can can bring people. But then we need to get more serious about spiritual fruit. You know, you talked about we wanna see people taking that next step. Am I getting engaged in community? Am I using my gifts to build up the body? Am I sharing my faith so that more people
come to know the Lord and are baptized? You know, if we're not seeing those things that we can measure, which is increase in groups attend community life, increase in service. You know, if you had 200 new people at your church, just by sheer math, you would have some increase in community life and some increase in service. But if you don't see a commensurate, like a sizable increase, then that's that's a bad sign. People are not taking more of a next step. That's not
good. But I guess I would push and go a step beyond that, AJ, and go, are we seeing spiritual transformation happening? This is a hard thing to say, but it needs saying. I fear that some churches that are growing in attendance are growing in attendance because of the perception of the people who come that nothing will be expected of them, and that they can simply go and be there and check off their religious box of that they attended a worship service, and they're happy to go there because no
one's going to push them. They're gonna be comfortable there. No one's going to hold them accountable for spiritual fruit. No one's going to be pushing them for spiritual transformation. No one's going to ask them to do something uncomfortable. Mhmm. No one's going to remind them that Jesus said that if anyone would follow me, he must pick up his cross and follow me. And you you should be afraid of that kind of growth
Yeah. Actually. That's right. Narrow is the path that leads to life, and you should be you need to be challenging church, not easy church. And it doesn't mean you necessarily make it hard on people, but you should be challenging people. People should feel challenged at your church. They should be challenged by their spiritual life. They should be challenged by by the word that you're bringing, the message that you're bringing. You know, there's we, as the body of Christ, should
experience conviction by the holy spirit out of the truth of God's word. We should be challenged in our behaviors, in what the church should be talking about. Our pastors, our leadership should be talking about what is expected of us as followers of Christ in our behaviors. And if this is not happening, then I think you're over on the easy church side. Like you said, Scott, people are checking off the the church
box. And so if most of what you're seeing at your church is Sunday morning only and people are coming in for, you know, sixty to ninety minutes once a week, and it's awesome. And we've got, I mean, it seems amazing. You know, people are excited. They're singing, you know, and and then that's it. If you're not talking to them about, hey, here's what your next best step should be in engaging with our church and with the body of Christ. And if you're not
Well and also speak sorry. Just to interject. And not just talking about that as program attendance. Yeah. Here's another program for you to attend. I because I think that people do do that in growing churches. They'll go, hey. We want you to join a small group. Why? What is it that you're wanting to see manifested in what spiritual fruit or what transformation are we aiming for? Why do you need to be in a group? Yeah. Why do you want me
to serve? If you're like, well, we gotta make more room for more people, so we need you to pitch in and help. It's not that fine. Okay. That's fine. But that is the most superficial reason to get someone to volunteer. Mhmm. And that doesn't work on everybody. Yeah. You know? So do do you know what I'm saying? Like, we we talk about this all time with the established pathway. It's like programs facilitate the process, which facilitates spiritual fruit.
Mhmm. So if we're not talking about the fundamental thing, which is spiritual fruit, then we're missing the point. And so many churches get stuck talking at the program level. And, it's so it's so I don't know. I guess you get close enough to it like you and I have for for years. You just start to see through it. Mhmm. And it's almost like it's it's empty calorie church. Yeah. We're just like Yeah. I mean, you know, I really It's a turn off. To the people who are growing or
are sports spiritually mature, it's it's actually just kind of gross. You're just like, this is spiritual candy. It does start to feel that way. Way. I know you you know, I mean, we we ended up, you know, kind of falling into this episode because, you know, we've recently both experienced churches that kind of have these aspects going on, and, yeah, it's kind of what led us to have these kind of conversations and to just record it. But, yeah,
you know, I mean Well, we see it a lot. I mean, it's not We do. No. I mean Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean Grow a dart. You know, I a growing church. Let me see it. This church, this one church that, you know, that that I've that I have become aware of. You know what I mean? They're building they're adding on to their building, you know, a big, children's ministry space because of the the necessity on Sunday morning. You know what I mean? There's just they
need more room for kids. And I'm like, okay. So, you know, it's a huge capital investment, obviously. It's a it's a big public thing, though. You know? I mean, people can drive by and go, look at this church. You know? It's growing. It looks that looks really exciting. But, okay, it it's still to accommodate, you know, a a three hour window on a Sunday morning, millions of dollars in
investment. And I'm not saying it's bad. I mean, great. There's more kids. Now they're going to experience Jesus on that Sunday morning. But Mhmm. But the church, though, you know, doesn't seem to be talking about next step. You know? I mean, they're not don't seem to be striving for engagement beyond Sunday. And I just think that's I think you're stepping near the precipice on that.
But, you know, kind of going back to our our first point on complacency, when that is your environment, like, look at Sunday is going like crazy. You're not thinking to yourself about, you know, what what's what are the problems with this? You're celebrating the success and and the growth, and it should be. You can have all this. I'm not saying it needs to be one or the other, like, you know, stop growing and and, you know Yeah. Put on
sackcloth and ashes. I mean, just just think about what's going on and let's let's work towards sustainability in the growth. You know, I I think maybe one of the reasons why I'm sensitive to this is I've served in churches that are growing really quickly, and I've seen the soft underbelly of it. I'm not going to even say that that doesn't color my perspective to some degree. It definitely does. But there's a dark side of it, and it's and church growth's intoxicating.
Mhmm. You know, when you're growing and especially when you're growing quickly, as a leader, it's a drug. You're like, wow. This is you can really get high on your own supply and and think everything's going really well. And, you know, I really should write a book about this, you know, about how awesome I am and things are going. And just be totally just lack total self awareness. Like, what? And that's so that's point number two. So point one was complacency.
Point two is lack of self awareness. This is this is a good transition then to the third and and final pitfall we wanna throw out there, which is overreading the growth, you know, where you go, okay. We've got a lot of momentum. Therefore, we must do fill in the blank thing, and you rush into hiring more staff. We gotta we gotta hire more staff, or we gotta build more buildings, or we need to add more services. Those are the three maybe most common Yeah. Reactions, which might be
which all might be appropriate things to do, by the way. Mhmm. Maybe totally be appropriate to hire more staff, maybe totally appropriate to build more physical space, may be totally appropriate to add more services or to or to go multisite. That'd be another one. Or to plant a church. None of those are bad things. Don't hear us say don't do those things. Those are all great strategies for managing growth. So they're all good. Critiquing or trying to guard you against is moving too
quickly to those things. You know, when you're when you don't, when you are complacent and you think what is, that we are up into the right is what is and will always will be. That's you're not ready to add a service when you don't know why you're growing. Yeah. When you don't have that self awareness, what's working, what's not working, Are we moving
people through the process so that they're actually developing? Are we managing and shepherding the new people we have right now before we make room for even more new people? If you've not gone through those steps thoughtfully and well, then you're not ready to hire more staff or build more buildings or add more services Yeah. Or go more East Side Yeah. Or put two plants to church. You know, what's even harder and more complicated on this is we can't even we can't even
interject the word sustainability. Like, you need to have these other pieces in place for sustainability because there's so many examples of multisite and megachurches that have been going on for years and years and years. And people can point to it and go, well, I'm leaving around thirty years. You know? They've got 40,000 people attending, so don't tell me it's not sustainable. And the
reason you know? So sustainability is not even necessarily a good word to connect to church church health because people, and especially the Western church and more specifically the American church, has a huge appetite for shallow church. That just needs to be said. And so, you know, there's but it's dangerous. It really is. There's I'm afraid there's gonna be a lot of people that are are gonna hear I never knew
you. That you know, I mean, we have we all have our own personal responsibility for our maturity and and growth relationship with Christ, but the church has a responsibility in that too. And and I think there's gonna be some church leaders that are gonna be scolded at some point for how they've handled things. So now you though, the Church Revitalization podcast audience, are not those people. Not you. Shirley. Not you. Never.
I mean, honestly, you're probably listening to this podcast or you sought this podcast out because that's not you. If you were going like crazy, you're probably yeah. Well, let's see point one, complacency. If you were you know, if you're like, this is great. You're not out looking for help on unhealthy church growth. So Yeah. So I guess, you know, maybe this is just more of a of a word of warning. Don't get caught up in that stuff if if some
dramatic growth begins happening to you. No. Be be confident and be be joyful in the small to moderate growth your church experiences consistently over a longer period of time because you took positive steps to build a healthy environment and your people are growing. And and so, yeah, I would much rather see your church grow by 5% a year, consistently. And and things just really working well, than for you to go, hey, guys. My church grew by
30% this year, and we hardly did anything. Well, the Lord is really blessing us because that might be your response. And maybe maybe he is, you know, I am I am not he and I'm not here to pass judgment on you either, but dig into that. Know what's going on. And and yeah. Yeah. Don't, don't let that go untouched. Totally, and that would be maybe my biggest point is that if you don't know why things are the way they are,
then you probably don't have the systems to manage the things that they are. Yeah, yeah. Right. And, you know, churches will naturally contract back to this size that you're built for. Mhmm. And we talk about this all the time with leadership pipeline work that we do with churches. You know, I would like to point to acts chapter two because, I mean, I think a lot of people would go, well,
what about acts chapter two? That that church grew from people the disciples in the upper room to 3,000 in a day. That's pretty great growth. What about that? And and I would say Jesus spent the previous three and a half years making sure the right 20 leaders were in the room so that when the Holy Spirit came and did what only the Holy Spirit can do, you're ready for verse 42 where it says, and they devoted themselves to 3,000.
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship and to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And who is who is helping to guide and shepherd all that work? It's the 20 who are in the upper room. And so I would just wonder how many churches that are growing want the 3,000, but they don't wanna do the three and a half years of work to get the right 20 people in the room. Yeah. The leaders in place to to ensure that real genuine discipleship can happen if God were
to bring the growth. Well, that was also a miraculous event that day that Peter preached in Jerusalem, and the audience was I don't know. Do we know a number on that, Scott? Tens of thousands? I don't know. I mean, it'd probably be for me to say that the Lord couldn't have a couldn't have a Pentecost moment at your church too. I mean, I think you certainly
could. My point is the people who were the leaders who were there to shepherd those 3,000 people, that part, I'm I'm I'm I hope I don't get myself in trouble with someone. Listen. Of all the miracles that Jesus performed, leadership development wasn't one of them. It was just the hard work. Yeah. Leadership development takes a lot of time. You know? And so if Jesus took the time to develop the leaders,
you don't get to take the shortcut. And so and I'm afraid for a lot of these churches that are in the growth trap, they want to expand too fast, and they don't have the leadership structure or leaders themselves to sustain it. Yeah. And something that you said, and I'm gonna steal your quote because you said this in our prep, but things that grow quickly can decline quickly too. Yeah. Weeds grow fast, but their roots are shallow. They're very easy to pull. And
that's true. That's true for growing churches, fast growing churches. So Absolutely. Of course, you can have whole fields of of weeds as well. Point my lawn, for example, is great at growing weeds every year. So it's easy to look at my lawn and go, wow. There's a lot there's a lot growing there, but mostly it's not the stuff that anyone would be proud of. It's Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you what, you know what? We lost a lost a lot of grass. My my yard declined
several years ago. Okay. And I experienced a lot of I think you would I think it's pronounced the, scientific name for this bluegrass weed, poa annua. Maybe there's some guys out there that, ladies that know about this stuff. And it pops up in the spring, and the roots are so shallow. You know? It grows in clumps, and you can just go out there and just rip it right out. But that stuff is prolific. And we had a ton of it, and it's not easy to get rid
of. But, you know, so we we, we changed, like, fertilizer programs and all that stuff. And I got a bunch of bare dirt out there right now because I had lost healthy grass due to disease. But I am excited that all I have this year is bare dirt. I got no weeds in my bare dirt. And we've now we've prepped the soil, Scott, about to put down some new grass. So I've created a healthy environment for some sustained healthy growth,
and it's gonna have deep roots. But you won't be able to be complacent because those those weeds will come back, you know, in three months. That's right. Can't let off. Gotta gotta stay on the gas with the fertilizer, but I have done a lot of prep now to prepare my yard for sustained healthy growth. And and yeah. Not a not a yard full of easy to grow weeds. Yes. I got a I got a lot of that. You can send your son to my yard and have him Developing.
Yeah. Yeah. I can I can I can bring my system to you, Scott? We've I've got a system in place. Sure. Healthy, sustainable boat. And he's not out of business. Does he travel to Tennessee? But, likewise, we at, the Malthus group healthy churches global also have systems for sustainable healthy growth in your church. And I would start by getting into the healthy churches toolkit because we've got training in there for our strategic envisioning process
that lays the foundation for healthy church growth. We've got, leadership pipeline design training in there to help develop a healthy and, growable team in your church along with tons of other resources. You can get that for seven days for free signing up over at healthy churches toolkit dot com. So I would definitely do that. For sure. I wanna, wrap up today's episode by saying something that I feel like just needs to be said, because I think
you could listen to this episode and very quickly go, wow. You know, these guys are always talking about how you wanna grow a healthy church, and and so you listen to this episode and you might think these guys are anti growth. We are not anti growth by any means. We are for healthy growth. And sometimes, healthy growth is slower, or the annual percentage of growth or whatever is smaller. But healthy church growth comes from doing the right things the right way for a long time.
And and and you do that so that people spiritually grow deep and wide and and so that your church bears spiritual fruit for decades. Like, that's what we're after. That's what the Healthy Churches toolkit is all about. That's why we do strategic envisioning. That's why we do leadership pipeline. And it's born out of mourning situations that we've experienced and that you've all seen too, I'm sure, where some church had the appearance of health but had disease all in the
roots. We don't want that for your church. It's not what we promote. It's not what we teach. It's not glamorous what we teach, but it is good. So, yeah, so go to healthychurchestoolkit.com. Learn about how you can grow the right way and the healthy way. It's not necessarily the fast way. It's not the flashy way, but it's the spiritually
healthy way. So that's what we're all about. There you go. Link also down there in the video description or podcast description for this episode, however you're consuming the Church Revitalization Podcast this week, and it'll be there again next week. Those links will be there too because we'll be back with you then. Can't wait to see you.