“We’ve got to grow!”

These 4 words are the “rallying cry” for many church members — and many pastors fall into the trap of adopting that mantra for themselves. They believe that ministry effectiveness is based on how many attend your services on Sunday morning.

“We’ve got to grow!”

I fall into the trap of believing that the effectiveness of my ministry depends on the growth of the church I serve from time to time myself. My Monday morning mantra from time to time is: “We’ve go to grow!”

The problem is that I am not sure that the number of folks in Church on Sunday is an accurate measure of the effectiveness of a Church’s — or a ministers — ministry. While this may sound like I am trying to justify the trend in many churches of losing instead of gaining members, I believe that God wants us to serve Him in the community instead of simply “packing the pews” to make our ministries look good or successful.

I believe that if members of a Church are doing what they can to reach folks in their community with the love of Christ, they are doing God’s will. Service to the community should be more important than Church growth. Service to others around them may bring folks into a Church — but it may not. Whether it does or doesn’t is not the question — the question is doing God’s work and focusing on being God’s people in that community” instead of just focusing on growth.

Instead of saying “We’ve got to grow!” maybe church members and minsters alike should be saying: “We’ve got to serve!” It seems to me that serving instead of growing is a more faithful focus for Churches and minsters.

All this came to mind this morning as I read the following article at the Ministry Today web site. You can read it here — great food for thought for a Monday morning!