After the First Three Years...

A well known church planting fact is that the fastest growth happens in the first three years. Why is it that after that quick growth period, many churches fall into a lull and sadly, begin to decline after only those initial years of growth? When the church is young, there is almost always a heavy emphasis on evangelism. The church plant pastor and sometimes a small band of followers must get out and network and create excitement for the new church plant. This leads to many new Christians. George Barna shares in Marketing the Church that one out of four adults in the United States will go to church if someone invites them. When the church is young and full of passion, people invite everyone they meet. Somehow, that urgency seems to fade after a few years. The pastor who notices that trend setting in at his church has a decision to make. He could just let it happen as it is the natural tendency, or he can do something to be outside the norm. Here are some suggestions, should he choose the second route.
Taking another quote from Barna, in Evangelism That Works he wrote, “A church that strives to evangelize its community without saturating its efforts in prayer is like a race-car driver that jumps into his car at the starting line and discovers that the tank has not been filled with gasoline.” Not only should the pastor be in prayer for the souls of his community, but if he is to be successful, he will enlist those from his church that he can to pray earnestly with him as well. With the ease of blogs and e-mails, a weekly prayer list sent out to a prayer team is not a difficult task.
Once the prayer support is in place, modeling sharing the gospel with the lost is important. The easiest way is just to share one’s own testimony. What was I like before Christ? How did I meet Him? How has my life changed since? There are many approaches to evangelism, and many of them work. I think we can agree that there is no perfect system, but any of them is better than never opening one’s mouth to share Jesus with someone who is lost and going to hell! Perry Noble said that “50,000 people die every single day without knowing Jesus Christ.” Statistics like that should be motivating!
My last suggestion is to reconnect with the community. After a few years, the average Christian no longer has unsaved friends or has very few of them. We need to constantly cultivate new friendships outside our Christian community. Run for school board or city council, even if you don’t win, you get a chance to talk to a lot of people in the campaign process. The church could plan events that reach out to the community that aren’t churchy. While doing those things, the fact that the whole process was bathed in prayer from the beginning will help those involved keep the focus on evangelism.