I TENDERED MY RESIGNATION at Community Church of the Hills after eight years of fruitful labor. When I got there in 2015, the Elders told me that they were two weeks away from shutting their doors permanently. As I leave in 2023, the fellowship has the largest attendance ever in over a decade with record
I arrived in Texas 7 years ago. It has been said that it takes 7 seven years for any great work of God to take effect….
Pastors say it all the time when assessing their flock. Church members try to avoid sounding braggadocious when speaking about it. Christian leaders warn never to make this your focus.
What am I talking about?
Have you ever heard the phrase: “It’s not about the numbers.”?
I’m here to say it is about the numbers.
Because numbers are souls.
I do understand and wholeheartedly agree with Jesus when he declared, …”I will build my church….” I trust him to do this. He brings the people and my focus should not be on how many come each Sunday. Still, numbers matter.
This is what Charles Spurgeon said about it:
Q: What’s the size of U.S. churches? (From Thomas S. Rainer)
A: First, big is not necessarily better. A church with more people in attendance is not necessarily more faithful than a smaller church. Second, some churches are in very sparsely populated areas. There may not be 350 people in a five-mile radius (though every community still has people who need to be reached).
We are a nation and continent of smaller churches. And though we have far more small churches than large churches, there is a big migration of people from smaller to larger churches. In other words, many of the smaller churches are getting smaller, and many of the larger churches are getting larger.
Here is a simple depiction of the number of churches at three different levels:
Keep in mind that the upper 10% tend to include more of the growing churches, while the lower 90% tend to include more of the declining churches.
(Do numbers really matter? Spurgeon says yes and so do I. Read by clicking here.)
Attendance at Community Church of the Hills since I became pastor August 30, 2015 thru present:
The Agony & the Ecstasy: 7 Years as Pastor of Community Church of the Hills
Sunday, August 30, marked the official 7-year anniversary of my being the pastor at Community Church of the Hills. When I first started, we had 81 people. Out of that original congregation, 12 still attend.
The first year was my honeymoon. It seemed everyone loved me. The second and third year, not so much. I learned that in a small church, in a small town, if you offend one person, the whole family and all their friends leave.I offended many during my first years’ learning curve.
Coming directly from a 1,500-member church in the beach cities of L.A. to a small country church in the middle of rural Texas didn’t translate well. I was not very gracious and was way too demanding. I over-emphasized evangelism and talked about Hell ad nauseum.
The first person to leave said it was because I didn’t teach out of the King James Bible. She had gone there 17 years. In that entire time, no one ever taught out of the King James Bible.
Another said that he wasn’t being fed. (Pastors, ever hear that one before?)
Still another complained that she “just wasn’t feeling it.”
Yet another left because someone put a hat on his wife’s chair.
One guy split because he didn’t like being told what to do and another bailed because I shook his hand the wrong way.
Oh! Did I mention that God prevented a church split in 2018? Or that a guy wrote a 4 page letter to the Elders trying to get me fired?
The bottom line? They didn’t love me as much as I thought.
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