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“Though it’s good and reasonable to desire growth, I have learned to rejoice in the fact that God has chosen not to grow my church at the speed I once envisioned.” - 9 Marks

Discussion

Fri, 04/24/26

Two things about numerical growth:

Some communities have nearly no population growth. The county I live in is the same size today as it was in 1960. The church is about the same size today as it was then. This does not mean the church hasn’t grown. In fact, about 80% of the people in the church weren’t here when I came. But those people simply replaced those who died. In this kind of community, your “growth” is often offset like that. In God’s grace, there is sometimes growth beyond just replacing what a church has lost.

When I lived in the Bible belt, I observed that in any growing Bible belt community with tons of churches, the many choices of where to go to church bred restlessness. A person’s church might be an 8 out of 10, but close by, there is a church that, in a person’s judgment, was a 9 out of 10. The feeling I got was that 15% of the churchgoing population was almost constantly restless and ready to move on to another church. This is why the new church plant, which will be a mega church in a few years, can grow so fast. Such a church needs to snag just a little of that 15%, and they have “growth.”

Only God knows in a county whether there has been overall church growth in Bible-believing churches.