Course is keeping church growth on track

What practical steps can you take to develop your church’s vision and ministry? This is the question Mark and Kathy Ryan are asking leadership teams attending the church development and growth track. And as three leaders told Chris Rolfe, it’s proving to be extremely helpful.

George Whittome, Regis Christian Fellowship, Rowley Regis, near Birmingham

George started at Regis Christian Fellowship at the end of 2023 and took over as senior leader at the start of this year. From being a church of an average 30-40 on Sundays, regular attendance lately has jumped to 50-60. The church has just joined Elim.

I’ve learned so much from this course, but the main thing has been a mindset shift about church and how to develop it. One thing Mark showed us was that a core part of growing a church in a healthy way is raising volunteers, training leaders and building teams, so I’ve been implementing this advice. Mark’s tip was to write a list of everything that needs doing in church, then to give everyone a job, the idea being that when people receive responsibility their commitment goes through the roof.

From that, I’ve started a notices team. Before, it was just me running the services, but I did some training about speaking on stage and now we’ve got five or six people on board. I’m creating a team to launch kids work too and I’ve just run a work day where we gave people pizza then repainted a room upstairs and did a clear out.

Another big thing for me was the discipleship pathways session, where we looked at needs for discipleship at different ages and stages. Mark taught that as pastors we should be developing systems so people get the pastoral help they need, and to have discipleship pathways for different faith stages. We’ve had quite a few new Christians coming to church so I’m thinking through ways to give them a Christian essentials course. Then we need something for people to go deeper in their faith too; to understand their giftings and purposes in God.

On a personal note, this course has been massively helpful for me as a trainee minister for understanding how to run a church. Mark has run the sessions really well and his heart for our churches to be fruitful and for us to understand the workings of healthy churches bleeds through each and every session. All the praise goes to God for the salvations we’ve been seeing and the way our church has been developing, but Mark has been so helpful to me in terms of cultivating this fruitfulness.

Dave Meggers, Bethany Church, Gatley, near Manchester

Bethany is an independent charismatic church on the commuter belt into Manchester which recently joined Elim. An average 70-80 adults attend on Sundays, and ministries include kids and youth work, a young person’s music workshop, seniors groups, life groups and a food bank.

Initially Mark and Kathy were looking for a church to host the course so we offered and I went along for a look, but I was hooked from the first session. We’re a small, active church with the potential and desire to grow, so it was right up our street.

Mark talks about things like creating church culture, getting your systems and admin right and keeping your website up to date, so we’ve been chipping away at his suggestions around that. One recommendation was about including testimonies in services. We’d kind of been doing that, but now we have testimony slots where we interview people about how they came to faith, what God’s doing and how we can pray for them in their mission fields.

Mark looked at welcoming and visiting new people too. We were doing that to some extent but we’ve become much better at it. We’ve got systems to flag when new people get in touch and we’ve created new welcome packs and a connect corner. Now we feel confident that people will receive a decent welcome.

Another small thing is that we’re now actively using QR codes to invite people to meetings, which looks more professional. We’ve also made improvements to our building, painting some areas that were redundant in order to create new spaces such as counselling rooms.

These are all things we knew we needed to do but were on the backburner. The course with Mark has kept us accountable to actually do them – with homework to encourage us to do things between each session. We’re really grateful for this initiative and I’d recommend any Elim church to get involved. It gives you the impetus to do things you know you need to, and teaches you about things you don’t know, too. I’ve now got my assistant pastor Daniel, who’s an MiT, doing the course. It’s great because he’s younger so he’ll approach things in a completely different way even though we have the same objectives, and he’ll pick up different ideas from the same teaching. It’s like we’ll benefit from two years of teaching instead of one!

Steven Holmes, Dundee Elim Church

Dundee Elim is on the edge of the city, close to two universities and student housing. The church was founded in the 1920s and Steven felt the call of God to pastor it eight years ago. Its groups include women’s, men’s and young adults ministries and connect groups.

Before we signed up for the course our church was growing steadily. New people were coming and we had a heart to build community and see people’s relationships with God grow. But we’d come to a point where change was needed and were unsure of our next steps. We felt as a leadership team that this course was what we needed to help steer our way forward.

I attended with our elders and some of our staff which gave us the chance to discuss what’s best for Dundee Elim together. Mark and Kathy gave practical tips and we worked through the workbooks as a team. In the first session we looked at vision and values. We discussed how people in our church probably didn’t know what ours are. Mark encouraged us to find three practical and understandable words to sum up our vision (ours were “proclaim, build, serve”). Now, we’re teaching this in the church groups.

Another small thing was QR codes. We’d been asking people to connect by filling in cards, but Mark suggested putting codes on the back of seats instead. Sure enough, people are now scanning them to give their details.

Mark also spotted we had no notice board giving service times. We’ve now invested in one, again with a QR code, and students passing by are scanning it. The course also helped us question how we could improve discipling and caring for people and how to set up teams and get people volunteering.

This is just the start of a process for us. We’re continuing to meet quarterly to review what we’ve learned, what’s working and what’s not. We keep going back to the workbooks to assess where we’re at. One thing I’ve understood is that it’s the small things that can bring big changes, so we’re endeavouring to keep things simple. I would recommend this course to other pastors and leaders in the same situation as we were. If you’re growing, your church is healthy, yet you’re not sure what your next steps are, it will really help give you direction.

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.