Ben shared lessons from his 80+ years of life and decades of ministry…

Prayer: A Prayer Emphasis and a Prayer Council

The prayer council meets every Saturday, both to pray, and to organize prayer throughout the congregation. The group has two foci: getting the church to pray and teaching the church to pray.

Summertime Evangelism

About 19.2% of the people move every year. 64% of those will move between mid-May and mid-September. Yet often they visit churches “at our very worst” — when we reduce our ministries and programs to a minimum.

Ben puts a strong emphasis on not writing off the summer, but emphasizing the opportunities to connect with those new to the community. One example — a month-long “Harvester Goes Country” theme.

While the ebb and flow in California is different than the midwest, the principle is the same.

Benevolent Program

Harvester is located in a river bottom, an area with great pockets of poverty. The church became a licensed food pantry, which required building a new building to house the program. They have since started houses for battered women, give away about 15 cars a year, and many other benevolent ministries. The church has faced challenges in helping these people take responsibility for their own souls, but the church continues to be driven by both grace and generosity.

The church’s benevolent efforts haven’t necessarily resulted in the recipients becoming followers of Jesus and church members, but instead has resulted in other people, who want to be a part of a church like this one, making those decisions as they see the church engage in community benevolence. Today the church invests $350,000 a year in community benevolence, all given over and above the general giving to the church and its other ministries.

The tendency to become a “second commandment” church

• Small churches often think they are loving people well, but are often only loving each other.
• They are not loving the newcomers, and not also loving God with excellence in worship and teaching.

Failure to involve people in service

• Shepherding programs will always fail
• We do not lose involved people
• Unleash people to serve

Danger of a “set” program

• Assess the felt needs of your people and

No emphasis on “fellowship”

• Doesn’t have to be elaborately planned — should be spontaneous
• Getting people together and talking

Failure to staff the church

•   For a church to grow it must be overstaffed. Staff motivates volunteers to serve and start new ministries.
• The Church Growth Movement is unintentionally deceiving you on the subject of staff. (CGM says 1:100 ratio, higher with a large number of youth and children. That is 100 regular attenders — defined as someone who comes once a month.) We tend to take the 1:100 ratio and apply it to average attendance.
• Staff, properly hired, will pay for their own salary with 6-9 months. The exception is the youth minister, as it takes longer to attract the parents of teens.

I’m attending the Southern California Coalition of Community-Based Christian Churches at Hope International University, a conference for churches less than 300 in weekly attendance. Our church planting organization, Stadia, is co-sponsoring the conference.

Speaker Ben Merold is the lead minister at Harvester Christian Church in Saint Charles, Missouri, and was pastor at Eastside Christian Church in Fullerton, California for many years. Ben’s topic for today is evangelism that results in church growth. The theme verse was Ephesians 1:18 — which reminds us that the same power which raised Jesus from the dead is available in our churches today.

Ben presented questions to ask, challenges to overcome, and

Questions to Ask

1. Do you really want your church to grow?
   • Most everyone will answer “Yes” to this question, but the real issue is whether people are willing to make the changes needed to grow.
2. Are you willing to take some risks?
   • Every missionary has to get out of his or her comfort zone.
   • Set goals. A goal is “something you intend to do for God with His help.” A goal needs to be big enough that it can only be accomplished with God’s help.
   • You must allow leadership the freedom to fail.
3. Is you leadership leading? Or trying to control?
   • A study of church leadership meetings:
     • In declining churches, the leaders talked about “things” — a mindset of control.
     • In growing churches, the leaders talked about “people” — a mindset of service.
   • A study by Howard Hendricks found that:
     • 84% of people in churches were willing to change in order to grow.
     • 16% were unwilling to make such changes.
     • 70% of the formal leadership of the churches studied came out of the 16% who were unwilling to change!
4. Are you willing to broaden the base of your church?
   • Purdue University study:
     • Group #1: Went home and started one new class in each department. Within one year, each new class was as large as the average class, without taking anything away from the existing classes.
     • Group #2: Went home and merged classes any time lost a teacher. Within one year, the merged class was no larger than the larger of the two classes prior to the merger, resulting in a net attendance loss.
   • You have to broaden the base with new ministries, new groups, new classes, etc.
5. Will you teach stewardship?
6. Will you pray for the power of God?