Old School Church Growth

Sometimes people talk about church growth like it is a new phenomenon. Well, it's not. Malcolm Gladwell points out in his book "The Tipping Point" that in about a 5 year span in the 1780's, John Wesley took the Methodist movement from 20,000 to 90,000.

This rapid church growth didn't happen because he had a charismatic personality. "His genius was organizational. Wesley would travel around England and North America delivering open air sermons to thousands of people. But he didn't just preach. He also stayed long enough in each town to form the most enthusiastic of his converts into religious societies, which in turn he subdivided into smaller classes of a dozen or so people. Converts were required to attend weekly meetings and to adhere to a strict code of conduct. If they failed to live up to the Methodist standards, they were expelled from the group. This was a group, in other words, that stood for something."

Sounds very similar to what the Apostle Paul did. If you boil down what leaders like John Wesley, Bill Hybels, and the Apostle Paul focus on, it looks pretty close to this:

1. Passionately present a message
2. Recruit leaders
3. Set up an organizational structure
4. Continue developing leaders
5. Lead through those leaders
6. Require a high commitment from everyone

Do you agree?