Is your church stuck? Do you find yourself in the tension of organizational structure and relational equity? Once you decide to focus on these seven things, you can begin to work and develop them as you go forward. The blend of organization and organism embedded in each of these areas will keep you growing in numbers while also growing in depth of relationship and commitment to Christ.

Ask a church member why they’re at the church. Ask any parent why they go to the church they go to. They will all have the same answer, “We have friends here.”

Church planters think “sticky.” Large, engaging Sunday gatherings are not the glue to hold your church together and keep guests returning. What is the key to stickiness in your church?

Medium-Sized Communities (MSC) are where you belong before you believe. They are safe step before a person chooses to become a part of a small group. MSCs are an environment where the unengaged get engaged in biblical community, the lost come to know Jesus, leaders are developed, lives are restored, care and prayer happens both in and outside of the groups, and both introverts and extroverts find community. It’s the “one anothers” being lived out.

God is doing miracles through online outreach. Here’s the reality: Church attendance is not decreasing; it’s decentralizing. Digital channels do not compete with physical attendance, they partner with it. A discipleship pathway will serve you in making digital disciples.

A “Discipleship pathway” is the intentional route, steps, and paths in your church to develop missionary disciples for Kingdom impact. It is the engine for the effectiveness of your mission. The goal for a discipleship pathway is never to get someone through it; the goal is to get individuals to own it. As long as the church owns the pathway, the only possible response for an individual is consumption. When something is ours, a shift happens inside of us, and we tend to approach it in a fundamentally different way.

Our world desperately needs disciples who not only call themselves Christians, but who reflect Jesus. The accountability factor is what takes a micro-shift from the individual level to the church-wide level and where you can begin seeing discipleship as a system from a thirty-thousand-foot level. When a micro-shift is made at this level, your church will embark on a new trajectory to both spiritual and numerical growth.

25 years ago Starbucks made a shift. If Starbucks had only focused on the what, without making an intentional shift to the where and when, they would not have experienced the widespread success that they have. After all, people do not just go to Starbucks for the coffee; they also go to relax, read, work, and have conversations. This micro-shift led to a macro-change in the coffee-drinking culture. What if you could make a similar micro-shift as a church leader that would result in a macro-change in your disciple making culture? What if this micro-shift would set your church on a trajectory to both spiritual and numerical growth? Would you consider it?

The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is clear. Will those who are identified as “Christians” become disciples—students, apprentices, practitioners—of Jesus Christ?

Unless you overlay accountability onto the micro-shift we described in Starbucks, Micro-Shifts and Discipleship, all you have is a solid lesson in a discipleship class. Our world desperately needs disciples who reflect Jesus.

There is a lot to be learned about discipleship from a micro-shift made twenty-five years ago by Starbucks.

The average person has no idea what next steps to take to connect into this congregation and what the destination (being a part of the church) might look like. It’s up to us as leaders to create clear and obvious next steps for them.

It’s never fun to realize that there were things that you thought were working, actually weren’t working. The recent pandemic exposed weaknesses and brought out realizations amongst churches and church leaders all over the world.

Many of us pastors have a “Sunday to Sunday” mentality. We prepare all week for the one hour (approximately) in the week. The problem is, there are 167 more hours in the week and your congregation is engaging many of them online through social media.

Social distancing, quarantine, self-isolation, all of these terms are new to us and on the surface fly in the face of the very idea of community. But now more than ever, it’s the very thing that our communities need! It’s time for our small groups to fill the void that is needed. Here are 5 things to remember when you are leading small groups online.

This is a 5 week small group study by ABNWT and Mission Canada Worker Connie Jakab (Cypher Church) that talks about how you can share your faith in a post Christian world.