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"Holy Wows" |
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Every year at District Conference as we browse the individual church statistics there are always a few churches that “wow” us with big numerical gains. Over the past 10 years, two of our District churches have consistently “wowed’ us. The exception was 2 years ago when both Kings Valley and Presque Isle Wesleyan lost ground, significant ground, yet last year they more than gained those loses back. This past year they both gained 100+ in Weekend Worship attendance. If you are like me, curious, you want to know how they are doing it. What gives you an increase of that magnitude? In their own words, Pastor Rick and Pastor Don share how they grew by 100+ in 2002-2003. Thanks, guys, for your time and effort! – Brock Symonds, co-editor
Rev. Rick Kavanaugh, Senior Pastor, Presque Isle Wesleyan This last year’s growth simply regained what we lost the year before. We have grown every year since 1992, except two years ago. That year we lost 100 people. That’s quite a blow! But other than that year, we have experienced steady growth for over a decade. About three or four years ago the Lord blessed us with a margin of a 120 increase in worship attendance, but honestly we didn’t do anything different that year than what we have been doing all along. This year there was no special push to regain our losses. We just analyzed the cause for last year’s loss and rectified the situation, and then our growth picked back up again. So really, what might be more profitable is to examine what halted last year’s growth, and then consider some things that have contributed to consistent growth over the past decade. One of the things we have done all along, but did not do two years ago was host “Big” days. Each year we sponsored large outreach events. We put on dramas for the community, entered floats in parades, set up booths at the county fair, presented musicals and hosted rallies in order to reach the community. I won’t go into the reasons we did not have these events, but their absence from our schedule had a negative impact. This last year we started having big events again, but not to the magnitude we had had in past. Those events are an important component for reaching the community. We also brought our children’s pastor up to full time status. This has increased the number of young families attending on the weekend. There was also something new we added this last year that was helpful. We launched a prayer service on Sunday nights called “Highest Priority”. It replaced our evening Adult Sunday School. The adults meet in the sanctuary for worship and prayer. The teens gather in a separate room for their own prayer service, and the children are taught prayer by our children’s pastor for an half hour, and then go to Sunday School. We started something early on in our prayer services that has helped keep evangelism a focus. A full size cross was erected in the front of the sanctuary. Masonry nails were provided for people to drive into the cross during the prayer service. Each nail represents an unsaved person for whom they are praying. When that person gets saved we have either the person who drove the nail, or the person who was converted tie a red ribbon around their nail. When the ribbon is tied the place erupts in applause. Currently there are over 900 nails in the cross. Several ribbons have been tied on, so it’s starting to turn red! There are a couple of new developments that are happening around here that I believe are and will have a huge impact on our growth. First, we changed the order of our Saturday night service. That has had some dramatic results. Saturday night is experiencing a huge influx of non-believers. We open the service with three songs. During that time we take the offering, welcome everyone and share the announcements. When we take the offering the ushers don’t pass the plates. Instead the people come to the front and place their offerings in containers on the edge of the platform. During this time everyone greets one another. Fifteen minutes into the service I’m preaching. When my sermon is done, we enter into our main time of worship. At 7:30 (90 minutes after we start) a message is projected on the screens informing the people they may be dismissed if they wish to go. Those who want to stay longer are free to do so. There’s no pressure to leave and there’s no pressure to stay. Our children’s workers are prepared to keep the children longer if the parents want to stay in the sanctuary for worship. This “soft ending” to the service has helped our unchurched people feel comfortable about the length of the service. They can leave when they are ready. And it has given the worship team freedom to give more attention to the altar call time. It’s been great for me, because I don’t feel pressured to rush through my sermon and I can give the attention needed for altar work. Since we made this change our Saturday attendance has steadily increased. There is one final thing that is making a huge impact. This summer we had William Fay come to our church. He wrote the book, “Share Jesus Without Fear”. He took an informal poll while he was with us. In a congregation of over 600 only 17 people had shared the gospel from the Scriptures with a lost person that previous year. That’s terrible! But he said it was typical. We were so challenged and motivated by his ministry that the next week over 100 people shared the gospel and ten were saved. That was over ten weeks ago and since then we have averaged 30 people a week sharing the gospel with a lost person. Since that time we have not had a single week without at least one person being saved. And those conversions are not the “show of hands” type you record in a big crowd. These are one-on-one conversions! That’s very exciting. Each week in our main worship services a candle is lit before the service begins. When I get ready to preach I approach the candle and ask by show of hands how many had an opportunity to share the gospel with someone that week. I explain the candle represents our commitment to be the light of the world as Jesus instructed. If no one raises their hand, I snuff out the candle. It’s a poignant reminder of our calling. Thankfully, we’ve never had to snuff the candle out. But even more significant, our people have continued to faithfully share the light.
Rev. Don Ingersoll, Senior Pastor, Kings Valley Wesleyan Kings Valley Wesleyan Church has been pursuing "growth" for 20 years. At some stages in our life as a fellowship, that growth was driven by the purest of motives, to establish a witness for Christ in the Kennebecasis Valley. At other times, the reality of our motives may have been less than ideal: to survive as a congregation, to pay the bills, to achieve a new level of size and functionality. After serving on the leadership team here for about three-quarters of the congregation's life, I must confess that one stage of growth sort of blurs into another. I remember wishing we could grow enough to actually have some decent song services. (a few people can listen to a message, but it generally takes a crowd to make a great song service.) I remember our entire congregation salivating over a few "visitors" (they certainly stood out in the crowd of old faithfuls.) I remember trying to get people to park out by the road so that it would look like we had a crowd at church (now they all want to park near the building and our challenge is to get them to use the back parking lot). My point in all this is to remind myself that managing to encourage growth in the church, and keeping an atmosphere in the fellowship that appears vibrant and forward moving, is a challenge at virtually every stage of church life. It certainly continues to be that now. These days our growth seems to be sustained by at least three factors. Which one is of greatest significance I am not sure. A. Side Door Growth Our commitment to "need-meeting" ministries and easily accessible programs has been a consistent "producer". Whether it's ministry to those wounded from divorce, weekday morning fitness classes, or a swing clinic for golfers, the interests of a wide variety of people can only be engaged by offering a wide variety of opportunities. Successful fishermen change bait often, and despite the high commitment of energy that is required by a church to accomplish this, and, despite the fact that programmed-based churches are not in vogue with some observers of the church, a wide base of ministry engages the interest of a wide base of people. B. Big Event Outreaches Driven by our musical gifts in the early days of the church, Kings Valley's outreach events continue to grow in effectiveness and variety. Our posture in the community has largely been structured on these events, and our new multi-ministry facility has literally taken the lid off of the creativity box here. After struggling to produce events in a limiting facility, our new building now has us struggling with how to maximize our potential. Our Trunk or Treat outreach in October will likely go over 500 in attendance this year, hundreds have made decisions for Christ at the Christmas productions, and with kitchen and banquet facilities, something as simple as food has become a tool to reach people from Alpha to Valentine Dinner Cruises to corporate dinners. C. Interesting Sunday Morning Programming This continues to be the heart of our emphasis, and the most significant aspect of our workload. Our prayerful pursuit of Sunday programming with compelling content, inspiring worship, meaningful body life, and interesting packaging find it's way into our Sunday School classes, our Kingstown Corner children's ministry, Sunday young adult events, and an ongoing schedule of practical sermon series, mini-concerts, special guests, barbecues and who knows what else. When people say that at Kings Valley there are no "normal" Sundays, they mean it. Even the ways we use our current technical capabilities, our foyer, and pursue our struggling attempts at a multi-sensory worship experience keep people interested in coming back again.
Our pastoral team has devoted long hard hours to the ongoing creative process,
and as we have searched for ideas and concepts in other places, we continue to
keep all of our efforts closely tied to spiritual life change in the people who
attend. We increasingly contend with the reality that our best efforts are no
match for the task at hand, and call regularly and fervently on the Lord as a
church to keep our hearts on fire, to save us from discouragement, and to engage
the interest of the many in our community who have left God out of their lives.
As to any accompanying growth that we have experienced, the answer to what
causes it still seems very elusive to me. Ministry is the hard work of dealing
with the sheep, and still having the passion to go after the lost. May God grant
us all effective ministries in the days ahead. |
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