As a result of living in that environment during my formative years, I thought that was the way every church is. I graduated from Nyack and took a tiny church in Wilkes-Barre, PA. It really didn't matter to me that it was tiny. After all, the only thing I needed to do was preach the gospel and people will come to Christ and the church will grow.

Not exactly. One of my surprises was that most churches didn't grow like the church I grew up in. In fact, I was rather surprised by the apathy of the leaders of this small church I was pastoring. My formula - preach and people will come to Jesus - wasn't working. I learned that a church needs much more than good preaching to be effective.

I learned that churches need to be focused on evangelism outside the building. Since only one other person in my tiny congregation (we were ahead of our time in light of the the tiny house movement) was concerned about reaching the lost. He and I devised a plan to do direct mail to 1000 homes in our region of the city. It took a while but eventually we began to see people take interest and under the next pastor many people reported that the direct mail was the reason they came to the church. That method may not work today but focusing an appropriate form of evangelism outside the church is essential to a healthy effective congregation.

Churches need a clearly defined approach to discipleship. During our 3 years in this very difficult community we saw only one person come to Christ. That was a great improvement over the prior 10 years! Julie and I did our best to disciple the woman and she was showing signs of growth. When we moved to our next assignment, the leaders of the church asked this new believer to leave the church because caring for a new believer was "too much trouble." Discipleship must extend beyond the pastor and his family. It must be a value held by the congregation and a have a defined path so that others can learn and disciple new believers.

Churches need a process for developing leaders. In my first two churches, leaders were in place when I arrived. Many of them were not spiritually qualified nor gifted to lead. New leaders have to be grown. We often pick people for leadership based on tenure in the congregation, their work roles outside the church, or the fact that they have been in a particular leadership role for a long time. Leadership development is a job that never ends. Pastors need to invest in their own development as leaders. Leadership development need to be incorporated with the Governing Board and with the elders. But the church needs all kinds of leaders; Sunday School leaders, small group leaders, assimilation team leaders, deacons, deaconess and trustee leaders. The number of leaders developed is often the cap on the growth of the church. You need one leader for every 10 people. If you only have 5 leaders it is unlikely the church will grow beyond 50 people.

There is more to growing a healthy effective church than preaching, no matter how good it might be. To be effective a church needs systems in place that will sustain its ministry. How are those systems in your church?