There’s something that just rubs me the wrong way about formulas for church growth. That is, just like with any experiment, if all of the elements are the same but you have a different environment, the results will always be different. While I do believe there are many principles we can learn from churches and other leaders, there are some aspects of your church that are unique to your environment. Let me give you an example: I’ve heard many Pastors talking about how Christmas Eve is THE best day to reach the unchurched all year. I believe that’s true in many places, but not Miami. For the 67% of Miami residents that are Hispanic, Christmas Eve is the most special day of the year. So to do a church service on ‘Noche Buena’ is not a wonderful opportunity to reach the unchurched. Instead, it makes people choose between church and family. It would be like people in other parts of the country putting together a huge outreach service for 5PM on Thanksgiving Day! That would be insanity. Yet that’s what ‘Noche Buena’ is for us here in Miami. So when I read the books on church growth, we put tons of money into our Christmas Eve service only to find that it wasn’t a service where thousands were coming to hear the Gospel. It was the most faithful people in our church that snuck out of the house to catch the service and then ran back home before anyone in their figured out they were gone. So what’s the point? It’s that we should read these books and stay open to new ideas, but we have to exercise wisdom and filter them through the lens of our environment because when you change the environment you change the experiment…