I’m convinced that the 500 barrier is the hardest barrier to break for churches.
That’s why 96% of churches never grow beyond 500 in attendance.
The average church is hovering under 100 in weekly attendance, but even churches committed to growing bump up against the 500 barrier and stop growing.
So what’s the problem? What’s keeping churches that want to grow from actually growing?
Here are 3 changes that need to happen in you and your church if you want to grow beyond 500…
#1 – What Got you Here won’t get you There – The things you did to get where you are, are not the things that grow your church beyond 500 in attendance. You’ve got to create systems in your church that are scalable. This means the Senior Pastor can’t attend every meeting, visit every sick person, and preach every Sunday. I’m not saying abandon those things entirely. However, a team approach is needed to keep growing.
#2 – New Connections – People in a church of 200 have a connection to the Pastor. People in a church over 500 have connections to others in the church. They know some of the leaders, but their main connection is a group of friend within the church. Churches that continually push a connection to the Pastor get stuck because the Senior Pastor can only minister to a certain number of people. Leadership has to multiply if you want to keep growing.
#3 – Get coaching – Sorry if I sound a little self-serving here, but I firmly believe many churches are one coach away from rapid growth and reaching their community. Coaching is how we broke 500 at Calvary. Coaching is how many of our Evangelism Ninja members have broken 500. We need people in our lives who know what life is like beyond the barrier we’re bumping up against.
We’re going to cover the A-Z of everything you need to do to break the 500 barrier at our Breaking 500 Bootcamp on August 7-8 in Orlando, FL. It’s going to be an amazing experience limited to only 100 churches. We are going to teach you everything we’ve learned about breaking 500 (and we’ll probably throw in a few things about breaking 1,000 as well).
Here’s the link if you want more info.
