Every church has an inflow and an outflow; you cannot stop these two from happening but for effective church growth to happen the outflow must be always smaller than the inflow through the process of retention.
Children will always die but when immunization steps in there is instantaneous natural increase. Our conviction is that “if the people will not come to church, we must take the church to their homes!”
Written By Apostle Pride Sibiya
These are some of the concepts and strategies at The House of the Lord:
1. “Where the people are” ministry: This is taking the gospel to the streets and market places. By market place, I mean all the places where people meet. Examples of such may be workplaces, schools, colleges, boreholes, homes, hospital grounds. It is apparent that as long as the police are in their camps or continue to be in training camps all year round the thieves will have a D-day. Only when the police leave their camps and start to roam the streets will the thieves feel the heat.
The same with the devil: as long as we keep in our conferences in church and do not go where the enemy is he will continue to ruin our communities.
According to Lawrence Khong, while Jesus commanded us to go and win souls to Christ, the church often devices means to try and invite the unchurched to church. The early church shook the world by being a “go” church not only a “come” one.
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| Apostolic Invasion For Church Growth: Bishop Pride Sibiya |
They broke bread in homes rather than encourage people to be in church. At the same time, they were a “come” church. We will not wait and watch, let us go and evangelize our communities.
2. Anagkazo: This is a great concept of choosing a few close relations and targets to bring them to the House without fail. The basis of it is, “ultimately I will win and the person has to submit to Christ.” It is militant evangelism; it is compelling power, twisting someone’s hand until they submit. How do we do this? By :
- Praying the person into the Kingdom.
- Constantly visiting giving love.
- Helping them out in times of need.
- Preaching the word to them especially by way of your testimony and providing necessary Christian resources.
- Constantly following them up, answering every silly excuse not to come to church.
3. Cell groups: Everyone must join a cell group so that life becomes easier for them in the church.
The first job of the cell group is to evangelize their own community with the vision of giving birth to another after they pass the 15-20 member mark. This will make sure that we have a continual inflow right from “Jerusalem”.
The second work of the cell group is to effectively pastor the smaller church by minimizing its members to less than 20 members only. Without going to the cell group it is very difficult to have pastoral care and follow-up within the bigger church. Everyone who is a member of a cell group will feel lost in the crowd of the bigger church! It is here also that the most important work of retention takes place: after a Sunday service, a revival, crusade or outreach, the cell is given the mandate to make follow-ups before the Wednesday of that week
The third work of the cell group is to equip and train the believers by way of teachings and opportunities to minister to one another thereby discovering callings and gifts from the people.
The fourth duty of the cell church is to provide a platform for fellowship. In a cell you have a family setting and can easily relate to one another in times of joy or even sadness. When you have a deep problem, you, sometimes, cannot share it with the multitudes in the church but with the family cell church. When you have a funeral these are the people that stand with you and become the main players in your life and what is happening to you when the “multitude church” cannot reach you.
Some few handy things on using cell groups:
a. Identify people with problems and help in any way, the end target is to have them receive Christ. Even a little help is amplified in a time of crisis. Visit the sick and identify yourselves with your church, pray for them and share the Word with them and their relatives. Usually, when people are sick, their mind is recollected and have more capacity to hear the Word. It is when people are sick that they start to think of matters of eternal value. Khong call this body evangelism
b. Dropping advertising handouts to every mailbox. This may not initially yield much but it makes us present in their homes by way of these handouts. Though they may not come now, they now know there is a Glory Ministries somewhere and someday they may need it. Apart from that, if we spread out 20 000 fliers for e.g. seriously speaking we cannot fail to get at least a hundred souls to the church. Is that not worth it?
4. The sections outreaches: A section is a number of cell churches combined together under one section leader. The section leader then invites the team of evangelists to visit their section for an outreach meeting. Here the members are told beforehand to invite family, friends, and neighbours for a service in which there will be evangelistic preaching after great music and worship. People are then invited to the Sunday service through varied means e.g. handouts and by word of mouth.
5. Communications systems: We really need to move with the times. Never under-estimate the power of multimedia:
a. A website is accessible to all people of all nations.
b. Some of our church members have over 2000 friend s each on Facebook and by just connecting us we have access to minister to these people. Some links on Facebook have over 30 000 members. Sharing our songs or part of our sermons on you-tube has a massive effect on nations.
c. Making hand-out free promotional DVDs of some of our messages. Our DVD, We Shall Not Die bears witness to this impact.
d. Radio stations are to be used as well
e. Television at any given chance is good
f. Newspaper adverts have a tremendous effect.
g. Our handouts have shown a massive effect on our community and our continued distribution will work wonders.
6. Offering community services and ministries
7. Mass evangelism: without the preparation of other methods, the mass crusades become a dismal failure in terms of retention. After a crusade, a new believer is introduced to strange people with strange habits who relate to him as brethren and is expected to drop old associates. He may not be very peculiar with the church and its stuff like speaking in tongues and feels so lonely. He has a sense that all people know each other except him. Faced with such a challenge they do the simple, drop out. It would be easier to blend in when after a crusade people from your own locality (cell group) that you obviously know, flock you and help you understand the church.
8. One on one
9. Door to door
10. Others like Evange-cube, art, drama.
Receive Jesus Christ today and go to church for spiritual fellowship.
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