This is part of a series of interviews with pastors of churches whose attendance has grown 20% or more in 5 years. We hope this series will be a resource of ideas to help increase worship attendance at your church.

Ten Principles That Have Helped Grace Fellowship UMC Grow

1. God – We are not trying to sound super spiritual, but we really believe that the #1 reason God has grown Grace Fellowship from 22 to 2700 in attendance in 14 years is because God sovereignly chose to.  This is not a rebellion against a Wesley-Arminian view of free will – it is just a practical observation.  Other churches in our Katy community are doing some of the exact same things described below but have grown at a much slower rate.  First Corinthians 3:6 says that when it gets down to it:  “God made it grow.”  God gets all the credit!  But, this is also a great reason why Principle #2 is so important.
2. Radical Emphasis on Prayer – If John 15:5 and Psalm 127:1-2 are true, then we believe praying is the most important thing a local church can do.  God can do more in 10 seconds than all of us combined can do in 14 years.  When we work, we work; but when we pray, God works.  So, this is why we have conducted 23 major prayer campaigns in our 14-year history.  This is why we have a full-time Prayer Pastor on staff and have a large prayer budget.  And, this is why we have prayer ministries such as the Prayer Center, Audience of One, Prayer Altar, Perforated Sheet Prayer Team, Pastor’s Prayer Shield, Prayer Blankets, Pre-Worship Prayer, Children’s Prayer Team, Youth Prayer Team, Freedom in Christ, Katy Prayer Room, World Reach Prayer, Prayer for the Military, Methodism Prayer, and Prayer Small Groups.
3. Plant a Church in a Growing Community – Let’s be honest:  Katy, Texas is a fast growing community.  Whereas the principles explained below saw 15% growth in our 4 years in Hearne, Texas (a declining community), these same principles saw 10,000% growth in Katy (a fast growing community) over 14 years.  But, don’t miss the point:  Has your church considered helping plant a new church in a fast growing community.  This is a fantastic way to reach lots of people for Christ and will bless your church in the process.
4. Be the Most Alive Church You Can – People want to invite their friends and neighbors to something if that something is personally touching their own lives.  So, be honest:  Would you want to go to your own church?  If I was not a pastor, I would want to go to a church that had very alive contemporary praise and worship, relevant Bible teaching, no liturgy (just worship, Bible, and prayer), no announcements, friendly people, small group Bible study, and a high dependence on God.  That’s the church we’ve created, and we’ve found that lots and lots of other people (churched and unchurched) want to go to that kind of church also!  Your ideal church experience might look different than mine.  Why not build the kind of church that you would actually enjoy going to?
5. Bible Exposition – People are hungry for Bible!  Give people Bible!  We have trained our people (even unchurched people) to bring their Bibles to church.  We say, “Turn in your Bibles to….”  (and then we tell them how to find that passage).    Every week we take our people through a passage of Scripture verse by verse (whether expositing a book of the Bible or expositing a text on marriage or parenting or sex or time management or intimacy with God).  So far, we have worked verse by verse through 25 books of the Bible.  Churched and unchurched alike:  People are hungry for Bible!
6. Small Groups – We believe small groups are the best avenue for spiritual and relational growth.  See Donahue/Robinson’s Becoming a Church of Small Groups.
7. Don’t Be a Family Killing Church – Churches are supposed to help the family… not kill it.  And yet, many of our churches have sooooo many meetings and programs (and people try to do them all) that we end up hurting the family not helping it.  At Grace Fellowship, we have purposed to call all our people to make two time slot commitments to church:  Sunday morning worship and then a time slot for small group.  Now, we also picture committed people serving the church, but for most people we see that happening during one of those two time slots (“While you are here on Sunday morning, stay an extra hour and serve in children’s ministry.”)  Other than that, we want you to STAY AWAY from church and stay home with your family and practice this stuff we are learning from the Bible.  By the way, this healthy lifestyle must start with the pastor.  If the pastor’s marriage and family are suffering from too many meetings, then how in the world is the pastor modeling healthy living?!?
8. Be a Healthy Pastor – Ditto #7 but more:  daily Sabbath, weekly Sabbath, yearly Sabbath, and seasonal (every 7 years) sabbatical.  Daily time with God actually enjoying intimacy with God.  Healthy, spiritually alive pastors tend to produce healthy, spiritually alive churches.
9. Make POF Easier and Membership Harder – We give an invitation to receive Christ every Sunday (receive Christ into your life right there in your seat with a silent prayer; not by walking the aisle.)  If you would like to investigate Grace Fellowship UMC further and/or consider joining Grace Fellowship UMC, then please come to the Exploring Grace 101 class (3 hours) next Sunday at 2:30 p.m.  The result is lots of professions of faith and lower (actually just slower) membership.
10. Sermon Series for the Community – Roughly twice per year we will devise a hot topic sermon series and advertise it to our community inviting them to come.  We will coach our people to invite their friends and neighbors and give them an attractive invite piece to do so with.  We will do “10 Most Wanted Lists” or some other prayer campaign (like 40 Days of Prayer and Fasting).  It’s amazing:  Every time we do this, lots of unchurched people come!

Evangelism Spotlight Idea:  “Ten Most Wanted Lists”

Create a card to put in your bulletin (2 per bulletin) for one Sunday entitled “Ten Most Wanted List.”  Work this into that Sunday’s sermon and say, “Will you write down on this card the names of 10 people in your life whom you most want to see come to Christ?  Then, please take this card home and stick it on your bathroom mirror and pray for these 10 people every day while you brush your teeth.  Keep praying for these 10 people until they come to Christ.  And, if you will write down their names on a second card and put it in the offering plate, we will put these names in our church’s prayer room for our prayer warriors to pray over also.”  Grace Fellowship has done this almost every year for the last 14 years.

Jim Leggett, Senior Pastor  - jim@whatisgrace.org

Church website – http://www.whatisgrace.org