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.

Knowing the Make-Up Enhances the Make-Over

McKinney United Methodist Church is a church that serves within a community consisting predominately of seniors and less than one third of the population being considered young adults, those under 30 years of age.  Another key identifying element in this make-up is the number of children being reared by grandparents and rapidly emerging Hispanic families leading to a change in demographics and multiculturism. These dynamics, along with economic woes of the region due in large part to widespread loss of jobs in industry such as refineries, hospitals, and schools that support more than seventy percent of all employment opportunities, created an environment inundated by socio-economic hardships. In addition, the community at large is one of great heritage steeped in monuments and memorials of the past and less movement towards the future. Consequently, there was an experience of stagnation within the church and community that made evangelism challenging. However, it was the realization of these elements that has helped McKinney identify and conceptualize its mission field and begin making adjustments in the ways we do ministry, from the inside out. In other words, we as the church, began to meet the people exactly at their point of need in their everyday lives. This is the origin of our experience in church growth.

Dr. Janice Gilbert

McKinney United Methodist Church is a church that has learned to evangelize in unique ways simply because our mission field changed significantly. Therefore a paradigm shifts was necessary and inevitable if we were to touch the lives of individuals and families within the community.  As a thriving church our identity is immersed in prayer, healing, and a vibrant worship experience.  We are known as the church where the sin sick soul is fed touching lives from one generation to another.  This has meant an influx of single parents, troubled youth and teens, couples, multiracial families, young adults, and seniors joining our family.  Understanding what it meant for us to be a healthy church, understanding our individual purpose, rekindling passion and compassion in our personal lives and learning to trust God in new and different ways, I believe has played a major part in our experiencing healthy church growth.

I have heard it said that “if you build it, they will come”.  Well we have experienced in our faith community that when healthy environments are built people come.   Building an environment where people within learn that the Kingdom of God is for all people, learning what this looks like for them, and how to express their  love and service  in ways that invites others in. Donald Bryan wrote an article entitled, “It’s Not the Size of the Church That Matters, But Its Health That Ensure Its Survival”.  Many within had to learn that the size of the church and the way that we have done it in the past could no longer be the driving force in the way that we continue doing  ministry.  As a thriving, transforming church, there are several key factors that have helped build our faith community:

Identify the Make-Up of the Mission Field

Create a Healthy Environment

Diverse and Creative Worship Experience

Relative Sermons (Real Life Application)

Hospitality Venues

Targeted Small Cell Groups

Evangelism, for us, was a movement to demonstrate God’s love through the development of healthy lifestyles and the teaching and preaching of the word of God.  For our church and community this meant creating a healthy environment whereby individuals from many broken situations could come and experience God’s love and power.  It was at this juncture that a different culture was created within our faith community.  This cultural reshaping, so to speak, is now a place of diverse worship styles, laity involvement, different types of prayer venues, along with targeted developmental and empowered bible studies. Questions that I might add which can be a vital entity in church growth are: What do we have to do to grow a church?  How can we add to the church?  Why don’t people keep coming after they first attend?  Is healing taking place through the power of God in the worship?     Heal Them and They Will Come! (Dr. Fred Childs)

Dr. Janice Gilbert, Senior Pastor – pastor@mckinneyumc.org

Church website:  http://www.mckinneyumc.org