Mikey Lynch commences online ruminations about his recent trip to the US.
In this post he deals with a largely ignored, but substantial, dynamic in church planting: transfer growth.
We never say it is. The books rarely talk about it explicitly, the hero-story of church planters is always ‘We arrived, just the two of us, in this new area and started doing evangelism’ But the reality is that the fast-growing churches rarely (if ever?) in the West grow because of massive conversion growth. We picture them arriving and just person-by-person evangelising until they somehow get a core group of 50+ people to launch the church. We are amazed at how God enables them to see (we imagine) 50+ conversions in 6-18 months.
The reality is very different. The planters of most fast-growing churches go in to the region and start evangelising. But at the same time as evangelising, they are also meeting with as many people as they can – including many, many Christians – and selling their vision and plans and inviting them to join the mission. And most of the growth early on comes from some of these Christians jumping on board.
Lynch outlines, since transfer growth will happen, that it be managed well.
There is something here for those in settled congregations, as well.
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