Procrastination Kills

I once even planted a hedge because I wanted to be productive in my procrastination.
Now six years post University I am studying again and again I’m faced with the impending doom of an essay deadline so, how do I react? By procrastinating of course! Old habits die hard it seems. No hedge this time though, this blog will have to do.
There is one difference this time round though. This time I’m actually interested in the topic of my essay. Where once I had to write about such riveting topics as King Richard’s effect on 14th Century England and Soviet Russia’s food programme now I get to write about Church vision and growth. May not sound too exciting too some but remember I’ve written essays about medieval England.

Through my essay research I unearthed a book entitled: ‘Natural Church Development’ by German Christian Schwarz. I began to read, before long I realised that this book included the findings of the most comprehensive research project ever undertaken into the causes of Church growth based on a detailed survey of 1000 churches across the globe.

I was interested so I read on.

Based on his research Schwarz concluded that among growing churches it was the smaller churches (those under 100) which grew at a faster rate (13%) than larger churches (those over 300 only grew at a rate of 3% on average).

He then went on to say this: ‘If instead of a single church with 2,856 attending worship services we had 56 churches each with 51 worshippers, these churches would statistically win 1,792 new people within five years – 16 times the number that the mega church would win, Thus we can conclude that the evangelistic effectiveness of minichurches is statistically 1,600 percent greater than that of mega churches!’

I was surprised but as I read on I became convinced that planting 50’s was the way forward.

At CCM we long to see more and more people trust in Jesus and we believe that the best way to see this happen is to plant churches of 50 all across this city and beyond. We hope that through this and the ministry of the many other great churches in Manchester we will see this city transformed and the kingdom increase.