Philosophy
of
Church Growth
To understand more about HOW & WHY www.SeekOrServe.com actually works, let's examine its philosophy & three main Church growth components:
PHILOSOPHY OF CHURCH GROWTH
www.SeekOrServe.com was developed under the belief that the smartest and best thing to do at ANY time, in ANY place, and in ANY situation is to OBEY THE LORD GOD IN JESUS CHRIST. This begs the question, "What does He command us to do?" John 13:34-35 provides a glaringly evident answer: LOVE ONE ANOTHER, and by doing so show the world that we are His followers.
You might say, "But our Church is already loving." Maybe so, but is it loving to the degree where people are able to help each other 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with things such as yardwork, medical aid, clothes, computers, housing, and even cars....all without any Church staff lifting a finger or contributing a single penny...while at the same time MASSIVELY advertising, marketing, and promoting your Church all over the world through Search Engine Optimization, Reputation Management, and Organic Relational Cultivation? (Keep reading to learn more about these three vital aspects of Church growth)
Or you might be thinking the opposite, "But not many people in our Church are loving." Well then they're sure to be interested in getting FREE items & services, right? So SeekOrServe.com was designed to be a platform not only to give for free, but to RECEIVE for free. =)
Of course there's the other objection: "But people are too busy & burdened...they already have a million other things to do." Perhaps, but NOBODY is too busy to take just one MINUTE (60 seconds!) out of each MONTH...so SeekOrServe.com came up with The Minute-A-Month Challenge as the one specific, measurable, super-easy "thing-to-do" for people in your Church. =)
Now it doesn't take a genius to figure this out....if you actually create a place where people really, TRULY love one another - which means they meet each other's needs - in a real, practical, and tangible way that can happen NON-STOP 24 hours a day.....do you think that kind of an atmosphere would help Church growth? OF COURSE IT WOULD! It would DRASTICALLY help growth. And if it doesn't, assuming you're not only concerned with "numbers," at the very LEAST you obey The Lord's command to love.
We often try so hard strategizing & planning "Church growth" it never occurs to us that Jesus already gave us the solution: Church growth is INHERENT in His command to love. While He may not have specifically told us to "grow Church," He told us the very thing to do which will naturally result in a healthy, growing, thriving, and ever-expanding Church. John 13:34-35 is a stroke of marketing genius...so powerful, so SIMPLE, so well-known, and so perfectly hidden in plain sight.
Whether it's Christian or not, the fact of the matter is that the more a place is loving, the more it grows. PERIOD.
And we're not just talking about growth in terms of "numbers." We're talking about growth in terms of HEALTH. A Jesus-loving, people-caring, fully thriving, community impacting, Gospel spreading, smoothly functioning, life-transforming Church which can only be achieved through, you guessed it...LOVING ONE ANOTHER.
Loving each other isn't just a command. It's not just something "good" people do. It's not just a goal. It's actually the most genuine and exceedingly effective strategic method for achieving Church growth. And it's so SIMPLE that we almost always miss it. When we talk about Church growth, the command to love one another rarely ever crosses our minds, and then we wonder why so many people leave Churches to join NON-Christian groups which they see as "more loving."
Could you imagine how difficult it would be trying to grow apples without their trees? You don't "grow" the apples themselves. You put your efforts into taking care of the tree, which will then yield GREAT NUMBERS of fruit on its own. In the same way, if you want Church growth, you don't put your efforts into "growing Church." You instead put your efforts - your strategies, your planning, and so forth - into doing EVERYTHING you can to get people obeying Jesus Christ's command to love one another, which will then naturally yield the fruit of UNSTOPPABLE and EXPONENTIAL Church growth WITHOUT ANY LIMITS.
