I perceive things are well at Highland right now. Let’s pray that all will remain well, and even get better. We’re growing! That’s a blessing from God. Often when things are well, we’re tempted to take things for granted. In good times we all too easily slip into apathy, and when we do, things can deteriorate before we realize what’s happening. The right time to reflect on where we are and what we’re doing is all the time—especially when things are well, so that they will remain well.

Lord willing, this is the first article in a series about church growth. Over the next few weeks I want to examine current trends in churches, ideas and influences concerning growth expectations, the pros and cons of numerical growth, and ideas about means and methods. I ask for your prayers as I research and write, and hope the series will bless us all.

In this first article in the series, I just want to affirm that a healthy church is a growing church! Good churches are nearly always growing numerically. Churches that stagnate at a certain number, shrink, or just never grow usually have spiritual problems at the root of it all. This may not always be the case (consider the fact that Noah’s family was the entire faithful church in their generation and made no converts before the flood), but it has always been the case from Christ until now. The Lord teaches us that faithful Christians bear fruit (Mt 3:10, 7:19-20; Lk 8:15; Jn 15:2). While this doesn’t mean that every one of us must necessarily succeed in converting others to Christ who then remain faithful in order to be pleasing to God, it certainly means we must be trying to (1Corinthians 3:5-15)! When the early church finally spread out from Jerusalem, the Bible says, “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:4 ESV). Not just the elders and preachers, nor only Bible class teachers; not just missionaries, but the whole church—every member—went about proclaiming Christ. The church grew and grew. The same should be true of us today!