Church Growth Meets the Real World
David Coffin
January 1, 1996
Close to 80 percent of my seminary class came out of a metropolitan church, campus church, or urban parish that gets denominational support. It's in these places that people catch the vision for ministry.
Whenever I watch Christian TV, I see the churches of Charles Stanley, Ben Haden, Robert Schuller, and others. In these types of churches—plus church camps, retreat centers, and Bible studies in university towns—many clergy conceived the vision of what ministry can be like (versus the old, Gothic-style Methodist/Lutheran/UCC church of their parents). Upon graduation, however, we seminarians found that 80 percent of the vacancies are in that parish of our parents.
As I see the seminary advertisements in Leadership, I wonder if they're telling prospective seminarians that only a small percentage of calls are in big churches. Many are in small, struggling churches like mine.
WORKING WITH WHAT YOU HAVE
In rural America, I live with contradictions of sorts. Many people claim to be salt-of-the-earth-old-time-backbone-of-America-rural-people—until they get a chance to buy a house or relocate to a suburban or metro area. Often, they leave, and a poorer group moves into our town, ones who resemble (and often are) Appalachian-impoverished types. Older housing and lower incomes are typical indicators of this trend.
In my setting, I can read any church growth guru (e.g., Barna, Callahan, Schaller), but the fact remains that church is a people business and you must work with what you have.
Last year, for example, I took in three families through adult inquirers' class, but I am simultaneously losing two families. The two I am losing came as youth. We raised them, and they stayed here after college while unemployed. Now, they ...
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