TOP TEN REASONS THAT CHURCHES PLATEAU IN GROWTH

In these dog days of twenty-first century summer, only about one in ten churches are growing in the United States.  But as a coach, more of my churches are growing than not - so we still are in the plateau-busting business!  As a matter of definition - a plateau is when a growing church hits an invisible ceiling to its growth.  I was once in leadership at a church where we were stuck for 3 years at 1400 in worship attendance.  That church started two more campuses and grew by another 1000.  Here are the top ten reasons for plateau, as I see them these days:

10 - The main worship room is more than 80 percent full at the prime worship hours (between 9:30 and 11 am) on Sunday.  Because you can easily add other times or locations, this is not the number one reason for plateauing - by far.  (But adding an 8:30 service is probably not the answer.)

9 - There is inadequate follow up with worship guests.  Most seminaries teach absolutely nothing about this - and I continue to discover pastors ten years out of school who are utterly clueless that you have to follow up with visitors in order to grow a church.  Callie Crawford (recently retired from Rayne UMC in New Orleans) grew churches for over a quarter century, year after year, with excellent preaching and two hours every Sunday evening making calls to guests and parishioners. They knew she cared.

8 - Pastoral turn-over.  I can show you thousands of declining churches with pastors of 15 (or more) year-tenures. On the other hand, I can't show you many growing churches where the senior leaders move every 4 or 5 years.  Stable pastoral tenure is a critical piece for growing ministry.  Young church participants are more likely to fall out of participation during pastoral transition today than in years past.  20-40 percent attendance drops may attend the loss of a much-loved pastor.  Pastors of growing churches - the grass is not greener "over there." If you move, you will have to start all over training the next church.  Throw away the moving boxes!  Bust the plateau in the place where your ministry has thrived.

7 - Inadequate stewardship development.  In the American model of church (heavy on buildings and staff), it takes money.  When we are lax in stewardship development of our people, we will end up understaffed, and this takes a toll in terms of staff burnout and overall ministry productivity.  With good software and a streamlined approach to programing, we can do church with less staff per capita than fifty years ago.  But people are busy, and if a church becomes too understaffed, growth will usually stop.  In a church with $2000 per attendee annual income, between 50 and 60 percent of the budget should go toward staff costs.

6 - Congested hallways and/or a 20 minute wait in the Ladies' Room.  This is misery - and today's church goers are less tolerant of misery than their grandmothers might have been.  Ancillary spaces can bottleneck growth as much as the major spaces.

5 - Staff that are unable (or unwilling) to grow their ministry teams further.  In this era, we cannot afford to ask staff to do all the teaching and directing - or we will be running an en-smallment campaign.  If staff can't take it to the next level with teams of volunteers, they need to find a smaller church that is within their capacity to lead and grow ministry.

4 - Nowhere to park!  In 1995, my church added on 200 seats to the worship space and zero parking spaces.  I will never forget the look of incredulity on Ken Callahan's face as he absorbed this piece of information.  We had wasted $1.2 million.  If you can't park your car, you will never get out of it to come inside.  Just that simple.  This has not changed in the new century.

3 - Not enough new groups starting in order to onboard new people.  You may have lots of groups, but many of them are effectively closed systems.  New groups can take on new people - and help you hold on to them!  New groups should be starting all the time!!

2 - Insufficient physical space or inadequate leader capacity for Sunday morning children's ministry.  This can cut off the growth long before the adult worship area hits 80 percent capacity.  No one wants their child crawling in a human ant bed.  In a very young church, overcrowding in the nursery rooms alone can slow down the growth of the entire church.

1 - An insufficient attention to leader apprenticing and leader development.  When I coached Embrace Church (Sioux Falls) on their way to 1000 AWA in their first 3 years, we compared leader development to laying train track. Unless we can start now preparing for the number and quality of leaders we need next year, a church barreling along may not only plateau, but derail!  All the space and money in the world will not substitute for growing the number of leaders.  In fact, in much of the third-world church there is no money and insufficient space.  But they grow leaders, year after year.  And that is the most critical thing.