How to grow a small church

Generate a prospect list by whatever your people do want to do. Knocking on doors is a good example. Baked goods, simple gifts of some kind. Look for a few green prospects. Then, I suggest having a candid conversation with them about vision and possibilities. You may have to say something like, we know we are in a building situation. Will you come and work to build this with us? To get that going you are probably looking for someone who is already a professing believer and is being pulled that way by God. Ultimately, the new believers will be your strength but they are also messy by comparison. Do not hit h your wagon to anyone fleeing a previous ministry situation and saying something bad about their previous church. But your prospect generator whatever it is will generate red (not interested), yellow (maybes),  and green (likely). Reconnect with green over and over until they either get involved, your interaction with them lead to the conversation above or they turn yellow or red. Community ministries such as food pantry and so on are just avenues of prospect generation. They may provide conversations where in the gospel can be shared and people can get saved. They may not. Either way, they will generate a list of prospects if you collect information from those you serve. Then funnel that list of prospects into the red green yellow system that I laid out above. Take heed in entering into the conversation that I explained above and treat it like you are looking for people who are called to form the growing version of your church. Caught by God, of course. If you find one or more families or individuals who fit that criteria-Called by God and willing to stick it out during the dry times, Then you will have what you need for sustained growth. Any core group of people can come up with simple ways to accumulate a list of names. Getting people into the red group is just as important as getting people into the green group. It even happens that people in the red group wound up getting saved and jump into the green group. Because contacts are continually being made with people in the green group You can encourage people by helping them realize these are not cold calls but talking to people who have said that they would be interested in a new church home. Even if you only generate a few names weekly on the lists In a year the list will be 150 names A good portion of which will be red and yellow and some percentage will be green. You should probably have some prayer warriors in your church who will be willing to pray over the names on the list segments. They can pray as the Lord leads of course but asking people what you can be praying for them about is a way to generate name for the list. Your people can say something like our church keeps the list of people that we regularly pray for and we know that God is going to provide miracles for those people. Would you like to be on it? What can we pray for? Would you say that you are looking for a new church home? Would you be an interested and knowing more? These are sample questions. They are questions your people can ask while waiting in the doctor's office, while sitting in a restaurant, while dealing with their family, whatever. Getting enough information to contact the people on the segments will actually be easiest when the contacts are green, harder when they are yellow, difficult when they are red. Asking someone who has professed a certain amount of interest in being included on the list or who has been served by giving them something if you can inform them when God has done a miracle for someone on the list and/or If it would be okay for someone to check up with them to see if God has done the miracle...would be a good way. One huge blessing when working with a population of seniors is the often time they will garner some respect in conversations with anyone who is tender-hearted. Middle-aged and younger Christians can be viewed with suspicion. If a 70-year-old man or woman carries a notebook and collects information from people they run into at a restaurant or whatever for a purpose similar to the example given above it is unlikely that anyone will take offense especially because your people can be trained not to push past objections at all. Once church members are engaged in collecting names for the list and a simple system for following up with people who are on the list and in the green category, post card, call, visit, visit, visit, etc. has been put in place and all the names are being bathed in prayer, whether or not the church grows will be largely up to God (which makes it a given because this is what he wants) and regardless of whether it takes weeks months or years The church will be doing what the church should be doing and being with the church is supposed to be all throughout the process. Souls will be won. It is possible that you will win dozens or hundreds of prospects to other churches because of rising tide raises all boats and the name of the kingdom will spread far and wide in small increments and ever-growing larger increments if new people coming are enlisted to the same process. I'd be more invested in ensuring this latter outcome than I'm ensuring the growth of the church. It seems more honoring to God even though God has assigned us to lead his sheep and grow his flock. 

Pastor Daniel Stevenson Southside Life Station-Director
New Heights Fellowship Baptist-Pastor
amaldaninc.com-Light and fun stuff