Just say no

It is not the usual advice that you get, but saying no to Christian activities grows the size of ministry.

In Christian ministry it has been assumed that it is best to promote and do anything that has a gospel edge to it. This assumption is now being challenged.

There is much research being conducted on two fronts. The first examines churches that have a policy of only doing a narrow list of pre-approved activities and saying ‘no’ to any others with churches that say ‘yes’ to anything. The results (entirely from the American setting) conclusively say that churches that say no grow much faster than those that say yes. Read more

This has been the experience of the church with which I am sojourning. We have grown rapidly in a space of five years and have launched a second campus in an adjoining county. To learn more about the rationale behind saying no, read Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger's Simple Church: Returning to God's Process for Making Disciples.