June 4, 2025 • 25 mins
Why do some unhealthy churches seem to be growing rapidly? In this episode, we peel back the layers behind fast-growing churches and explore whether all that glitters is truly gold. Join us as we discuss the hidden factors that can fuel church growth and how to discern authentic health from surface-level success.
Your hosts are Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu from The Malphurs Group. Each week, we bring practical insights and real-world advice to help pastors and leaders revitalize their churches and lead with confidence. Whether you're a first-time listener or a longtime subscriber, we’re here to help your church thrive.
In this episode, we cover:
- The dangers and appeal of charismatic leadership [06:01]
- How consumer-oriented programs can spark attendance without real transformation [10:03]
- The impact of location and demographics on church growth [15:29]
- The role of transfer growth and what it really means for church health [20:13]
- Practical steps to focus on healthy discipleship and mission [22:50]
Links & Resources:
- The Healthy Churches Toolkit: healthychurchestoolkit.com
- Full episode article & resources: malphursgroup.com/293
- Connect with us: Website
- More revitalization tools and leadership tips: YouTube
Looking to build a thriving, healthy church? Explore the Healthy Churches Toolkit and other resources linked above!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Why do unhealthy churches sometimes look like they're
growing? Let's talk about that right now on the Church Revitalization
Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Church Revitalization
Podcast brought to you by the Malphurs Group team, where
each week we tackle important, actionable topics to help
churches thrive. And now, here's your hosts, Scott
(00:21):
Ball and AJ Mathieu.
Welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined
by my friend and cohost, AJ Mathieu.
Alright. Not all that glitters is gold, my
friend. True. And not everything that grows is
healthy. And, anybody who's listened to this podcast for any length of
(00:44):
time knows that we've we've chatted about this kind of thing
indirectly, or it's kind of been woven into an episode. I think about ten
weeks ago or 10 episodes ago, we talked about some
challenges of growing churches, and we sort of
hinted at this in one of the points was that, you know, it
may or may not be a healthy situation. So, ten weeks ago, we'd made a
(01:07):
note. Hey, let's do an episode on this. Let's go a little bit deeper on
why sometimes even unhealthy churches
are growing churches and, the reasons for that. And that's what
we're gonna talk about today. Yeah. I mean, with this conversation has come up, at
least, you know, I mean, with you and I, because we've both, you know, bit
we've been in places and we're we're like, what exactly
(01:28):
what is leading there to be a lot of people here? I mean, you know,
we sometimes when you have your your church consultant hat on,
you investigate. We're always on the investigation. And, so, yeah,
it it makes you wonder. And, I mean, I feel this also from
because, again, you know, we work with declining churches a lot,
plateaued churches. And, you know, I mean, we have empathy
(01:50):
for a lot of the pastors and leaders who are, you know,
feeling at the end of their rope. Like, what do we need to do around
here? And, you know, some something new goes in to the to
their city, and they're like, what is going on? You know? Why
is this place growing so much over here? Why?
And, you know, I mean, I think, sometimes
(02:12):
you they might even feel like how come God is blessing that he's not blessing
what we're doing. Yeah. And that's just not always the case. And and,
so that's a little bit of, I think, the heart behind this, why
unhealthy churches sometimes grow because you may not know
whether it's a healthy church or not. From outward appearances, it just looks it's
booming. It's great. You know? And the parking lot's full. They got all this new
(02:34):
stuff is happening. You know? Everybody seems happy and excited. And all of
that can be true, but let's peel back a little bit
and Mhmm. Look at maybe some possibilities of what might be happening
that you might not be envious of, I guess, is kind of where I'm
going. Yeah. You you might be thinking, I wish I
wish we had all these people, but you may not envy
(02:57):
what's happening inside the walls. I think, you
know, my one caution would be, I think that sometimes smaller
churches have an automatic bias against larger
churches and they, they will go, well, it's gotta be
one of these reasons. Sure. Yeah. And so I want to
caution you against that. If you're listening to this episode and think
(03:19):
that we're describing all larger churches are all growing
churches or the ones that are growing really fast. Cause
that's, that's not always true. I've I've had the privilege
of attending and working with and
consulting with growing churches that are healthy,
and they're they're growing for the reasons you would want for for a church
(03:41):
to grow. And so, I think it's important to
know that there are growing churches
that are smaller, and there are growing churches that are bigger. There are
growing churches that are healthy. There are growing churches that are unhealthy. There are
healthy churches that are smaller that haven't yet started to grow. There are Yeah.
Healthy churches that are bigger. You know, those all of those, like,
(04:05):
nuance exists. And so what we're trying to do today is not
pick on any particular category of size of
church as much as we're trying to pick on the reasons why
you can you can mimic health
and those things that is dangerous. So if anything, maybe
just take a look at your own church and go, man, if we've ever seen
(04:27):
a trend in growth, I wanna make sure that it's for the right reasons and
not for one of these things that sort of a shortcut Yeah. That ultimately
sabotages the church in the long run. Yeah. Yeah.
And and I think one of the cautions that we probably would also give you
is minimize the amount of time you spend comparing
yourself to any other church or on what somebody else is
(04:49):
doing and maximize the time you spend thinking
about what's right for your church, how you can help it improve and
how you can be on mission. That's such a great
point. I we need to get into these points. But one thing on that I
wanna say, this is why when you work when a church works
with us, there are very few places where you will see us
(05:10):
throw up a benchmark against some other standard.
There are a few. One would be these are just internal benchmarks
that we have, certain benchmarks for what volunteer
participation rates and groups' participation rates.
Those aren't based on national standards. They're they're just based on what we would
say. This is a minimum healthy standard.
(05:33):
And then the other would be, around giving where we would say, hey.
Here's what the national average is for per capita giving. But
because I just think it's helpful for churches to know where they're at in
that spectrum. But size comparisons and going, okay. You're in
this quintile or whatever, we just don't do that. We
don't think it's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
(05:55):
The biggest comparisons we like to make are comparing your
church to God's word. Amen. Yeah. Well said.
Okay. All right. We could probably have come up with a much longer
list. There's a lot of things, but we're just going to throw four things at
you. The first one, it could be this charismatic
dynamic leadership. There's a lot of churches that
(06:17):
grow really quickly because the the main
person upfront is just really dynamic
charismatic personality, great speaker, and just
everybody seems to love every word that comes out of his
mouth. And this is, again, not always you don't take that
and go, That's an unhealthy thing. It's not an unhealthy thing. But it's a
(06:38):
possibility that the growth of the church is all because
of everybody wants to just hear this person speak, and there's
got to be more to that. So I guess the unhealthy component that we're really
referring to here is that that's it. That's all the church has to offer.
And it doesn't have anything else supporting it in all of
the essentials that we would consider a healthy church to have. And then I guess
(07:01):
as a nuance of this is that we have an
attractional personality, but the substance
that is being presented isn't bringing
fruitful transformation to the hearers. And in
that worst of it, I think, is that not only are they
capable of gathering a crowd, they're then not
(07:23):
bringing a substantive message that leads to life
transformation. Mhmm. And so that's that's a
danger zone. Yeah. I mean, I think we can look at
the example of Jesus to see
a leader whose personality and charisma is a
draw and an attraction. I mean, Jesus, certainly in his earthly
(07:45):
ministry was totally capable of drawing a
crowd, not just because he could heal, but also through his
presence and through his speaking. And I'm certainly not
trying to make anybody go. So be as good as Jesus. Like, we're
we're all gonna fall short of that standard. But to to point out
that teaching skill as a mode of attracting a crowd
(08:08):
isn't inherently bad. We only look need look as far as
Jesus to go, no. It's it can be a good thing.
However, Jesus also had the ability
to push the crowd away by saying hard things. Yeah.
You know, when, when Jesus says, unless you
(08:29):
eat my body and drink my blood, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven
and everyone leaves except for the disciples because this is a
hard teaching that he has. Speaking of that sacrifice and
that picking up your cross, these are things that people don't want to hear.
So if you ever find yourself in a position where people
are attracted to your teaching and to your style, and as a result
(08:53):
of this, you find yourself wanting to couch things or
not say hard things so that people will continue to like
you, you need to that needs to that should be a red flag in your
own heart and go, okay. I can't steer away.
I I'm glad that people like my teaching ability, but
I need to be sure that I what I'm teaching is the word and
(09:15):
not my Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. I mean, you know, we've seen examples
all over Christendom of huge churches
and leaders. You know, they're writing books and making appearances and
all this stuff. And then, you know, you can see evidence
that they're they're just preaching to what people want to
(09:38):
hear. Easy, you know? Yeah. Easy preaching, non
challenging preaching. That's easy on the ears. You know, You're
not you're not making me do anything different. This is
the place I like to be. This is pretty you got good coffee and
donuts, and you're telling me everything that I wanna hear. What do you wanna
hear? Sign me up. What's
(09:59):
not to like? Yeah, exactly.
Okay. Alright. Let's move on. Our second one is, more
consumer oriented programs in the church.
And yeah. I mean, one of the other, you know, points that that we have
under here is that there's not really you're not really demanding
it much of me. Couple this with point one.
(10:22):
I come in on Sunday. I hear hear a really good feel good
message. Shake a few hands. Have a couple of
hugs. Good cup of coffee and a donut. And you
haven't said I should do anything else. Right.
I love that. That this is great, you know? Because
we got t ball starting in a half hour anyway, and
(10:44):
then I got all kinds of stuff going this week. I'm probably gonna be working
late. And, and so, yeah, you haven't told me I have to do anything
else. This this is a church that people might find attractive
because they might have heard or maybe they were in a previous church that was
like, hey, you need to be up here on Wednesday night, and then you gotta
be in a home group, and you gotta come to Sunday school. And it seems
(11:04):
seems like they wanted me to do all kinds of stuff. This church doesn't do
that at all. Yeah. This is great. So
you can see, obviously, you know, being facetious here that our churches
need to be challenging us to live a biblical
lifestyle and be participating in the work of the
ministry and to be growing as a disciple, to be studying God's word and to
(11:26):
be fellowshipping with other believers and to be sharing our faith and to be in
prayer. There's a lot of things that God, through his word,
demonstrates we should be investing in. And when our church
is not trying to strengthen those areas in
us, for some, that will be an attractional
place to be. Totally. I mean, I think we've
(11:47):
labeled this consumer oriented programs, but I think we could just
say worship only churches. Yeah. Yeah. Lack of
programming. And and, it's almost like
it's like simple church gone sideways where it's like
we we cut the programs not for the sake of
clarity, but for the sake of
(12:09):
reducing expectations on people and go, you know, we really
just want we just really just show up on Sunday. You know, we're we're
putting the whole burden of discipleship on the Sunday morning experience,
which we call you know, even calling it that. It's experience.
You know, come and experience, but, which isn't the end of
the world. I'm not being I'm not trying to be too critical. But, yeah, I
(12:31):
mean, that's it's easy church, and, and that's a great way
to grow things. Oftentimes, you go, oh, let's just reduce expectations on
people. Right. Yeah. But going I guess this was in last
week's episode. We talked about how vision drives
drives growth, but, you know, the the number one predictor for
for overall health in the church is the discipleship pathway.
(12:55):
And I've got some data now to kind of back that up, but if you've
got a clear discipleship pathway, that is
the leading indicator on whether or not your
overall health, church is healthy,
including growing. Not just like healthy
in a, well, you know, we're not growing, but we're healthy. No.
(13:17):
Growing and healthy. And so what we what we see in some
of the data that we have with the churches is that they can have a
really high Sunday attendance number,
but all of the other indicators are not healthy. Low
volunteer participation, low groups attendance participation, and,
you know, their even their vision scores can be low. Their strategy other things can
(13:39):
be leadership scores are low. Other these these other things can be low even though
the Sunday morning number is high. And it's because
potentially it may be that it's just a it's a Sunday morning
only church Sunday morning experience only church.
That's not good. Yeah. Yeah. To, my
wife reminded me of this when I was talking to her about this episode. We
(14:00):
used to, pass a church,
in Texas driving south. So I apologize if anybody
knows this church. I don't think it's still there. Maybe it's still there. But I
think on their side, they were advertising that it was, like, fifteen minutes, like, a
fifteen minute worship service or something. Oh, okay. I don't
know anything about it. Maybe I've got the complete wrong idea. If
(14:23):
you know this church and you're like, this is the most amazing church. Yeah. That
was a thing that but you're missing the beginning. Of thoughts in my head that
I'm thinking I'm immediately filtering them and going, don't say that.
No. Definitely don't say that. We would call it, like, you know, the drive
through church. You know? It's like you pull up to McDonald's and get your order
and drive it out. You know? But I'm like, fifteen minute turn. What is this?
(14:43):
I never again, I apologize if this was an amazing church,
and I completely misunderstood, but that just didn't give
healthy church vibes to me. You can get you can get all that discipleship
15 for your money back.
I'll have to do some searching and see if fifteen minute church is around anymore.
I don't know. But that was the name of the church or that's just what
(15:05):
I'm trying to remember what gave us what led us to think that it was
fifteen minutes. If that was the name of the church or if it's set on
the sign, maybe they had a sign. It was like fifteen minute worship service. Sounds
like youth group campfire vibes.
I I don't have a lot of time. I need a worship service stat. We
got you. We got you. That's our starter plan. Yeah. The plus
(15:26):
plan is an hour and fifteen. You get an extra
hour. Man. Alright. The third thing, a third reason
why an unhealthy church might be fast growing is just because of where
they're located. You can have a highly populated
area. Every time I go I I grew up in Dallas, but I don't live
in Dallas anymore. I live in East Tennessee. But anytime
(15:48):
I go back home for work or
to visit family, I'm always like, how are there so
many of these churches? I mean, it's hard to talk to
DFW churches because their their perceptions of
church size are way skewed. They might be a church of three fifty and they
go, oh, we're a small church. I'm like, you're a big church, most, most
(16:10):
places in the world. And even most places in The U S you'd be a
really good sized church, but they'll they'll go, Oh man, we're tiny. You know? And
so you sometimes you're in a DFW, you're in a Dallas Fort Worth area,
and the churches just run big because everything's bigger. And
sometimes you're in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska, and
you shouldn't have an expectation that your church could be a thousand people,
(16:32):
should be a thousand people, or any of that. Although I
did once work with a church in what state were they in?
Ohio, I think. And they were in the middle of nowhere,
AJ. Like, nowhere. Nowhere. And, they were they were an
hour I had to drive an hour and a half from South Bend,
(16:53):
Indiana, like a whole another state, to get to them.
They must have been Indiana, or they were also in Indiana. But I had to
drive an hour and a half from South Bend, and South Bend's not big. South
Bend's some middle market place
to get to this place, and there were 800 people. So, I mean, you can,
I guess, have larger churches in the middle of nowhere? It's uncommon.
(17:15):
I had I spoke at a conference. Would be like, oh, we're tiny people.
Yeah. I had somebody from the middle of nowhere in Texas. One time
I was speaking at a conference, and and they
were kind of pushing back. I don't remember exactly what what I was
talking about, but, you know, it was related to growing churches. And and he
was pushing back. What if what if I'm out, you know,
(17:39):
I got this and it was super rural and there's nobody for miles.
How can you expect my church to go? And I'm like, okay, golly, let's push
the limits of what we might be able to do. So, yeah, I mean,
if you're if you're in 100 families live in the entire county
and, you know, it's miles to drive, sure. Your church is it's gonna be
small. It can be totally healthy and totally small, and you have
(18:02):
hardly any mission field within driving distance. Yes.
There that I have worked in these situations. I've worked
with multiple churches in very rural
rural locations and seen them in a year
double their growth, but that was going from 30 people to 60 people.
Yeah. And that's fantastic, by the way,
(18:23):
considering their towns only had 250 people in them. Yeah.
But anyway, yeah, we've ended up flipping the script here to the other side of
this. I mean, to very small churches, but, you know, yes. There's there are
some huge population moves happening in cities. And it's not irrelevant. I
guess what we're saying the point is your
geography does have some influence
(18:46):
over the size, either maybe making it
artificially small or or making it artificially large
depending on some of these other factors. Yeah. Yeah. Not
gonna be big just because you're in a highly populated area. New
neighborhood goes in and a church goes in over there,
and all of a sudden there's restaurants and fast food and there's a ton of
(19:08):
people. Do you remember this? I'm not calling them an unhealthy church. Just as a
preface, please hear this, please. But I remember
growing up when a Stonebriar Community Church opened
up, You know that church in Frisco?
They're by the Stonebriar Mall? Right there by the mall,
yep. And I think that the church may be opened before the mall
(19:30):
did. And I remember just thinking, what
is this? I mean, they and they built a big church.
I thought, what are they doing? This is crazy.
Because there was nothing in Frisco. People who are listening to the
podcast who don't know Frisco, Texas. It's where the Dallas Cowboys headquarters
are now, just for context. But at the time, I thought this is
(19:52):
nuts. And now I mean, now it's this massive megachurch. I'm
not calling them an unhealthy church. I'm showing an
example of a church that built in a location
that shortly after they built there, the area
Mhmm. Absolutely exploded. And they saw that
coming and planned ahead accordingly. Yeah. Right.
(20:14):
Okay. For and the fourth one we're gonna hit you with today is just the
transfer growth. So and this can happen,
a lot of times you might see this coupled with, again, some
newness happening. Church builds a new building, and
they start filling it really quickly. And a lot of that
growth could be the the sheep shuffling as
(20:36):
people say. People are just moving moving over because they've got
all of a sudden, there's a great playground for the kids there, and
everything is new, and they've got cool screens and lights and sound
system and all the bells and whistles. And That don't mean a church is
unhealthy, by the way. I mean, just to be fair.
Transfer growth happens in healthy and unhealthy churches.
(20:58):
True. Yeah. To be fair. Yeah. Because you can also
transfer growth for things like the church the really
the dying church down the street closed. Mhmm.
And so those people are now without a church, and they need to go to
church somewhere. And so x y z church starts growing. You know,
they they they add 10 new families. X y z church might be
(21:20):
a healthy church, or they might be an unhealthy church Right. But they benefited from
transfer growth. Exactly. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. That's it. So
yeah. I mean, you know, the proof comes later. You know? I mean, they
could they they could experience a lot of growth for
whatever reason just because it's new. And then, you know,
it's are they sustainable then? Are there other is it a healthy
(21:42):
environment? Is it not a healthy environment? And because of the previous, you know, things
that we've already discussed, maybe it continues to grow even though
there's not any healthy markers in it. But that could be a catalyst, I
suppose, for growth is putting a new building in. Definitely, most
churches would see a bump from that. Yeah. I,
we've seen this with lots of churches that went through the disaffiliation
(22:05):
process, with the United Methodist Church. That
would be a signal to me that they might be a healthy church because they're
standing on the authority of God's word and those kinds of things.
But not necessarily. I mean, there could be some people who just from a purely
political level insiders look at that and go, oh, okay. Well, you know, I
feel like I can trust this church. So they start going. And then and
(22:27):
then the proof, like you said, comes later. What about the rest of these things?
And we've been contacted by a number of these churches and worked with a few
that that recognized this and said, we want to be a healthy
church. So we were seeing this growth as a result of
this choice we made and we'd want to be wise with
it. And that's smart, you know, not just want, not just
(22:49):
coasting. So if you if you're experiencing transfer growth
for a reason that's outside of maybe just just happenstance Mhmm.
Let that be a signal to you and go, okay. Hey. Let's let's be good
stewards of this, and let's be sure that we're a healthy church. That's a good.
Yeah. That's a good call. Yeah. Yep. Really good.
Okay. Well, there you go. We don't need to reiterate all of the
(23:10):
stipulations that we put on this. There there's unhealthy churches out
there. There's healthy churches out there. Don't judge a book by its cover. And if
you don't need to judge them at all, don't do it. Mind your own
business. Make your church healthy. Make your church healthy. Your whole business is
that of yours. Just just I I promise your church has its
own problems. Yeah. How about you become the envy of other churches
(23:33):
that aren't they aren't minding their own business? You be a healthy church. You
grow. We'd love to help you do that, and you can reach out to us
at malphors group dot com. Link will be in the show notes of your
podcast app or over on YouTube in the video description below. We'd love to have
a conversation with you. Last thing to and
end. You know what would really help if a church wanted to be
(23:56):
healthy? If is if they had a toolkit that
was designed for healthy churches.
And if you called it maybe I don't know what what's
a really creative name for that? Maybe Like, for a
toolkit for a church to be healthy? Yeah. Like, maybe a
healthychurchtoolkit.com.
(24:19):
Yeah. You can throw the .com on there if you want. There's a link also
in the show notes for that because we have such a
thing. The Healthy Church's toolkit is designed to train and
equip your team for healthy leadership, for
healthy discipleship and mission in your church.
Tons of resources on there to help answer some of the daily questions
(24:41):
that might come up. And then, Scott, we got a couple of new features in
there too that are pretty sweet. Oh, man. So good.
When is this episode going out? I don't know. Sometime in
2025. Minute. Well, all I can
say is, yeah, I won't go into all the details, but there there are some
neat new things in there. I know for sure we've already talked
(25:02):
about this of the build groups courses in there. You can grow
your group's ministry by 30 to 50% in six to twelve months by
going through the steps that Adam and his team lay out in that
course. It's so practical. So good. The The stuff in there. So
good. Try it out for free for seven days. There you go. Give it a
click, and then you can click back in next week when we have a new
(25:23):
episode of the Church Revitalization Podcast. Thanks for being with us. See you
then.
Why do unhealthy churches sometimes look like they're
growing? Let's talk about that right now on the Church Revitalization
Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Church Revitalization
Podcast brought to you by the Malphurs Group team, where
each week we tackle important, actionable topics to help
churches thrive. And now, here's your hosts, Scott
(00:21):
Ball and AJ Mathieu.
Welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined
by my friend and cohost, AJ Mathieu.
Alright. Not all that glitters is gold, my
friend. True. And not everything that grows is
healthy. And, anybody who's listened to this podcast for any length of
(00:44):
time knows that we've we've chatted about this kind of thing
indirectly, or it's kind of been woven into an episode. I think about ten
weeks ago or 10 episodes ago, we talked about some
challenges of growing churches, and we sort of
hinted at this in one of the points was that, you know, it
may or may not be a healthy situation. So, ten weeks ago, we'd made a
(01:07):
note. Hey, let's do an episode on this. Let's go a little bit deeper on
why sometimes even unhealthy churches
are growing churches and, the reasons for that. And that's what
we're gonna talk about today. Yeah. I mean, with this conversation has come up, at
least, you know, I mean, with you and I, because we've both, you know, bit
we've been in places and we're we're like, what exactly
(01:28):
what is leading there to be a lot of people here? I mean, you know,
we sometimes when you have your your church consultant hat on,
you investigate. We're always on the investigation. And, so, yeah,
it it makes you wonder. And, I mean, I feel this also from
because, again, you know, we work with declining churches a lot,
plateaued churches. And, you know, I mean, we have empathy
(01:50):
for a lot of the pastors and leaders who are, you know,
feeling at the end of their rope. Like, what do we need to do around
here? And, you know, some something new goes in to the to
their city, and they're like, what is going on? You know? Why
is this place growing so much over here? Why?
And, you know, I mean, I think, sometimes
(02:12):
you they might even feel like how come God is blessing that he's not blessing
what we're doing. Yeah. And that's just not always the case. And and,
so that's a little bit of, I think, the heart behind this, why
unhealthy churches sometimes grow because you may not know
whether it's a healthy church or not. From outward appearances, it just looks it's
booming. It's great. You know? And the parking lot's full. They got all this new
(02:34):
stuff is happening. You know? Everybody seems happy and excited. And all of
that can be true, but let's peel back a little bit
and Mhmm. Look at maybe some possibilities of what might be happening
that you might not be envious of, I guess, is kind of where I'm
going. Yeah. You you might be thinking, I wish I
wish we had all these people, but you may not envy
(02:57):
what's happening inside the walls. I think, you
know, my one caution would be, I think that sometimes smaller
churches have an automatic bias against larger
churches and they, they will go, well, it's gotta be
one of these reasons. Sure. Yeah. And so I want to
caution you against that. If you're listening to this episode and think
(03:19):
that we're describing all larger churches are all growing
churches or the ones that are growing really fast. Cause
that's, that's not always true. I've I've had the privilege
of attending and working with and
consulting with growing churches that are healthy,
and they're they're growing for the reasons you would want for for a church
(03:41):
to grow. And so, I think it's important to
know that there are growing churches
that are smaller, and there are growing churches that are bigger. There are
growing churches that are healthy. There are growing churches that are unhealthy. There are
healthy churches that are smaller that haven't yet started to grow. There are Yeah.
Healthy churches that are bigger. You know, those all of those, like,
(04:05):
nuance exists. And so what we're trying to do today is not
pick on any particular category of size of
church as much as we're trying to pick on the reasons why
you can you can mimic health
and those things that is dangerous. So if anything, maybe
just take a look at your own church and go, man, if we've ever seen
(04:27):
a trend in growth, I wanna make sure that it's for the right reasons and
not for one of these things that sort of a shortcut Yeah. That ultimately
sabotages the church in the long run. Yeah. Yeah.
And and I think one of the cautions that we probably would also give you
is minimize the amount of time you spend comparing
yourself to any other church or on what somebody else is
(04:49):
doing and maximize the time you spend thinking
about what's right for your church, how you can help it improve and
how you can be on mission. That's such a great
point. I we need to get into these points. But one thing on that I
wanna say, this is why when you work when a church works
with us, there are very few places where you will see us
(05:10):
throw up a benchmark against some other standard.
There are a few. One would be these are just internal benchmarks
that we have, certain benchmarks for what volunteer
participation rates and groups' participation rates.
Those aren't based on national standards. They're they're just based on what we would
say. This is a minimum healthy standard.
(05:33):
And then the other would be, around giving where we would say, hey.
Here's what the national average is for per capita giving. But
because I just think it's helpful for churches to know where they're at in
that spectrum. But size comparisons and going, okay. You're in
this quintile or whatever, we just don't do that. We
don't think it's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
(05:55):
The biggest comparisons we like to make are comparing your
church to God's word. Amen. Yeah. Well said.
Okay. All right. We could probably have come up with a much longer
list. There's a lot of things, but we're just going to throw four things at
you. The first one, it could be this charismatic
dynamic leadership. There's a lot of churches that
(06:17):
grow really quickly because the the main
person upfront is just really dynamic
charismatic personality, great speaker, and just
everybody seems to love every word that comes out of his
mouth. And this is, again, not always you don't take that
and go, That's an unhealthy thing. It's not an unhealthy thing. But it's a
(06:38):
possibility that the growth of the church is all because
of everybody wants to just hear this person speak, and there's
got to be more to that. So I guess the unhealthy component that we're really
referring to here is that that's it. That's all the church has to offer.
And it doesn't have anything else supporting it in all of
the essentials that we would consider a healthy church to have. And then I guess
(07:01):
as a nuance of this is that we have an
attractional personality, but the substance
that is being presented isn't bringing
fruitful transformation to the hearers. And in
that worst of it, I think, is that not only are they
capable of gathering a crowd, they're then not
(07:23):
bringing a substantive message that leads to life
transformation. Mhmm. And so that's that's a
danger zone. Yeah. I mean, I think we can look at
the example of Jesus to see
a leader whose personality and charisma is a
draw and an attraction. I mean, Jesus, certainly in his earthly
(07:45):
ministry was totally capable of drawing a
crowd, not just because he could heal, but also through his
presence and through his speaking. And I'm certainly not
trying to make anybody go. So be as good as Jesus. Like, we're
we're all gonna fall short of that standard. But to to point out
that teaching skill as a mode of attracting a crowd
(08:08):
isn't inherently bad. We only look need look as far as
Jesus to go, no. It's it can be a good thing.
However, Jesus also had the ability
to push the crowd away by saying hard things. Yeah.
You know, when, when Jesus says, unless you
(08:29):
eat my body and drink my blood, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven
and everyone leaves except for the disciples because this is a
hard teaching that he has. Speaking of that sacrifice and
that picking up your cross, these are things that people don't want to hear.
So if you ever find yourself in a position where people
are attracted to your teaching and to your style, and as a result
(08:53):
of this, you find yourself wanting to couch things or
not say hard things so that people will continue to like
you, you need to that needs to that should be a red flag in your
own heart and go, okay. I can't steer away.
I I'm glad that people like my teaching ability, but
I need to be sure that I what I'm teaching is the word and
(09:15):
not my Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. I mean, you know, we've seen examples
all over Christendom of huge churches
and leaders. You know, they're writing books and making appearances and
all this stuff. And then, you know, you can see evidence
that they're they're just preaching to what people want to
(09:38):
hear. Easy, you know? Yeah. Easy preaching, non
challenging preaching. That's easy on the ears. You know, You're
not you're not making me do anything different. This is
the place I like to be. This is pretty you got good coffee and
donuts, and you're telling me everything that I wanna hear. What do you wanna
hear? Sign me up. What's
(09:59):
not to like? Yeah, exactly.
Okay. Alright. Let's move on. Our second one is, more
consumer oriented programs in the church.
And yeah. I mean, one of the other, you know, points that that we have
under here is that there's not really you're not really demanding
it much of me. Couple this with point one.
(10:22):
I come in on Sunday. I hear hear a really good feel good
message. Shake a few hands. Have a couple of
hugs. Good cup of coffee and a donut. And you
haven't said I should do anything else. Right.
I love that. That this is great, you know? Because
we got t ball starting in a half hour anyway, and
(10:44):
then I got all kinds of stuff going this week. I'm probably gonna be working
late. And, and so, yeah, you haven't told me I have to do anything
else. This this is a church that people might find attractive
because they might have heard or maybe they were in a previous church that was
like, hey, you need to be up here on Wednesday night, and then you gotta
be in a home group, and you gotta come to Sunday school. And it seems
(11:04):
seems like they wanted me to do all kinds of stuff. This church doesn't do
that at all. Yeah. This is great. So
you can see, obviously, you know, being facetious here that our churches
need to be challenging us to live a biblical
lifestyle and be participating in the work of the
ministry and to be growing as a disciple, to be studying God's word and to
(11:26):
be fellowshipping with other believers and to be sharing our faith and to be in
prayer. There's a lot of things that God, through his word,
demonstrates we should be investing in. And when our church
is not trying to strengthen those areas in
us, for some, that will be an attractional
place to be. Totally. I mean, I think we've
(11:47):
labeled this consumer oriented programs, but I think we could just
say worship only churches. Yeah. Yeah. Lack of
programming. And and, it's almost like
it's like simple church gone sideways where it's like
we we cut the programs not for the sake of
clarity, but for the sake of
(12:09):
reducing expectations on people and go, you know, we really
just want we just really just show up on Sunday. You know, we're we're
putting the whole burden of discipleship on the Sunday morning experience,
which we call you know, even calling it that. It's experience.
You know, come and experience, but, which isn't the end of
the world. I'm not being I'm not trying to be too critical. But, yeah, I
(12:31):
mean, that's it's easy church, and, and that's a great way
to grow things. Oftentimes, you go, oh, let's just reduce expectations on
people. Right. Yeah. But going I guess this was in last
week's episode. We talked about how vision drives
drives growth, but, you know, the the number one predictor for
for overall health in the church is the discipleship pathway.
(12:55):
And I've got some data now to kind of back that up, but if you've
got a clear discipleship pathway, that is
the leading indicator on whether or not your
overall health, church is healthy,
including growing. Not just like healthy
in a, well, you know, we're not growing, but we're healthy. No.
(13:17):
Growing and healthy. And so what we what we see in some
of the data that we have with the churches is that they can have a
really high Sunday attendance number,
but all of the other indicators are not healthy. Low
volunteer participation, low groups attendance participation, and,
you know, their even their vision scores can be low. Their strategy other things can
(13:39):
be leadership scores are low. Other these these other things can be low even though
the Sunday morning number is high. And it's because
potentially it may be that it's just a it's a Sunday morning
only church Sunday morning experience only church.
That's not good. Yeah. Yeah. To, my
wife reminded me of this when I was talking to her about this episode. We
(14:00):
used to, pass a church,
in Texas driving south. So I apologize if anybody
knows this church. I don't think it's still there. Maybe it's still there. But I
think on their side, they were advertising that it was, like, fifteen minutes, like, a
fifteen minute worship service or something. Oh, okay. I don't
know anything about it. Maybe I've got the complete wrong idea. If
(14:23):
you know this church and you're like, this is the most amazing church. Yeah. That
was a thing that but you're missing the beginning. Of thoughts in my head that
I'm thinking I'm immediately filtering them and going, don't say that.
No. Definitely don't say that. We would call it, like, you know, the drive
through church. You know? It's like you pull up to McDonald's and get your order
and drive it out. You know? But I'm like, fifteen minute turn. What is this?
(14:43):
I never again, I apologize if this was an amazing church,
and I completely misunderstood, but that just didn't give
healthy church vibes to me. You can get you can get all that discipleship
15 for your money back.
I'll have to do some searching and see if fifteen minute church is around anymore.
I don't know. But that was the name of the church or that's just what
(15:05):
I'm trying to remember what gave us what led us to think that it was
fifteen minutes. If that was the name of the church or if it's set on
the sign, maybe they had a sign. It was like fifteen minute worship service. Sounds
like youth group campfire vibes.
I I don't have a lot of time. I need a worship service stat. We
got you. We got you. That's our starter plan. Yeah. The plus
(15:26):
plan is an hour and fifteen. You get an extra
hour. Man. Alright. The third thing, a third reason
why an unhealthy church might be fast growing is just because of where
they're located. You can have a highly populated
area. Every time I go I I grew up in Dallas, but I don't live
in Dallas anymore. I live in East Tennessee. But anytime
(15:48):
I go back home for work or
to visit family, I'm always like, how are there so
many of these churches? I mean, it's hard to talk to
DFW churches because their their perceptions of
church size are way skewed. They might be a church of three fifty and they
go, oh, we're a small church. I'm like, you're a big church, most, most
(16:10):
places in the world. And even most places in The U S you'd be a
really good sized church, but they'll they'll go, Oh man, we're tiny. You know? And
so you sometimes you're in a DFW, you're in a Dallas Fort Worth area,
and the churches just run big because everything's bigger. And
sometimes you're in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska, and
you shouldn't have an expectation that your church could be a thousand people,
(16:32):
should be a thousand people, or any of that. Although I
did once work with a church in what state were they in?
Ohio, I think. And they were in the middle of nowhere,
AJ. Like, nowhere. Nowhere. And, they were they were an
hour I had to drive an hour and a half from South Bend,
(16:53):
Indiana, like a whole another state, to get to them.
They must have been Indiana, or they were also in Indiana. But I had to
drive an hour and a half from South Bend, and South Bend's not big. South
Bend's some middle market place
to get to this place, and there were 800 people. So, I mean, you can,
I guess, have larger churches in the middle of nowhere? It's uncommon.
(17:15):
I had I spoke at a conference. Would be like, oh, we're tiny people.
Yeah. I had somebody from the middle of nowhere in Texas. One time
I was speaking at a conference, and and they
were kind of pushing back. I don't remember exactly what what I was
talking about, but, you know, it was related to growing churches. And and he
was pushing back. What if what if I'm out, you know,
(17:39):
I got this and it was super rural and there's nobody for miles.
How can you expect my church to go? And I'm like, okay, golly, let's push
the limits of what we might be able to do. So, yeah, I mean,
if you're if you're in 100 families live in the entire county
and, you know, it's miles to drive, sure. Your church is it's gonna be
small. It can be totally healthy and totally small, and you have
(18:02):
hardly any mission field within driving distance. Yes.
There that I have worked in these situations. I've worked
with multiple churches in very rural
rural locations and seen them in a year
double their growth, but that was going from 30 people to 60 people.
Yeah. And that's fantastic, by the way,
(18:23):
considering their towns only had 250 people in them. Yeah.
But anyway, yeah, we've ended up flipping the script here to the other side of
this. I mean, to very small churches, but, you know, yes. There's there are
some huge population moves happening in cities. And it's not irrelevant. I
guess what we're saying the point is your
geography does have some influence
(18:46):
over the size, either maybe making it
artificially small or or making it artificially large
depending on some of these other factors. Yeah. Yeah. Not
gonna be big just because you're in a highly populated area. New
neighborhood goes in and a church goes in over there,
and all of a sudden there's restaurants and fast food and there's a ton of
(19:08):
people. Do you remember this? I'm not calling them an unhealthy church. Just as a
preface, please hear this, please. But I remember
growing up when a Stonebriar Community Church opened
up, You know that church in Frisco?
They're by the Stonebriar Mall? Right there by the mall,
yep. And I think that the church may be opened before the mall
(19:30):
did. And I remember just thinking, what
is this? I mean, they and they built a big church.
I thought, what are they doing? This is crazy.
Because there was nothing in Frisco. People who are listening to the
podcast who don't know Frisco, Texas. It's where the Dallas Cowboys headquarters
are now, just for context. But at the time, I thought this is
(19:52):
nuts. And now I mean, now it's this massive megachurch. I'm
not calling them an unhealthy church. I'm showing an
example of a church that built in a location
that shortly after they built there, the area
Mhmm. Absolutely exploded. And they saw that
coming and planned ahead accordingly. Yeah. Right.
(20:14):
Okay. For and the fourth one we're gonna hit you with today is just the
transfer growth. So and this can happen,
a lot of times you might see this coupled with, again, some
newness happening. Church builds a new building, and
they start filling it really quickly. And a lot of that
growth could be the the sheep shuffling as
(20:36):
people say. People are just moving moving over because they've got
all of a sudden, there's a great playground for the kids there, and
everything is new, and they've got cool screens and lights and sound
system and all the bells and whistles. And That don't mean a church is
unhealthy, by the way. I mean, just to be fair.
Transfer growth happens in healthy and unhealthy churches.
(20:58):
True. Yeah. To be fair. Yeah. Because you can also
transfer growth for things like the church the really
the dying church down the street closed. Mhmm.
And so those people are now without a church, and they need to go to
church somewhere. And so x y z church starts growing. You know,
they they they add 10 new families. X y z church might be
(21:20):
a healthy church, or they might be an unhealthy church Right. But they benefited from
transfer growth. Exactly. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. That's it. So
yeah. I mean, you know, the proof comes later. You know? I mean, they
could they they could experience a lot of growth for
whatever reason just because it's new. And then, you know,
it's are they sustainable then? Are there other is it a healthy
(21:42):
environment? Is it not a healthy environment? And because of the previous, you know, things
that we've already discussed, maybe it continues to grow even though
there's not any healthy markers in it. But that could be a catalyst, I
suppose, for growth is putting a new building in. Definitely, most
churches would see a bump from that. Yeah. I,
we've seen this with lots of churches that went through the disaffiliation
(22:05):
process, with the United Methodist Church. That
would be a signal to me that they might be a healthy church because they're
standing on the authority of God's word and those kinds of things.
But not necessarily. I mean, there could be some people who just from a purely
political level insiders look at that and go, oh, okay. Well, you know, I
feel like I can trust this church. So they start going. And then and
(22:27):
then the proof, like you said, comes later. What about the rest of these things?
And we've been contacted by a number of these churches and worked with a few
that that recognized this and said, we want to be a healthy
church. So we were seeing this growth as a result of
this choice we made and we'd want to be wise with
it. And that's smart, you know, not just want, not just
(22:49):
coasting. So if you if you're experiencing transfer growth
for a reason that's outside of maybe just just happenstance Mhmm.
Let that be a signal to you and go, okay. Hey. Let's let's be good
stewards of this, and let's be sure that we're a healthy church. That's a good.
Yeah. That's a good call. Yeah. Yep. Really good.
Okay. Well, there you go. We don't need to reiterate all of the
(23:10):
stipulations that we put on this. There there's unhealthy churches out
there. There's healthy churches out there. Don't judge a book by its cover. And if
you don't need to judge them at all, don't do it. Mind your own
business. Make your church healthy. Make your church healthy. Your whole business is
that of yours. Just just I I promise your church has its
own problems. Yeah. How about you become the envy of other churches
(23:33):
that aren't they aren't minding their own business? You be a healthy church. You
grow. We'd love to help you do that, and you can reach out to us
at malphors group dot com. Link will be in the show notes of your
podcast app or over on YouTube in the video description below. We'd love to have
a conversation with you. Last thing to and
end. You know what would really help if a church wanted to be
(23:56):
healthy? If is if they had a toolkit that
was designed for healthy churches.
And if you called it maybe I don't know what what's
a really creative name for that? Maybe Like, for a
toolkit for a church to be healthy? Yeah. Like, maybe a
healthychurchtoolkit.com.
(24:19):
Yeah. You can throw the .com on there if you want. There's a link also
in the show notes for that because we have such a
thing. The Healthy Church's toolkit is designed to train and
equip your team for healthy leadership, for
healthy discipleship and mission in your church.
Tons of resources on there to help answer some of the daily questions
(24:41):
that might come up. And then, Scott, we got a couple of new features in
there too that are pretty sweet. Oh, man. So good.
When is this episode going out? I don't know. Sometime in
2025. Minute. Well, all I can
say is, yeah, I won't go into all the details, but there there are some
neat new things in there. I know for sure we've already talked
(25:02):
about this of the build groups courses in there. You can grow
your group's ministry by 30 to 50% in six to twelve months by
going through the steps that Adam and his team lay out in that
course. It's so practical. So good. The The stuff in there. So
good. Try it out for free for seven days. There you go. Give it a
click, and then you can click back in next week when we have a new
(25:23):
episode of the Church Revitalization Podcast. Thanks for being with us. See you
then.
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