“what’s good for my church numerically may not be best for the kingdom – but what’s good for the kingdom is always best for my church.”

Challenging post by Bob Roberts. I actually got to hear Bob teach this while I was a Southwestern Seminary. His books Transformation, Glocalization, and The Multiplying Church (I blogged about this book here) have been very influential in my thinking about ministry.

What about the health factors in ministry that might shrink the church numerically. Bob mentions a few:

• church planting can impact the size of your local church.  That isn’t bad – it’s good.  We’ve helped over 20 churches get going all around us.  There are over 10,000 people in those churches combined – but I doubt seriously if we’d ever run 10,000 at our local church.
• loving other people radically can hurt your church attendance. People want lost people to find Jesus – but they want nice, acceptable, like us lost people – I’m so glad Jesus wasn’t that way.  We must go after the ostracized, the neglected, the marginalized – these are the ones that Jesus went after.
• being serious about making disciples will actually hurt your “church attendance” at times.  We live in a very consumeristic culture…being a disciple isn’t going to church – and it’s not just feeling good about life and all your dreams coming true.

Read the entire post here.

What are other markers of Kingdom Growth?