Climate Control: Conditions of a Growing Church
Donald Gerig
A cold church, like butter, will not spread. Growing churches have learned how to regulate the congregational thermostat, and they have set it on friendly.
Herb Miller
No greater love hath anyone than someone who will give up a parking space to visitors.
Lyle Schaller The best-laid fields of farmers can be turned into mud by a week of constant, heavy rain. Every season's crop depends on the climate, which is completely out of their control.
Donald Gerig found that churches, too, are dependent on climate, that "atmospheric conditions" have to be right if a church is going to attract new people and grow. Unlike the weather, however, a church's climate can be shaped favorably by informed leaders.
Now the president of Fort Wayne Bible College, Gerig wrote this chapter out of his experience as pastor of Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois. This church weatherman takes a look at six atmospheric conditions that attract people and thus contribute to growth. After more than twenty years of pastors' conferences, I had heard my share of formulas for church growth, revival, and renewal. I had done the "pastoral drool" while listening to stories of skyrocketing attendance. I, too, had visited other churches hoping to find the key to growth. But the only church growth I had ever experienced was the plodding, gradual growth that no one writes books about. It seemed a dream for us to consistently have more than five hundred on Sunday morning. Then it happened! We started seeing our monthly attendance rates 30 percent ahead of the previous year. Before we could get used to that, we found ourselves with more than seven hundred in worship. How did it happen? The disconcerting thing was that we really couldn't put our finger on any single ...
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