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« Princess Bride is the Top Romantic Fairy Tale Movie Ever | Main | More help - name some famous players with the #'s 22 and 44 »

August 13, 2007

Help - Why are church plants the most successful at reaching people and does my established church stand any chance of being renewed?

Today's post title gets the award for longest title on a post I have ever written and I bet it is one of the longest you've seen.  But it gets to a good point that I'd like some input on.

I mentioned it on a prior post where I had asked Ed Stetzer about this.  Peter Wagner says that church planting is the most effective method of evangelism on the planet and lots of people say things to the effect that established churches just don't evangelize well.  Ed thinks this is basically because of established churches' unwillingness to change.

In his terrific slideshow on church planting in post-Christian U.S. Drew Goodmanson reports the following statistics:

Churches under 3 years reaching 10 people for every hundred church members

Churches 3-15 years old win an average of 5 people for every hundred church members.

Churches over 15 years old reach an average of 3 for every hundred church members.

The average new church gains the majority of it's members from people who had not previously attended a church, The average established church gains 80-90 % of it's members from transfer growth from other churches.

With all of that I thought I would just open it up to the readers for input.   Why do you think established churches don't reach the lost?  Have you seen an established church that is over 15 years be effective in reaching the lost?  And by the way, note the question - I'm not asking about the growth of established churches - many grow, but the growth is 80-90% transfer growth. 

Have you seen any established churches that have turned around and become more effective in reaching the lost? If so how?

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