Church Growth: The Series

Over on Church Marketing Sucks, they're well into a series discussing church growth and the various ways to look at it. Y'all won't bother to follow my links but you may be inclined to read this one post, so I'm going to summarize this series for you. Isn't that nice of me?

Part One: Is Church Growth the Highway to Hell? (Link)
Church growth is a touchy subject but yes, churches are supposed to grow.

Part Two: 9 Church Growth Myths (Link)
From Rich Warren's book, The Purpose-Driven Church. Um, there's nine of them but they're only one paragraph each. I dare you to click on the link.

Part Three: Perpetual Church Growth (Link)
Intangibles are the goals of church but they're measured through tangibles. Businesses are obsessed with growth but does church need to be as well?

Part Four: Healing, Sick and Dying Churches (Link)
Like an organism, if a church isn't growing then it's dying. Or, it should be in a healing process so that it can grow some more.

Part Five: It's Not Always Numerical Growth (Link)
There are different kinds of growth and some are hard to measure. Personal growth is church growth, too. However, personal growth should eventually lead to numerical growth.

Part Six: Numbers Are People, Not Evil (Link)
It's not about counting scalps and showing off. It's about seeing souls come to Christ.

Part Seven: Why Churches Should Care About Numbers (Link)
Numbers are important because they are one of several signs of effectiveness.

Part Eight: Quantity Is Job 1 (Link)
The third myth: You must choose between quantity or quality.

Part Nine: God Makes It Grow (Link)
Synthetic growth-by-formula sucks. God makes plants and churches grow, but we need to be good gardeners as well.