God wants your congregation to grow as well, not just numerically but spiritually. And for the people of your church to grow, you've got to be intentional.
As a pastor, I think about the spiritual maturity of my congregation all of the time. I grew up in church as a pastor's son. I knew people who had been in church all of their lives and were still spiritually immature. They were self-righteous, critical, unloving, and jealous. They had been taught the Bible all of their lives, and it hadn't changed their lives.
It bothers me to see that in my church today. I am accountable to God for leading the spiritual growth of my church. I don't take that responsibility lightly. Peter tells pastors, "Just as shepherds watch over their sheep, you must watch over everyone God has placed in your care. Do it willingly in order to please God, and not simply because you think you must. Let it be something you want to do, instead of something you do merely to make money" (1 Peter 5:2 CEV). The spiritual growth of your congregation should matter greatly to you.
Many people think that the Purpose Driven paradigm is all about church growth. But really it's about personal growth. It's a paradigm we designed to help people grow spiritually. It's not about building attendance; it's about building an army of people serving God. It's not just about building hearers of the Word; it's about building doers of the Word.
If you want to build doers of the Word in your church, you've got to be intentional about growing people spiritually. Your people will grow spiritually when they make commitments to spiritual maturity.
Saddleback Church is built on people who have made deeper and deeper commitments to Jesus Christ. We encourage people to make these commitments in three ways.
First, we encourage people to move through six levels of spiritual commitment.
We put everybody in our community in one of these levels of spiritual commitment. The first level actually takes no commitment at all. Called the Community, it's everyone within driving distance of our church.
We expect nothing from the people in this group - although we hope they will come to our weekend worship services. That's the first step of commitment a person makes at Saddleback. When they do that, they move into the Crowd.
Once someone starts attending Saddleback, we encourage them to come to our membership class, C.L.A.S.S. 101. That's where they learn what it means to be a member and get a chance to make a commitment to church membership by signing a covenant. When they do that, they become part of the Congregation, a part of our church family.
To be honest, we don't care if a person joins our church or another church. We just want people to make a commitment to a local church.
Then, once they join the church, we encourage them to take C.L.A.S.S. 201, where they learn about how to grow as a Christian. We focus on the great habits of the Christian life - prayer, quiet time, giving, and attending a small group. Then, just like we did in C.L.A.S.S. 101, we ask people to sign a covenant committing to practice these disciplines. Once they make that decision, they move into the circle we call the Committed.
