The Road to Growth

The Road to Growth
by Bob Jackson

Bob Jackson has written an absolutely fascinating book, which attempts to analyse the evidence for growth ascociated with various popular strategies. One of the benefits of this approach is that it produces a wonderful treasure trove of tables, charts and figures. This makes it a perfect book to dip into again and again... One to leave in the loo for a while...
On the minus side, it's worth reminding ourselves that there are "lies, damned lies and statistics". All attempts to pin down the facts about any complex situation are always doomed to oversimplification or omission. Use wisely...
Having said that, there are various observations in this book that I feel it would be unwise to ignore. Here are just a few for starters:
1. Team Ministries (and LEPs) have not had a good track record for mission and growth. Jackson observes that that they require a great deal of time and energy to maintain and therefore have little capacity for mission. (His statistics prove this...)
2. Short Incumbancies are bad news: If ministers stay for less than five years, they won't have had time to get established and won't reach their peak. (He has the figures...)
3. Younger Clergy are generally ascociated with growing churches. In fact, he suggests that ministers are best at atracting people who are within ten years of themselves in age. This would suggest to me that if you want to reach out to people in their twenties and thirties, you need at least one thirty year old on your team...
4. Lengthy vacanices are bad: Long vacncies are not a good idea - he says. Although the recieved wisdom is that vacancies are good times for churches to grow, the evidence is that they generally shrink. Combine this with short incumbancies and you have a recipe for steady decline. (He has charts to prove it....)
5. Alpha Courses (and other nurture courses) don't produce growth by themselves - but they can be productive when they are well established and part of the core strategy of a church.
6. Churches that provide good youth work (and youth workers) normally have growing children's work - because younger children can see that they are being taken seriously long term...
7. Sunday Morning is the key time for growth and evangelism - except amongst teens and twenties...
8. Multi-plex churches are the way forward - provide variety
9. Small churches grow quickest. In fact, he says, most church growth in London has taken place in the small churches, not in the big (and sometimes well known) churches. Which means that we need more small churches...
...and there's much more worth picking out... Perhaps I'll return to this blog and add more...

One of his key observations is that the Church of England is stuck in a cycle of decline based on a continual need to raise shares to pay for clergy who are finding life more and more difficult - and being reduced in number as their responsibilities grow... More generous giving is seen as the main solution...

He contrasts this with a cycle of growth which would focus on church growth. In this cycle, parishes are renewed and fresh expressions encouraged. Costs are reduced and a "pay for what you use" approach taken for shares. Ordained Stipendiary Clergy numbers may go down, but a growing workforce of lay / part-time / task focused people would energise the life of the church...Of course, it strikes me that this is precicely what we've been talking about in the Deanery. The vision is to make Milton Keynes a sustainable, growing Deanery - hence the challenge to pay at least 80% of clergy costs - hence the focus on mission rather than structural ecumanism - hence the desire to change the way we use clergy and deanery posts - hence the Local Shared Ministry project... I may not agree with everything that Bob Jackson says in this book, but the central message is very familiar. We need to get from a cycle of decline to a cycle of growth - from a cycle of greif to a cycle of grace...