Live Blog From ReThink Conference – Breaking The 200 Barrier By Carey Nieuwhof

For the next three days, I will be live blogging from the ReThink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, GA.  ReThink, open exclusively to senior pastors, campus pastors and executive pastors, is a unique gathering of church leaders who are committed to solving the biggest challenges facing your church and the Church.

Injoy Stewardship Solutions has dispatched me to attend this amazing event as a way to invest in your growth.  They also want to invest in your leadership by offering you our latest FREE ebook Breaking The Next Growth Barrier: 10 Things Pastors Can Do To Break Down Growth Barriers by clicking HERE for your complimentary copy.

Today’s next speaker was Carey Nieuwhof. His session was entitled Breaking The 200 Barrier.  The following are 50 leadership quotes I captured from his challenging session:

1. You need to structure bigger to grow bigger.
2. 90% of all churches can’t get past the 200 barrier.
3. The reasons churches don’t grow are quite surprising.
4. The structure that you have right now is perfectly designed to sustain the church you are at.
5. Most churches behave like a mom-and-pop operation. You structure where everything is within your reach.
6. A really charismatic leader can break these rules but you cannot sustain growth breaking these rules.
7. You need to structure around pastoral care.
8. My first church had 6 people in it. I could do all the pastoral care by myself.
9. Small groups are a very good way of scaling pastoral care.
10. 98% of pastoral care is having someone who cares. It does not have to be you.
11. You need to structure care into the DNA of your church.
12. Pastoral care is the #1 killer of churches.
13. Staff that do everything vs. staff that lead leaders.
14. Do hire people to do. Hire people to lead.
15. You know they can lead when they take a vacation and the ministry runs better.
16. Get comfortable doing what God called you to do. Not what other people think God called you to do.
17. Bigger vision requires better structure.
18. If I do all the pastoral care we’ll never grow beyond 200 people.
19. When “No” becomes your default it makes people very grateful when they get a “Yes”. They also respect your time more.
20. The governance issue will kill you 500 to 600 in attendance.
21. If you spend $0.42 on children’s ministry you’ll never have a good children’s ministry.
22. The mission has moved home.
23. Volunteers can accomplish more than we think.
24. You tend to be too staff heavy when you’re not good in volunteer development.
25. Every leader has a number on his back. Some people are just going to lead churches of 50. Some are more organizational.
26. People who are in all the details can’t scale beyond 200.
27. The question is not, “Will they develop leaders?” The question is, “Are they developing leaders?”
28. It now takes 2600 to make 1300 on the weekends. You need a bigger reach.
29. My goal is not to get people in the building. My goal is to get people to engage in the mission.
30. It’s not getting people to church to engage. It’s engaged people who attend.
31. If you’re the only person thinking about your church on a Wednesday, you’ve got an engagement issue.
32. When you have engaged people, you see your attendance surge.
33. I’m only good at communicating, inspiring people and raising money.
34. I manage self-managed people really well.
35. If someone can do something 50-80% as well as you can do it, hand it off and do what you do well.
36. When you add a 2^nd service the rule has always been you automatically grow by 20% because you give people more options.
37. Multi-site as a growth strategy, you need to be careful with that. I live in a country where 95% of the people won’t be in church this Sunday.
38. I would not add another location if you’re not growing. I would not add another location if you’re not at two or three services. I would not add another location if you don’t have momentum. Adding another location will take away momentum, not add it, if you don’t have it.
39. Great communication used to buy you more than you have today. Anybody can hear anybody. You’re now competing with every pastor in the world.
40. Good preaching will not grow your church. Bad preaching will kill your church.
41. Church culture – Is what you what worth exporting?
42. At 200-500 the Board knows exactly what’s going on. They develop bad micro-management habits.
43. Congregational leadership is a permanent lid on the growth of a church.
44. You cannot run any successful organization on a vote.
45. The congregation needs to trust the leadership.
46. As elders, we only meet six to eight times a year.
47. Move the kids to the service you want people to attend.
48. If you get bigger you have to do less. You can’t duplicate complexity. You can only duplicate simplicity.
49. We only do a few things well. If we keep doing more, it gets increasingly complex.
50. For every 100 in worship, you should have 1 FTE. If portable or multi-site, it needs to be a little higher.

Now we onto the final speakers of the afternoon.

As previously mentioned, INJOY Stewardship Solutions would like to offer you the FREE resource Breaking The Next Growth Barrier: 10 Things Pastors Can Do To Break Down Growth Barriers.  Click HERE or on the image to the left for your complimentary copy.