Post Tagged with: "Enthusiasts"
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Help! My Church is Heading for Extinction
What Can I Do? I have had considerable feedback from my two posts on the Growth, Decline and Extinction of UK Churches [1]. Many people have been concerned by forecasts of extinction and have asked me what they can do […]
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Enthusiasts – Quantity or Quality?
In the church growth models, “enthusiast” is the name given to the Christian believer who is responsible for bringing unbelievers to faith. Which is better for church growth, more enthusiasts or better enthusiasts?
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John Wesley Under the Contemporary Spotlight
Recently I had a lengthy comment on my blog post about John Wesley in Wales. The comments raised so many issues that I felt it needed a long reply. So I have made the reply into a blog!
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John Wesley, Enthusiasm and Today’s Church
Recently, while on holiday in Pembrokeshire, I passed a plaque in the town of Haverfordwest dedicated to the memory of the pioneer Methodist evangelist, John Wesley.
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Church Growth Limited by Evangelistic Purity
The fourth in the series on limits to church growth. The relationship between a mixed church and the effectiveness of evangelism.
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Church Growth and the Perils of Second-Order Feedback
Feedback is the process where an action has an effect, which in turn changes the original action. Either it magnifies it – reinforcing feedback; or it corrects it – balancing feedback
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Feedback and Church Growth
Feedback in a system that changes over time is the mechanism where an action results in an effect, which then, in turn, influences the original action. The action literally “feeds back” on itself. Reinforcing Feedback For example, if a population […]
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Infectious Church Growth
An “Agent-Based” View The central hypothesis I use to model church growth is that religious belief spreads like an infectious disease. This principle is built into the limited enthusiasm model of church growth. The church contains enthusiasts who pass their […]
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Where to Plant a Church?
Big City, Small Town, or Rural? Despite church decline, church planting continues at a fast pace. In the cities of the UK, the church landscape has a generous number of recently established, glossy, relatively wealthy, contemporary churches. It would appear […]
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Closing Rural Churches
Is This the Way to Church Growth? Recently in an article for the Guardian newspaper, Giles Fraser suggested the Church of England should do to its churches what Beeching did to the railways, close its underused rural parishes. He further […]
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Limits to Church Growth – Part 2
The Reproduction of Enthusiasts In a previous post, I investigated two barriers to church growth. Firstly, the lack of the supply of religion by the church. Secondly, the a lack of demand for religion in society [1]. For those barriers […]
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Is the Charismatic Revival Over?
The Changing Nature of Worship Songs In a recent article for Christian Today, worship leader Noel Richards passed commented on the style of worship songs written in the 1990s and those written now[1]. His central thesis is that there were […]
In 1904-5, Moriah chapel was the centre of massive church growth in Wales through a God-sent revival.