100 Ways To Increase Church Attendance

I have been involved in Christian leadership since 1982. But I started pastoring in 1995, as Senior Pastor. It has been my motivation, desire and passion to see God's work grow and progress. Most of the principles in this book, if not all, have been practiced with results in our ministry. 

When I was privileged to become the President of AGAPE Conference in 1987, only one or two churches attended. By 2003, 203 churches from 85 denominations became regular participants. In other words, I am a fellow student with you dear precious reader in this same school of church growth.  This is the second reason why I wrote this book .

My wife, Lara, is a Mathematician. She has been teaching Mathematics since 1989. Naturally, she likes computation and percentages. We came back from a Pastors' meeting one evening, Lara analyzed the various reports submitted by about 187 churches.  Her statistical conclusion got my attention. She found out that only two churches of the lot were above 1,000 in attendance. Only one church was 500 in attendance, ten churches averaged 300 worshippers. About twenty-four churches were above 100. One hundred and fifty churches were below 100 in attendance.

Though our church was above 1,000 at that time, we received a burden, a mandate to seek for what factors make for church growth. When we searched further, we discovered that 87% of churches in Nigeria were below 200 in attendance. This is the third reason why I wrote this book. It is to report our findings on what make churches grow.

I have also discovered that success in ministry is more than numbers. What makes for success in the eyes of God, the LORD of the harvest, is not the same indices used by men to bench mark success. There are habits found with successful pastors. In fact, by and large, success in ministry is an inside job. No work can grow faster on the outside than the man behind the work is growing on the inside. This is my fourth reason for writing this book.

The challenge of growth is enormous in the gospel ministry in Nigeria and Africa. The problem and challenges we face are not the same as those faced in other lands and under different climes. The few books we are reading on Church Growth are written by foreign authors, far removed from our context. Many are not relevant to Africa. Except from the writings of Dr. Francis Akin-John, Bishiop David Oyedepo, Pastor Mathew Ashimolowo and very few others, there are not many books and literature on what makes churches and ministries to grow in our contemporary African setting.  If this gap is filled a little by this book, then the fifth reason for its writing is justified.

Several questions often come up during our Church Growth Workshops and Leadership Conferences across the country. As recently as the month of this publication, I was asked several of such questions by about 230 church leaders that attended a leadership conference organized by our outfit, Christian Leadership Skills Inc. Few of the questions have been answered. I truly hope this volume of about 100 chapters will answer more of the questions on ways to increase church attendance in practical context. This is the sixth reason for this book.