If you've been to Good Shepherd for more than five minutes, you know that we are all about "inviting all people into a living relationship with Jesus Christ."  We say it, we repeat it, we preach it, we publish it, and one of these days we may even sing it. What you may not know, however, is that we have to the best of our ability defined what a "living relationship with Jesus Christ" looks like.  How can we know if someone is practicing living faith as opposed to dead religion? So there are seven marks or measures that characterize someone who has a living relationship with Jesus Christ:  saved by grace, filled with the Spirit, serving in love, starting at home, moving to maturity, generous with resources, and sharing the gospel. The majority of our sermon series and teaching emphases are designed to reinforce one of these measures. Why am I telling you all this? Because it explains everything that happened in Every Life Counts.  We have long known that of all the measures, we as a church are weakest at sharing the gospel.  It is a great challenge to get the people of the church to feel the urgency to share their faith with others, and then even if they get a sense of that urgency, it is even more difficult to make them feel equipped and empowered to do so. So we devoted an entire series to preparing the body of Christ to engage in the ministry of evangelism.  (But notice: we didn't call it "How To Be An Evangelist."  That would have been as dumb as following a capital campaign with . . . another capital campaign.) No, we called it Every Life Counts and we often used the tag line -- borrowed from our mission statement! -- that "the invited will become inviters." It's why the bottom lines earlier in the series were:  one question to help one person take one step closer to Christ;  your best you is when you're sharing him; and then the three answers to the three most common objections people have to faith (Yes! I did a three point sermon!). It's why on the fourth Sunday of the series we had three people tell the stories of those who had led them to faith -- and why we ensured those stories were of regular people . . . no preachers allowed. It's why we augmented the Sunday series with a special Inviting All People course taught by our own Ron Dozier on Wednesdays nights. And it's why, as a prelude to yesterday, we handed out thousands of movie tickets for the people of the church to distribute to their friends and loved ones.  Because if we're going to ask church folks to do the work of an evangelist, we're going to make it as non-threatening as possible.  And it's always easier to invite someone to a movie than it is to invite them to church. And it's why the culmination of the series was the poignant and powerful short film by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association called Lose To Gain.  Because not only did we want to help the Good Shepherd community share the gospel with their friends and family, we wanted to give those same friends and family members a chance to respond to the offer to be saved by grace. And boy, did they respond. At 8:30, at 10, at 11:30 (English and Spanish), and at the Student Connect ministry on Sunday night. All in all over 100 people, moved by the beauty of the short film and the majestic power of the Gospel itself, stood up to give Jesus their lives.  That tally included folks of all ages, from all walks of life, and even from backgrounds pretty disconnected from church.  It was a deeply, profoundly spiritual morning and night. All in the service of advancing our strategy. So was it strategic?  Was it spiritual? Yes. If you've not seen Lose To Gain, take 24 minutes and do so.  It is a glorious intersection of art and faith . . . and you may find it becomes an intersection of your life and God's love as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU6K7xA45T4      

When you grow up in a Roman Catholic family in New York City, becoming a pastor's wife is simply not on your radar. Yet that's what happened to my wife, Julie. To say she is not a "typical" pastor's wife would be an understatement.  She doesn't play the pipe organ, bake with the auxiliary (whatever that is!), or have a blog defining herself in terms of her relationship to me. Actually, when it comes to our relationship, it is fair to say that I am almost as much a "Vice President's Husband" as she is a "Pastor's Wife" -- she is a VP of sales for a medical device firm, a job that takes her across the country and around the world leading her team. Here she is, along with me and our children Taylor (25) and Riley (22). So why am I telling you all this? Because this evening at 7 p.m. at Good Shepherd, Julie is the featured speaker at Ladies' Life, a quarterly event hosted by our LifeGroups ministry.  She'll tell her story through the lens of hearing the inner voice of God.  There are already over 250 women signed up to come, but there's room for more.  And you can't beat the price: free. To pre-register, go to www.gsumc.org/ladieslife See you there!  (I will be very discreet in my presence.)  

Here is our faith-sharing tool for this Sunday's culmination of Every Life Counts. Yep.  Movie tickets. The goal of the series has been to equip, enable, and inspire the people of Good Shepherd to share the gospel.  That's why our teaching has centered on 1) one question to help one person take one step closer to Christ; 2) dealing with the three most common objections to faith; 3) a reminder that your best you is when you are sharing him; and 4) the live testimonies from three Good Shepherd regulars about who had invited them into living faith. And so to conclude the series, we wanted to give the people of the church a practical, tangible, invitational tool. And what could be better than movie tickets?  Our worship gathering this Sunday will center around the short film Lose To Gain (similar to Defining Moments that we did in January of '14).  Given the role of film in our culture at large, we believe this artistic piece has great evangelistic power and appeal. We also know it's easier for people to invite their friends to a movie than to church. So this week, there have been thousands of these tickets floating around the Steele Creek community. And we pray those thousands of invites lead to hundreds of people entering into a living relationship with Jesus Christ.    

Blogger, pastor, and statistical analyzer Len Wilson has compiled a list of the 25 fastest growing large (over 1,000 per Sunday) United Methodist Churches in the USA. You might recognize #19.  And since our 2014 attendance jumped to 1,974, our five year growth rate would move to 28% by the most recent statistics. Anyway, I admire the comprehensiveness of Wilson's record-keeping and, more to the point, appreciate his analysis that follows the list. I add one point to his summary: of the 25 pastors leading these churches, at least seven are graduates of Asbury Seminary, including #1 and #2.  Huh. Here goes, courtesy of Wilson himself:     I believe that the result of creative thinking is innovative practice, and the result of true innovation is growth. While not all growing churches are healthy churches, healthy churches grow, because growth isn’t the goal; it’s the outcome. Because of this, I like to follow the practices of growing congregations. What innovations are happening in the fastest growing large congregations, and how might other churches learn from them? In 2011 I published a list of the top 25 fastest growing large United Methodist churches. Here’s the updated list, and 25 of the most innovative churches in the United Methodist Church today. While average worship attendance is an imperfect indicator, it remains one of the best we have to measure how we’re doing at telling the story of Jesus. While I currently serve in a Presbyterian church, my background is United Methodist, and the United Methodist Church is helpful for such statistical analysis because of its episcopal organizational structure and corporate record keeping. To qualify as “large” for the sake of this analysis, a congregation must have had at least 1000 in weekly worship in 2013, the most recent full year of average weekly worship attendance records. With the benefit of more years of records since my previous post, I elected to rank the churches on a five-year trend (my previous list was on a 3 yr trend), as a five-year trend offers a more precise indicator of sustained growth. Click on a header to sort by that row.

Rank	Church Name	City	State	Sr Pastor	Pastor Since	2013 AWA	Rank by size	5 Yr Growth
1	Faithbridge (*)	Spring	TX	Ken Werlein	1998	3,276	9	108%
2	Harvest (*)	Warner Robbins	GA	Jim Cowart	2001	2,443	18	69%
3	Christ (*)	Fairview Heights	IL	Shane Bishop	1997	1,802	48	61%
4	White’s Chapel (*)	Southlake	TX	John McKellar	1992	6,162	2	52%
5	Morning Star (*)	O’Fallon	MO	Mike Schreiner	1999	2,122	30	52%
6	Cornerstone (*)	Caledonia	MI	Bradley Kalajainen	1990	1,751	52	47%
7	First, Flushing (*)	Flushing	NY	Joong Urn Kim	2011	1,520	63	40%
8	Korean Central	Irving	TX	Sung Chul Lee	1990	2,005	36	39%
9	Apex	Apex	NC	Gray Southern	2012	1,361	84	38%
10	Impact	Atlanta	GA	Olu Brown	2007	1,381	83	38%
11	First, McKinney	McKinney	TX	Thomas Brumett	2006	1,443	72	37%
12	Crosspoint	Niceville	FL	Rurel Ausley, Jr	1998	2,689	15	36%
13	New Covenant (*)	The Villages	FL	Harold Hendren	2011	2,034	35	35%
14	Cove	Owens Cross Roads	AL	John Tanner	1997	1,406	76	34%
15	First, Mansfield	Mansfield	TX	Mike Ramsdell / David Alexander	1995	2,305	23	33%
16	St. Luke’s	Oklahoma City	OK	Bob Long	1991	1,464	69	31%
17	Covenant	Wintersville	NC	Branson Sheets	2004	2,048	33	29%
18	Gulf Breeze	Gulf Breeze	FL	Lester Spencer	2011	2,336	21	24%
19	Good Shepherd	Charlotte	NC	Talbot Davis	1999	1,811	46	23%
20	Crossroads (*)	Concord	NC	Lowell McNaney	1995	1,470	67	22%
21	Church of the Resurrection	Leawood	KS	Adam Hamilton	1990	8,895	1	20%
22	Anona	Largo	FL	Jack Stephenson	1993	1,553	62	20%
23	Grace Fellowship	Katy	TX	James Leggett	1996	2,988	12	19%
24	Saint Timothy on the North Shore	Mandeville	LA	James Mitchell	1994	2,170	26	19%
25	The Orchard	Tupelo	MS	Bryan Collier	1997	2,164	27	18%

A few observations:

Nine churches remain from the 2011 list of growing churches.

This means they’ve had a pattern of continuous growth since at least 2006, which is remarkable. They are: Faithbridge, Harvest, Christ, Morning Star, First Flushing, New Covenant, Cornerstone, Crossroads and White’s Chapel. They’re indicated with an asterisk (*) above. Not coincidentally, 7 of these churches occupy the top 7 spots on the 2015 list.

Stable leadership continues to be key.

The average senior pastor’s tenure is over 15 years, and 19 of the 25 have served their churches over 10 years. The median and mode are both 17 years, which means that if you account for four recent changes in leadership, the length of leadership of these fast growing churches is even longer. Of course, a declining church can have a longtime leader as well, so this isn’t directly causal, but it demonstrates that one factor in growth is stability. As long term leaders move closer to retirement, succession will become an issue. First UMC, Mansfield, has recently made changes in its senior leadership to navigate this transition. William Vanderbloemen’s book Next provides further insight.

Most growing churches aren’t overnight sensations.

While perhaps the dream is explosive growth, such as my colleagues and I experienced during my tenure as creative / media director at Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in the 1990s, when we grew from 1000 to 3000 in two years, such stories are the exception, not the rule. Most growing churches aren’t overnight sensations; they are the fruit of a long, steady climb in the same direction.

The bias is toward innovation in worship.

10 of the 25 are entirely “contemporary” or “modern” in worship style. 13 have a mix of “traditional” and modern services. Two serve primarily Korean communities, with distinct worship styles fit for their constituency. None are entirely traditional in worship style.

The “Bible Belt” still exists.

20 of the top 25 churches live in what is traditionally known as the “Bible Belt” – below the Mason Dixon line. 6 churches are in Texas (in three UM Annual Conferences), 4 in Florida, and 4 in North Carolina.  

On Sunday evening, I received the following text message from my 22 year old son Riley, a college senior at UNC-Chapel Hill.  I knew he was on his way to a spring break trip in northern Florida.  (Now, before you read what's below, imagine all the messages a college student on the way to a spring break trip could text:  I'm arrested. Can you bail me out?  Or I got in a wreck. Can you come get me.  Or, worst of all:  Mr. Davis, this is the hospital. We have your son's phone and need you to come immediately.) But no, none of that.  Instead, this: Riley:  Yo, diddy (think "daddy" with a deep Southern accent).  Plant or Bono?  Who's a better rock vocalist/frontman covering lyrics, vocals, showmanship, & stage presence? Me:  Bono, though it's close.  Gotta give a nod to longevity.  You in Florida yet? Riley: Almost. Me and (my friend) are talking about the seeding for a best rock frontman March Madness bracket.  Plant, Bono, Mick Jagger, and Freddie Mercury would probably be the one seeds. Me:  Ya got 3 outta 4.  Jim Morrison though I'm not a Doors fan. Riley:  Yeah, we said Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Ozzy, and Eddie Vedder as 2 seeds. Who has time to think of this stuff?!  But in those moments, of course, I was bursting with pride. But pride inevitably leads to blogging.  Which of course makes me come up with a list based on Riley's ingenious March Madness Rock Frontman bracket.  Here are my Top Five. 1.  Bono. The voice.  The sunglasses.  The Time Magazine covers.  The voice.  The cool.  The lyrics.  The voice.  The longevity.  The bike accident in Central Park.  The voice. 2.  Bruce Springsteen. He's almost a solo artist and therefore disqualified, but a) the E Street Band is really a band; b) We won front row seats to a Lexington, Kentucky concert in 1988 and so really now what a performer he is; and c) it's my list and I can do what I want. 3.  Robert Plant. Does anybody remember laughter? 4.  Mick Jagger. For all his flamboyance, his voice is truly under-rated. 5.  Kurt Cobain. Did anyone ever have a more beguiling mix of innocence and fatalism?