Our first three services have been great. We have had a lot of people present and we have had a lot of people sign up to help with future services. This presents a great, great danger! The danger is that we get so caught up in the "success" of the Sunday event that we lose sight of why we really exist - our mission - to see the Gospel transform everything within our reach - ourselves, our church, our city, and the world. That mission involves each of us. Each of us shares in living out the Gospel and in sharing the Gospel. Our Church went though a similar season, though we didn't grow as quickly. What I learned was that the 175 people showing up was just that...showing up. I was happy to see them and their butts in seats did wonders for my ego and pride. Over time, the vast majority of them left. The result was that we spent a year thinking we were doing something when in fact, we weren't doing crap.
I think the potential danger of growing in this way (primarily through attraction) is that you get a crowd together (which makes you feel good) but there's most likely no missional dna in that group. That crowd will reproduce itself including it's lack of missional dna. The effect is that the group gets excited about the group, but not about the mission. You end up creating more work for yourself because now instead of trying to lead a small group on mission, you have a large group that will be almost impossible to lead and/or change.
When you try to establish mission in the group, you'll find that many will leave and you will have lost time, lost funding (people and their money will go which may force you to make hard decisions) and lost momentum. I say this because its exactly what happened to us. We grew, thought we were doing something, ended up loosing over 2/3rds of our people and starting all over again at square one.
This was both extremely painful, and yet a great blessing as it taught me a ton. In the end, I realized the problem wasn't ultimately my people, but me. I had to repent and now, by God's grace, our church is headed in a much more healthy direction, but I created more work for myself by starting in a direction that was unhealthy. I had to back it up before we could put it back into drive.
That's my story. Hope it helps
I pray that God would continue to bring people to New City Church downtown, but I pray as well that we who are NCCd would understand the mission that is ours, that we would never lose site of it and that we would know that in order to be a true church, we must live out the mission He has given us. Fight with me for the mission - fight with me to be more than a Sunday gathering!
For more on who New City Church is check out the labels "Theology/Ecclesiology/Missiology and more" as well as "Who Is NCCd?". For a specific post see Church is Not Church Without The Mission.
