7/29/2022
<br>Author: Mike Kelley
<br>Title: Mike's Minute
<br><br>Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.<br>(Acts 2:41-42)<br>As a congregation of the Lord’s church, we must keep our eyes on both the front door and back door of the church. Our duty and desire is to keep people coming in the front door (baptism, restoration, placing membership) and to keep people from going out the back door (leaving our congregation or, worse, leaving the church all together).<br>In our transient society, where there is less and less commitment to any institution, this dual goal of bringing new people in and holding onto the people we have is quite a challenge.<br>How can we meet the challenge? We can HARP on church growth. To “harp on” something means to emphasize it. Let’s use each letter in the word HARP to refer to a concept that is very important to church growth.<br>Hospitality. The church must be a happy and hospitable place. It should be, in the words of the old theme song, a place “where everybody knows your name... and they’re always glad you came.”<br>Assimilation. We need to assimilate people into the work of the church. We need to find things for members to do. If there is nothing for them, we need to make something. We tend to think that if we ask people to do things in the church we may run them off. The reality is much the opposite. If we give people some responsibility in the congregation, they become more invested and are more likely to stay.<br>Relationship building. A real key to whether new members will stay with a congregation is whether or not they form significant friendships with other members. If we put new members to work by giving them roles and responsibilities and they form a few close friendships with members, the odds are very good that we will have those members for life.<br>Prayer. Do we pray for new members of the church? Do we pray that God will protect them from the temptation to leave and go back to their former way of life? If not, let’s fix that. Let’s start today!