The new era of ministry for Disciples of Christ Development Center was revealed to us by the Holy Spirit over the course of months of prayer. It is critically important that the covenant family of faith will become more involved in excercising their faith in efforts to reach the lost. With the specific mandate to release our faith for 12,000 active memberships, we began to see the Lord for direction and wisdom to bring this to pass. I began to study mega churches of 50,000 members or greater. The amazing discovery that I made then was there are no 50,000 member churches here in America. The real mega churches of 50,000 plus members are found overseas. The common denominator then and still is now is the cell group or small group concept in all of these churches.
I am persuaded that after a church reaches membership of 20,000 plus it becomes extremely difficult to control attrition. There seems to be steady growth with new members joining the church but there are also many baby Christians and disgruntled Christians falling through the cracks. Preventing the church from becoming a revolving door where new members come in the front door then escape out the back door, is a major challenge for churches of this size. This process of maintaining the membership or "closing the back door" is a challenge for churches that adhere to the traditional church membership care methods. With the mandate to believe for 12,000 members the Holy Spirit reminded me of the research He had me engaged in years ago. It was during this extensive time of seeking the Lord that several things were revealed to me by the Holy Spirit.
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