Categories: uncategorized
Date: 06 April 2004 21:54:31
Our church is running "40 Days of Purpose", starting in a couple of weeks. I generally like it when they run with a theme for a couple of months - it happens every now and then, and I find it good to learn a lot about one particular topic in-depth. And it doesn't matter if you miss a couple of Sundays, you get most of the teaching repeated anyway...
But the 40 Days program is huge, it's being done by churches all around the world, it's a program that came from the US and it comes with powerpoint presentations, pre-written sermons, music suggestions, and (this is the bit I find disconcerting) estimates of how many more people will come to church because of their involvement. They estimate 20-30% increase in church attendance and 50% increase in small groups. Why does that irk me? I don't know - I mean, if the church experiences growth that's a good thing, right? Maybe it's just the forecasting of how the congregation will behave that worries me - but even that, I mean if it's a good program then of course its results can be measured in such a way... hmmm. We'll see what it's like, anyway. It starts the week after Easter.