Church Health and Growth class resources

"I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it." -- Matthew 16:18, New Life Translation

This church health and growth class will focus on developing healthy, growing churches and planting new ones. This is not about a list of programs to be implemented but a serious study of questions like:

  1. Why are some churches healthy and growing and others are not? Is it simply something random, or are there things to be learned?
  2. Are there reproducible principles or patterns which church leaders can prayerfully employ in a variety of congregations?

The course will lean heavily on the foundational work of Donald McGavran, the man many call "the father of the modern Church Growth movement."

Course resources

"Most of us go to church expecting it to be a cruise ship. 'Provide me with this program and that program. Cater to my every want and need.'

"But Christianity isn't supposed to look like that. It is supposed to be a battleship fighting the powers of darkness and that isn't pretty. It can be really messy loving our neighbor and having compassion on the forgotten ones of this world." Sarah Dupray, Northwest Nazarene University student

"Reaping isn't all there is to evangelism. In fact, reaping isn't even the hard labor. Any farmer knows that. It takes one day to harvest what you've cultivated and nurtured for months. Furthermore, the disciples were going to reap a harvest they hadn't sown. I planted, Paul said, Apollos watered, and God gave the increase. Paul handed off some souls to Apollos. God gave the increase. The soil must be cultivated, the seed planted and nurtured, and then comes the harvest."

      — Joseph Aldrich in Gentle Persuasion, published by Multnomah Press

Writing Standards

Most courses at SNU contain a writing component.

I expect students to produce written work that is focused, well-developed, organized and relatively free of grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors.

Papers falling short of this standard will not be graded. Those papers will be returned to the students for revision and resubmission.

See my writing checklist.

Tempted to cheat on some schoolwork? Before you do, read SNU's academic integrity policy

"Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.: -- Acts 20:28

Open Educational Resources

This page and the resources on this site linked from this page are Open Educational Resources (OER)

    -- Howard Culbertson,

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