5 Reasons Why New City Has Doubled In Size In One Year

The biggest question I get asked from practically everyone who knows me is, "How is everything at New City going?" I'll be honest, that is pretty much impossible to answer in a quick conversation. There are a lot of things going in a lot of different directions, and I hate that people assume things must be good if the church is growing, and bad if it isn't.That being said, as we are planning and preparing for 2019, I realized something pretty incredible this week; New City has over doubled in size from November 2017 to November 2018. And as someone who doesn't celebrate well (I'm always on to the next thing), I began to think through what some of the practical reasons and changes we have made, through which God in his grace made this happen. While there are a lot of things we could point to, here are five in particular that I think have really helped.

1) Doubling in size in a year isn't normal, but we started small

Let me be clear, as neat as this is, our average Sunday attendance in November 2017 was 53 people total. Doubling 53 people is a little bit easier than going from 500 to 1,000 people in a year for a number of reasons. So while our growth has been neat to see, I don't want to pretend that revival broke out :).

2) Our people put the mission first

Every Monday I post a few things that I saw, felt, and heard on Sunday at New City. If you read those you won't be surprised to hear how great our people are. As we grow and things change, our people have always had such a great and flexible attitude. Our mission at New City is to help people meet Jesus and grow in a relationship with Him. You really can't grow if your people put their preferences over the mission. We've grown because our people are excited about impacting more people.

3) My preaching has gotten better

I'm just going to be honest here, as much as I'm still trying to improve and become a better communicator, a year ago I had to a lot to improve on. I'm not at all saying I'm some amazing communicator now (and a year from now I'll probably be saying the same thing), but my sermons didn't have a good flow or direction to them a year ago.I've put a lot of work in this year in becoming a better communicator, and let's be honest, that does help people better connect and take next steps at a church. I have a long way to go, but I'm not as bad as I was a year ago :). And as a side note for preachers, don't assume you'll get better simply by preaching more. If you really want to get better, like any skill in life, you have to work at it. One way I did this was going from 5 pages of notes to using no notes at all (you can read about how I did that here).

4) We have a better system of getting people connected

A year ago we were just rolling out our partnership process (traditionally known as membership), we were still getting a handle on how we do community groups, as well as how people got connected into serving positions. We are much better at following up with and helping new people get connected than we were a year ago. We still have work to do and areas to improve, but making it easier for people to take their next step means more people will stick around.If your church seems to be stalling when it comes to growth, it would be wise to look at how easy and clear it is for new people to get connected.

5) We know who we are trying to reach

No single church can reach everyone. And while we are certainly open (and desiring) all different types of people come to our church, earlier this year we shifted our efforts to be more intentional to a specific demographic: young professionals without kids. Why? We found that was our largest age demographic at our church (which we had not gone out of our way to reach), as well as the largest age demographic within a three-mile radius of our church.Having said that, we still want and need all different types of people to help us reach this target, but this is who we focus after the most. Here are a few things we did:

• Changed our events to be geared toward this age group. For example, we have themed trivia nights one Friday every month. People of all ages come, but this is something young professionals enjoy.
• We took out a kids room to create more space at our facility for people to hang out
• We stopped offering childcare (and doing the work for organizing it) for our events

This does not mean we only care about people in this age demographic, it just means that is who we are contextualizing to. We have quite a diversity of ages at New City, which we all love and need, but we make decisions based on how effectively things we do will speak to people in this life stage.Now you could say it's not "spiritual" or "loving" or "Christian" to be so intentional and specific in who you are trying to reach. And while there are many reasons why I don't agree, I will say this; twice as many people are either taking steps and figuring this Jesus thing out or are growing in a relationship with him at New City than a year ago. So we are going to keep doing whatever we can to help as many people as possible meet Jesus and grow in a relationship with him.