I listened to the Leadership Network telesiminar with Larry Osborne on his new book Sticky Church. There were several helpful thoughts that came out of the time for me.
•    Member retention is not so much about church growth as much as it is about having people stick around long enough to disciple them.
•    For a church to double from 250 to 500 over a 10 year period with a 30% retention rate it takes 834 new members.
•    For a church to double from 250 to 500 over a 10 year period with a 70% retention rate it takes 357 new members.
•    People tend to come to a church because of its children and youth programs. These youth go off to college get married and don’t come back until they have children which repeats the cycle.
•    We measure the wrong thing . For example new members and growth instead of retention.
•    Most small group models are broken and we retool them every 3-7 years. NC has a “very relational model” base on the word (sermon) that hasn’t changed in the last 22 years.
•    NC has 80% of Sunday morning attendance number in small groups.
•    People are like legos. Once their connectors are full they become friendly but don’t connect. Often time churches aren’t “clickish” their connectors are just filled. Create new groups for new people.
•    People need their own “Mayberry USA” in a hectic world. Churches that are constantly dividing and multiplying are more about growing the church than the people!
•    “Ingrown talk” is often more about leaders trying to “drive the people to accomplish what we want” than it is a concern about growing the people!
•    I wonder what our “retention rates are relative to our new members.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]