Service
• Do outreach primarily with money. Avoid the involvement of the congregation’s time and talent in the ministries they fund. Avoid participation – it is contagious, word spreads, and growth can result.

• Isolate outreach as the work of a committed few. Isolation of ministries tends to keep them small. Don’t encourage the entire congregation to own and value the outreach ministries.

• Avoid at all costs the notion that all baptized members are called to serve. This is highly conducive to growth.

• Do not develop relationships with those we feed, clothe, and/or house. Reserve pastoral care for the membership and evangelism for Sunday visitors who like us and are like us.

Worship
• Rely heavily on a professional choir and traditional classical church music. Avoid music that the congregation can sing with energy. Such music empowers a congregation and frequently leads to growth.

• Worry more about the correctness of the form of the liturgy than you do about its content and the congregation’s response or lack of response.

• Aim for worship to be interesting, rather than stimulating and transforming.

• Preach sermons you think would look good in print and that reveal that you have benefited from a seminary advanced degree. Don’t be overly concerned about whether the children get it or not.

• It is safer to do a merely adequate job with all parts of worship than it is to be known for the quality of your worship. Quality in worship is highly conductive to growth.

Evangelism
• Avoid all active definitions of evangelism.

      -- Promote passive definitions of evangelism:
      -- "Have a place and give space for individuals to make up their own minds."
      -- "Get all dressed up and wait."

• Don’t advertise your church services, programs, or ministries.

• Focus on the select few, the well-to-do, and highly educated.

• Be nice to visitors but DO NOT have an organized welcoming process or a new member incorporation process. Welcoming and new member incorporation processes will cause growth.

• Don’t talk about how God works in your life and your faith community with friends, neighbors, or associates. They may find it attractive and want to be a part of your faith community. It is safe to talk with them about your congregation’s money problems, the shortcomings of your clergy, or the limitations of the national church.

• Do not draw attention to Matthew 28:19-20. This scripture does not help the cause.

Education
• Bore children in church school. Keeping children active and interested in church can also result in significant growth.

• Do generic adult education programs about the church rather than classes that target specific groups and address the life and faith issues of those groups. When our faith community helps us with our growing edge problems, we experience the redeeming love we often only talk about. We can’t help but tell others. More people will come to these classes. This can be dangerous.

• Be very careful about leadership training and development. Leaders collect followers. The more leaders a congregation has the more followers they will have. Keep the leadership circle small (under twenty-five) or you are risking substantial growth.

Pastoral Care
• Define pastoral care as the work of the clergy. Most clergy cannot pastor, even in the superficial way, to more than several hundred people at a time. This is a comfortable limitation for growth.

• Lay ministry is extremely dangerous. Each member of the congregation that has a pastoral ministry has the potential of reaching another several hundred people. The results could be disastrous in terms of growth.

• When pastoral care is given, foster dependent relationships that rely on the clergy. Avoid the dynamic that what we receive we give. Keep the membership tied to receiving.

Stewardship
• Remember, it is safer to ask for too little than it is to ask for too much. You might receive what you ask for. Plenty has a way of removing limitations and opening up possibilities – not good things!

• Avoid the fact that with God there is no such thing as scarcity.

• Tight and deficit budgets may not be a totally bad thing. They are good excuses for not doing things that will lead to growth. Congregations worried about money seldom grow. "Of all the winds that blow on love, the want of money is the coldest."

Do not lose heart. Do not be overcome by those who argue for growth. Do not believe that large congregations are actually more warm, friendly, and intimate than small congregations. Do not let Jesus’ Great Commission get in the way of our Anglican identity. We can win the war on growth!

Not growing is serious and difficult work. We need to work together. If you know other proven ways to stop or significantly limit growth let us know at buildchurch@ecbf.org.

(Note to the literal minded: This article was written to be taken seriously but not literally. The truth is in the opposite of most statements.)