| The Church Growth Movement began 4 decades ago with the work and research of George McGavran. The Movement continues today with a plethora of consultants, scholars and researchers engaged in work that will help them and others understand how churches grow. The work continues because there is a quest to slow and stop the on-going decline of the Mainline Protestant churches of the United States. Some churches and denominations have invested time, personnel and money in programs and strategies in hopes of spawning a turnaround in the decline in membership, worship attendance, and overall participation.; This study focuses on 18 churches within the Los Angeles district of the California-Pacific Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. Nine of the churches have completed the training offered by the District and have implemented a church growth strategy (experimental). The remaining 9 have not implemented a church growth strategy, but have been invited to participate or are currently involved in the training (comparison). The training has fully exposed participants to the Crossroads-Strategic Mapping Model. The Crossroads Model centers around clear understanding of the congregation's DNA, which is comprised primarily of the congregation's mission, vision, and values.; The experimental group was compared to the comparison group to determine if implementation had an effect in the 3 prescribed areas. The hypotheses were that there would be a change in worship attendance, number of leaders and small group participants after implementation. There were changes in each area; however, there was not significant statistical evidence to support the hypothesis. Even though there were changes in the numbers, the significance levels were not satisfactory. Therefore, the hypotheses were not supported and implementation of a church growth strategy did not have an effect in the areas of worship attendance, number of leaders or the number of small group participants. |
