FAQ #1 - Is Harvest London Growing?

PostedThursday, September 10, 2009 @ 1 PMByBuilding Blog AdminTaggedNo tags

By God’s grace yes! In 2007 God grew us by 21% over the previous year. Last year, 2008, we grew 25% over 2007. And in the first 6 months of this year we are up 26.5% over the first 6 months of 2008!

May 2008 we averaged 315 on a Sunday but May 2009 we averaged 428 each week. June in 2008 we averaged 305 attending but this past month we averaged 399! And this September we have averaged 483 and 526 in October - praise God!

Did you know we average about 20 guests every Sunday! Shocking isn’t it. The first thing that comes to my mind every time I see our guest list is ‘why aren’t more staying?’ But our prayer is always that God brings who He wants. But something special is happening and part of that special thing is the growth – personally and spiritually but also numerically.

One of the Harvest principles is that we are to focus on the quality and God will care for the quantity. Our goal is to fulfill the great commission in the spirit of the great commandment and the way we best do that is to focus on making disciples. Seeing each person become a sold-out Christ-follower meaning they worship, walk and work for Christ.

Back in 2006 our leadership realized that as a church plant at the age of 6 (at that time) we had worried too much about how to grow the church. Jesus said, ‘I will build MY church’ and so our focus switch to just being faithful in worship and the word and since then we have seen God bless with amazing growth!

And other ministries are growing. Children’s ministry is up 18% this year, we have more people connected in our small groups – hitting a high in the winter of about 75% of our Sunday attendance in small groups, and our youth ministry was 280% larger this past year than the year before!