I have spent a lot of years around churches that want to grow, and I understand why they want to grow. When people come to faith, families become connected, lives begin to change and a congregation starts to experience new energy and vitality, there is something exciting about watching it happen. After more than three decades of ministry, I have seen enough church growth to know that it can be a wonderful thing.

At the same time, I have become increasingly convinced that we need to be careful about what we mean when we talk about “church growth.” Growing a church and reaching a community are both worthwhile goals, but they are not necessarily the same goal. They seek different outcomes and can require very different ways of thinking about ministry.

That distinction matters because it is possible for a church to become very good at growing itself without becoming particularly good at reaching the people who live around it.

The Cooler Problem

Imagine two fishermen sitting in a boat on a lake. They have their rods, bait and tackle, and they are ready to spend the day fishing. Their goal is pretty straightforward: they want to catch as many fish as they can.

There is, however, one limitation. They brought a cooler with them, and eventually that cooler is going to be full. They can move around the lake, try different locations, change their bait and use different techniques, but eventually they are going to reach the capacity of the cooler they brought with them.

When that happens, they have a decision to make. They can stop fishing, or they can get a bigger cooler.

Now, there is nothing wrong with getting a bigger cooler. If you are catching fish, you need somewhere to put them.

But imagine if they started measuring the success of their fishing trip by the size of their cooler.

Instead of asking, “How many fish are in the lake?” they begin asking, “How big is our cooler?”

It sounds a little silly when you put it that way.

Yet I think churches can sometimes fall into exactly the same trap.

We begin with a desire to reach people. We start an outreach ministry, host an event, invite people to church, serve the community or begin building relationships with people who are not already connected to the congregation. Eventually, people respond, attendance grows and the church begins to experience the kind of growth for which leaders have been praying.

Then the building starts to feel crowded.

So we add another service, renovate a room, build an addition or eventually move into a larger facility. Once there is more space, we are able to accommodate more people, and the process of reaching and growing begins again.

There is nothing wrong with any of that. A growing church may genuinely need more space, and there is certainly nothing wrong with celebrating when more people become connected to the life of a congregation.

The danger is what can happen over time. We can gradually begin to think that the purpose of reaching people is to fill the building. Once the building is full, our attention can shift from reaching people to managing the people we already have.

We have, in effect, filled the cooler.

And once the cooler is full, the next question becomes how to get a bigger cooler.

I don’t think most churches intentionally make that decision. It usually happens gradually. Ministry becomes more complicated as the church grows. There are more people to care for, more programs to organize, more volunteers to recruit, more finances to manage and more facilities to maintain. Before long, maintaining the church can consume most of our energy.

When that happens, the mission can become smaller than the ministry.

Growing the Church Is Not the Same as Reaching the Community

When we talk about growing a church, we tend to think in terms of numbers and capacity. We talk about attendance, baptisms, giving, volunteers, programs and buildings. We ask how we can make our worship services better, how we can attract more people and how we can encourage the people who already attend to invite their friends.

There is nothing inherently wrong with those questions. A healthy church should care about whether people are coming to faith, whether disciples are being formed and whether the congregation has the resources it needs to fulfil its calling. The problem comes when those measures become the goal rather than indicators of something larger.

Reaching a community starts somewhere else.

It begins by paying attention to the people who are not already part of the church. Who actually lives in our neighbourhood? What has changed since our church was established? What are people experiencing? Where are they finding community? What are they celebrating, and where are they struggling? What do they think about Christianity? What do they think about the church? What might keep them from ever walking through our doors?

Those questions require a different posture from church leaders. They require curiosity, listening and a willingness to see the community from the perspective of people who are not already sitting in our pews.

And eventually they lead us to a difficult question: What would we need to change if we really wanted to reach them?

That is where church revitalization becomes more than simply trying to get people back into the building.

The Mission Is Bigger Than the Church

Jesus did not tell his disciples to build the biggest church possible. He told them to make disciples, and then he sent them out into the world. The story of the early church is largely a story of people crossing boundaries, entering homes, building relationships, serving others and proclaiming the gospel in places where people had not yet heard it.

The church was never intended to exist simply for the people who were already inside it. The church exists for the sake of God’s mission in the world.

That changes the questions we ask.

If our primary concern is growing the church, our attention naturally turns toward making our existing ministry more effective. We may focus on improving our programs, strengthening our worship services, developing better communication or creating new opportunities for people to connect.

Those things can be valuable, but if our primary concern is reaching the community, we have to look beyond the effectiveness of what we are already doing. We have to ask whether the things we are doing are actually helping us connect with people who are not currently part of the church.

Sometimes the answer will be yes.

Sometimes it will be no.

The difficult part is being willing to discover which is which.

What If We Asked a Different Question?

One of the questions I often encourage church leaders to consider is this: Are we trying to grow our church, or are we trying to reach our community?

At first, those questions can sound almost identical, but they lead us in different directions. If we want to grow the church, we might ask how to make our existing ministry more effective. If we want to reach the community, we may have to rethink the ministry itself.

If we want to grow the church, we might focus on getting people through the front door. If we want to reach the community, we may need to understand why so many people don’t want to come through the front door in the first place.

If we want to grow the church, we may measure attendance, giving and participation. If we want to reach the community, we need to think about changed lives, meaningful relationships, opportunities to serve and the ways people are encountering Jesus.

Neither approach is necessarily opposed to the other. In a healthy church, growth and mission will often overlap. The issue is what happens when growth becomes the destination rather than a possible result of faithful mission.

That is an important distinction.

We Need to Listen to the People Who Aren’t There

One of the challenges of church leadership is that most of our conversations about ministry happen with people who are already part of the church. We ask our congregation what they think about a new idea, we ask our volunteers whether a change will work and we ask our leaders whether they are comfortable with the direction we are considering.

Those conversations are important, but there is another group of people whose voices are rarely included in the conversation: the people who aren’t there.

If we are serious about reaching our community, we have to become curious about those people. That means getting outside the church building, paying attention to what is happening in our neighbourhoods and building relationships with people who may not share our faith or have any particular interest in attending church.

Sometimes those relationships will reveal things that are difficult to hear.

We may discover that something we really value about our church is actually a barrier to someone we are trying to reach. We may discover that the language we use doesn’t make sense to people outside the church. We may discover that a program we have invested considerable time and money into is addressing a need that no longer exists while overlooking needs that are right in front of us.

None of this means that everything about our church needs to change. It does mean that we should be willing to examine what we are doing in light of the mission.

The Gospel Doesn’t Need to Change

I want to be careful here because there is an important distinction to make. When I talk about changing the way we do church, I am not suggesting that we change the gospel. The message of Jesus does not need to be reinvented to make it more appealing.

Our methods, however, may need to change.

Paul understood this principle. In 1 Corinthians 9:22, he writes, “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”

Paul was willing to adapt himself for the sake of the people he was trying to reach. He wasn’t changing the message; he was willing to change his approach.

That is a challenging principle for church leaders because we can become so comfortable with the way we do things that we begin to assume our methods are part of the message.

They aren’t.

Our traditions may be important to us, but they are not the gospel. Our preferred style of worship is not the gospel. Our building is not the gospel. Our schedule is not the gospel. Our programs are not the gospel.

Jesus is.

If some of the things we have become comfortable with are preventing us from connecting with people who need to hear about Jesus, perhaps we need to be willing to reconsider them.

So, What Is Your Cooler?

This is where I think the fishing story becomes useful. Every church has a cooler, although it may look different from church to church.

For one congregation, the cooler may be the size of the building. For another, it may be the number of volunteers available to serve. For another, it may be the budget, the capacity of the leadership team or simply the congregation’s comfort with change.

We reach people until we get to that point, and then we begin protecting what we have.

There is nothing wrong with recognizing our limitations. Churches need healthy boundaries. Leaders need rest. Volunteers need support. Buildings have capacity, and budgets have limits. But we should be careful that our limitations don’t quietly become our definition of the mission.

Sometimes the question isn’t whether we need a bigger cooler. Sometimes the question is whether we have become too focused on the cooler.

If the mission is to reach our community, then the goal isn’t simply to fill the building. The goal is to keep fishing.

This Is Where Church Revitalization Gets Interesting

I have come to believe that church revitalization is about much more than getting a declining church to grow again. If all we do is help a church increase its attendance, we may have accomplished something good, but we haven’t necessarily helped the church become more missional.

Revitalization is ultimately about helping a church rediscover why it exists and then reorganize its life around that purpose. Sometimes that will result in growth, and when it does, we should celebrate it. But growth itself cannot be the finish line.

The deeper question is whether the church is engaging its community, forming disciples, serving its neighbours and making Jesus known.

That is a different way of thinking about success, and it requires us to look beyond the numbers inside our building and pay attention to the people outside it.

Maybe We Don’t Need a Bigger Cooler

I don’t want to suggest that church growth doesn’t matter. It does. Every person matters. Every baptism matters. Every person who takes a step toward Jesus matters. When a church grows because people are encountering Christ and becoming disciples, we should celebrate what God is doing.

But I think we need to keep growth in its proper place.

Growth is a wonderful outcome, but it is not the mission.

The mission is bigger.

So perhaps the question for us as church leaders isn’t simply, “How can we grow our church?” Perhaps we should be asking, “How can we reach our community?”

Once we start asking that question, we may find ourselves asking some uncomfortable follow-up questions. Who are we not reaching? Why aren’t we reaching them? What would they tell us if we actually listened? What would we need to stop doing? What would we need to start doing? What would we need to change?

And perhaps most importantly, what are we willing to change for the sake of the people we have not yet reached?

Maybe we need a bigger cooler.

But maybe we don’t.

Maybe we simply need to remember why we went fishing in the first place.

Jesus didn’t call us to build bigger coolers. He called us to go fishing.