Life Cycle Stages of Congregational Development

Like other organizations, local churches have a life cycle—a predictable pattern of birth, growth, and even decline.

In his excellent book, Pursuing the Full Kingdom Potential of Your Congregation, church growth expert George Bullard says that you can identify your church’s place in its life cycle by looking at four factors—vision, relationships, programs, and management.

Vision is the current understanding of God’s preferred future for a congregation that is cast by leadership and owned by membership. It’s the understanding of where we are going or what we are trying to become.

Relationships refers to our ability to connect with people and to include them in the life and ministry of the church in efforts like evangelism, outreach, assimilation, and discipleship.

Programs are the functional attempts to provide projects, ministries, services, activities, and training for people connected to the congregation. They are the things we do to try and fulfill ourvision.

Management refers to the systems and structures that work to undergird the fulfillment of vision, and the implementation of relationships and programs. It includes the administration of resources, day-to-day operations and overall efficiency. Like the bones in a skeleton, we need management to hold us up, but like your bones, your management shouldn’t be too visible. If it is, something’s probably not healthy.

Bullard says that these four familiar ideas work together to define your current place in the life cycle. For example, the first step in the life cycle is birth. At birth, there’s lots of vision, but nothing else. There are few relationships, because there are no people yet. And programs and management aren’t needed yet either.

At the Infancy stage, vision and relationships are now in focus. The vision has connected with people and they have come to be a part of our local church. Programs and management aren’t necessary quite yet.

Childhood is the stage where programs enter the picture. The church has grown to where specialized ministries are now needed. These programs begin to separate the church into smaller groups so relationships diminish a bit, but vision remains strong and is the reason why we want to keep moving forward.

At Adolescence, relationships are strong again as the new programs have brought the opportunity to connect more deeply with others. At this stage, vision, relationships, and programs are all working together. Extensive management isn’t needed yet, but that day is just around the corner.

That day is here at the Adulthood stage. Here’s where we are finally a “grown-up” church.We now have the resources to do things we couldn’t do before. Our relationships are strong, our programs are  working  effectively, and we’ve begun to implement management structures to keep things running smoothly. It’s an exciting day as we see the original vision being fulfilled.

But, something’s ahead. From the diagram, can you see what’s coming? That’s right—a plateau, followed by decline. How can that be? Why when we are at our strongest can such a diminishing future be ahead?

It’s quite simple, really. Not long after we enter the Adult stage, we begin to lose vision. We become comfortable with the success of our church and we lose sight of the next hill to climb. People resist any real change because, well, things are going so well. “It’s not broke, Pastor,” they say. “Let’s just enjoy where we are.”

And that loss of vision brings a plateau that most of us don’t even realize is happening.

The first stage after the plateau is called Maturity. Here, relationships, programs, and management are all strong, but vision is lost. We’ve grown comfortable and start deciding that if more people want to come to our church, well, they’ll find us or they’ll connect with one of our current programs.

Lost vision is a primary cause for a local church’s plateaued growth or decline. Without vision, we ultimately stop moving forward, and the beginnings of our end are underway.

Once vision is lost, we begin to lose effectiveness in some of our programs. Maybe the people who have helped them be most effective have moved away or moved on to a place with fresh vision. We replace them, but without strong vision, our new leaders aren’t quite as effective and the programs begin to become an end in themselves. This stage is called the Empty Nest stage.

Then we begin to lose relationships. We settle into fewer programs, cutting back to the ones we can do well, but participation is declining. Here, at the Retirement phase, we are doing less because we lack the people or the energy we once had.

At the Old Age stage, nothing is as strong as it used to be. In fact, all we have left is management—the rules we operate by. Vision, relationships, programs have all diminished significantly. We keep meeting together because it’s what we do and as long as the offerings pay the bills, we can drift here for a while.

But Death is not far off. Declining congregations can’t go on forever.

So, where is your congregation in its current life cycle? Go back and look at the assessment we did a few minutes ago. You circled a total of ten statements on that page, two from each row. Now look at the five columns that divide the page vertically. Count the number of items you circled in each column and write the number at the bottom of the page.

Now this assessment is simple, but it can help you see where you believe your church is in its current life cycle. If you circled more items in Columns 1 or 2, you see your church somewhere on the ascending side of the life cycle – between Birth and Adolescence.

If you circled more items in Column 3, you see your church near the peak of its current life cycle – likely between Adulthood and Maturity.

If you circled more items in Columns 4 or 5, you are describing a church that is on the descending side of the current life cycle – somewhere between Empty Nest and Death.