Community UMC Naperville - Church Growth Task Force

Church Growth Task Force

From November 2007 to May 2008 our church had an active Task Force on Church Growth. On May 14, 2008, our Administrative Board unanimously approved all Task Force recommendations. A substantial amount of high quality work was involved, including the following:

Face-to-face interview with our bishop.
Face-to-face 5-hour interview with Lyle Schaller.
A face-to-face 1.5-hour interview with each of 3 senior pastors of neighborhood prospering churches, using discussion points that were determined ahead of time.
Much on-line research.
References.
Two CUMC surveys and one CUMC consultant report.

Summaries of this work in PDF format are available through the links at left. A brief description of each file is provided in the Overview of Documents, and Other Web Sites has useful church growth sites.

Al Brunsting
abrunsting@comcast.net
(630)357-7058

Overview of Documents

The reports are in PDF files, requiring the (free) Adobe Reader to view. You may either click on the link to view the document directly (it will open in a separate window or tab), or right-click on the link to save it on your hard drive.

Report to Administrative Board (110 KB) is the task force's final report accepted at the May 14, 2008 Administrative Board.

Average Worship Attendance (137 KB) tracks CUMC's average weekly worship attendance. This file has been updated with data through June 2010.

44 Ways to Increase Attendance (74 KB) is based on interviews with CUMC member Lyle Schaller.

Church Growth Handbook (242 KB) summarizes "The Church Growth Handbook" by William M. Easum (1990).

Problem Definition (177 KB) is one of the committee's working documents defining their goals.

Other Web Sites

The Task Force conducted on-line research and recommends the following sites. (Please note that the content of the sites may have changed since the May 2008 report.)

General Church Growth Sites

Congregations