Our church board is SOOOOO cool! I just love these guys! I love the fact that our church is committed to our mission of bringing people to Jesus and building them up in that relationship!

Here’s an e-mail that I just received from one of our board members (Charlie Canon)…

Paul, Thanks for keeping us stimulate and thinking about important issues.  As you know I agree very much with the idea that Perry Noble has that numbers matter because counting is a way of tracking people and each person has a soul.   I found interesting his comment on the fact that the population in the US is growing but church attendance is declining. Here are some number to consider in that light. Northgate FMC has grown approximately 300% from around 225 to near 700 since 2000.

Population growth rates for the same time period for our primary constituency area:

Genesee
County – 0.6

Orleans
County -1.2

Wyoming
County -1.1

Erie
County - 0.9

Monroe
County +.02

Conclusion – Growth that we have had in recent years and anticipated growth will not come from population increase in our area. Now some thoughts from some data from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, I was stimulated to the research by your comment on Wednesday that there is a new church joining the mega-church club (over 2000 in attendance each week). You may have been conservative; the data that I found would indicate that the number of mega-churches has doubled from around 600 to 1200 since the start of 2000.  The average mega-church has attendance around 3400.  Also interesting to me was the fact that only 7% of the 1200+ mega-churches in the USA are found in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states and of those only 4 are found in New York State in the 53 upstate counties that are not in the NYC metro area.  All four of those mega-churches are below average in size ranging in size from 2300 to 3000.   Possible conclusions:

1)       The mega-church phenomenon has not hit our area. Could there be a relationship to population growth, stagnation, or decline?  Is there some other demographic factor at work?

2)       It is time to see a change and Northgate FMC can lead the way. To go over 2000 at NFMC would take a 300% growth from our current level of near 700.   These are some random thoughts for our consideration. Charley

One of my favorite bloggers, Tony Morgan, has posted a few blogs on what kind of music we should have in the church.

In his latest post he asks, “Should Christ-followers use music to “speak a bit of life” into those that are unchurched? And, is it acceptable to use that type of music in church services?”

What do you think?

In case you’re wondering… I agree with Tony.

I am excited! We have hired Anthony Hoisington to lead our new ministry to 18-30 year olds! He will also be leading worship at our 6 p.m. Saturday service and our 11 a.m. Sunday service!

Anthony’s latest release is called Relevant Worship. This project, the combination of two bands (Adelaide and Elektromat), is a local phenomenon! These guys write all of their own stuff and it is great!

I can’t wait to do ministry with this guy!

We’ve got some really cool stuff happening @ our south campus! Check it out here

2 weeks ago we presented a challenge to our church to “Take the nine week tithing challenge.” There were three stipulations:

Tithe (i.e. give 10% to God) at every pay period for the next nine weeks(end Dec. 31)

Carefully manage the other 90% (if you lose at Vegas the bets off!)

Watch for God to do something “Uniquely God”

If you don’t see God do something that can only be attributed to Him then we’ll give your money back!

Here’s the cool thing… so far 53 people have taken the challenge and an additional 10 have committed to increasing their giving to above 10%!

I can’t wait to see how God works in their lives and in our church!