Dr Paul Allen

English: Inside Hillsong Church, Sydney (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) There are millions of people in smaller congregations across the country who live with a feeling that they are failures because their church isn’t as big as the megaplex congregation down the street. This is sad and should not be the case. A global survey conducted by Christian Schwartz found that smaller churches consistently scored higher than large churches in seven out of eight qualitative characteristics of a healthy church. A more recent study of churches in America , conducted by Ed Stetzer and Life Way Ministries, revealed that churches of two hundred or less are four times more likely to plant a daughter church than churches of one thousand or more. The research seems to even indicate that the pattern continues—the smaller the size of the church the more fertile they are in planting churches . It pains me that so many churches and leaders suffer from an inferiority complex when in fact they could very

Jesus Wikipedia ) When it comes to discipleship , churchgoers struggle most with sharing Christ with non-Christians according to a recent study of church -going American Protestants. The study conducted by LifeWay Research found 80 percent of those who attend church one or more times a month, believe they have a personal responsibility to share their faith, but 61 percent have not told another person about how to become a Christian in the previous six months. These distressing results came from an extensive discipleship research project focused on measuringspiritual maturity in individuals. Overall, LifeWay Research found eight biblical attributes consistently evident in the lives of maturing believers. Of those eight, "Sharing Christ " has the lowest average score among Protestant church attendees. Three-quarters of churchgoers say they feel comfortable in their ability to effectively communicate thegospel, while 12 percent say they don't feel comfortabl