In 2008 I became lead pastor of a church of 25 people in Bridgeport, Connecticut, one of the most economically distressed cities in New England. No staff. No building of our own. No clear plan.
Eighteen years later, City Wide Church runs 900+ in weekly attendance, plants churches, and sends people into the harvest across the region.
People ask me what we did. The honest answer is: we made five decisions. Not five programs. Not five campaigns. Decisions about how we would think, build, and lead. Everything else followed.
Here they are.
Decision 1: We Would Build a Church for the Lost, Not the Already-Churched
Most small churches, even great ones, are unconsciously designed around the people who already attend. The music, the language, the announcements, the culture. It all assumes familiarity. Newcomers feel it immediately.
Early on, we made a decision: we would build everything with the unchurched in mind. Not compromise theology. Not soften the gospel. But ask, constantly, "Would someone who has never been to church feel welcomed, understood, and confronted with truth here?"
This decision changed our music, our communication style, our children's environment, our entry points. It created the culture that makes outsiders feel like they belong before they believe.
If your church is not growing, ask this honestly: is your church designed to grow, or designed to maintain?
Decision 2: We Would Treat Discipleship as Infrastructure, Not Programming
We used to run programs. Bible studies, small groups, membership classes. People completed them. Few were transformed.
The shift came when I stopped asking "What classes do we offer?" and started asking "What path do we have?" A discipleship pathway is not a menu. It is a road. Every person who walks through your door should be able to follow a clear, sequential journey from curious to committed to sent.
We built ours around four stages: Exploring (Is this real?), Belonging (I'm part of this), Growing (I'm being shaped), and Sending (I'm on mission). Every ministry, every class, every small group maps to one of those stages.
When we built the infrastructure, the growth followed. Because the growth had somewhere to go.
Decision 3: We Would Invest in Leaders Before We Needed Them
Every church plateau I have ever seen comes down to leadership capacity. The church grows to the lid of its leadership team, then stalls.
We learned early to develop leaders before we needed them. Not to find someone to fill a slot, but to identify people with potential and invest in them before there was a role waiting.
We built a simple pipeline: identify, invest, release. Identify people who are faithful, available, and teachable. Invest in them through relationship and training. Release them into real responsibility before they feel fully ready.
The church you want in five years will need leaders you are not yet developing. Start now.
Decision 4: We Would Take the Mission of the City Seriously
Bridgeport is hard. High poverty. High violence. Low trust in institutions, including the church.
We could have built a church that served its members well and left the city alone. Many churches do. But we made a decision early that City Wide Church would take its name seriously. We would be a church for the city, not just in it.
That meant planting roots in the community: recovery programs, food distribution, community events, school partnerships. Not as a marketing strategy. As a conviction. The church that does not serve its city will eventually lose its witness in it.
The harvest is in the field. You have to go to the field.
Decision 5: We Would Build on Prayer, Not Just Talent
I have seen gifted pastors with failing churches and ordinary pastors with thriving ones. The difference, more often than not, is the culture of prayer beneath the ministry.
We decided early that City Wide Church would be a praying church before it was a programming church. We built corporate prayer into the DNA of the congregation, not as a special event, but as a regular practice. Early morning prayer. Fasting seasons. Prayer teams that cover every major decision.
Every significant growth season in our church's history has been preceded by a sustained season of prayer. I stopped calling that coincidence a long time ago.
If your church needs a breakthrough, it probably does not need a new program. It needs a fresh encounter with God in the secret place.
These five decisions were not easy. Each one required choosing the harder path over the easier one. But they built something that has lasted.
If you are a pastor in a small church wondering whether it can grow, I want you to know it can. Not through a formula, but through faithful, strategic, Spirit-led leadership applied over time.
If you want to talk through how any of this applies to your specific church, the consulting page is the place to start. And if you want a practical tool to help you build a discipleship pathway, download the free template here.
The harvest is real. Keep building.
Two posts go deeper on specific decisions from this list. Decision 2 has its own full breakdown: Building a Discipleship Pathway That Actually Works. And if your church is in a multicultural or bilingual context, What a Bilingual Church Actually Requires covers the layer underneath the strategy that most pastors miss.