Winning Them And Keeping Them

I didn’t coin the phrase, something I’ve heard like, “you keep them the same way you get them,” speaking of church growth methods or how a person comes into a church. The thought is to motivate a church and its members not to “get” people into the church in ways that one would not be able to “keep” them, because “keeping them” is the point. My beef with the phrase is that it still sounds like pragmatism, that is, it’s still about getting them and keeping them. What scripture presents is that it matters how you get them, whether you keep them or not. The Bible indicates that you, you yourself personally, are not getting anyone. God is supposed to be getting them and then He gets the glory for it. Using carnal means for getting people is not God getting them, but “you” getting them, which isn’t God’s will, because He doesn’t get the glory from that. With this explanation, you can’t keep anything that you didn’t get in the first place. God keeps them because He got them and if it is He that gets them, then He really got them. Sure, you want your church to grow, because more worshipers of God will glorify Him. You care about people, so you want them to be in a Bible preaching and practicing church. That is love: love for God and love for others. It matters if a church is built up, grows in size, but not at any cost. It has to be in a way that still brings glory to God. God has also told us how He wants it to occur and that is through the gospel – alone.