Friendships: The secret sauce to church growth

Relationships are the glue that holds a church together. In fact, you can’t overemphasize the importance of helping people build relationships within your church. Friendships are the key to retaining members.

A friend once told me of a survey he conducted in a church. The survey asked, “Why did you join this church?” And 93 percent of the members responded, “I joined because of the pastor.”

He then asked, “What if the pastor leaves? Will you leave?” 93 percent said, “No.”  When he asked why they wouldn’t leave, the response was, “Because I have friends here!”

Do you notice the shift in allegiance? This is normal and healthy.

Extensive research has shown that, the more friendships a person has in a congregation, the less likely they are to become inactive or leave. In contrast, I once read about a survey that asked 400 church dropouts why they had left their churches. More than 75 percent of the respondents said, “I didn’t feel anyone cared whether I was there or not.”

It is a myth that you have to know everyone in a church in order to feel like you’re part of it. The average church member knows 67 people in their congregation, whether the church has 200 or 2,000 attending. A member does not have to know everyone in the church to feel like it’s “my church,” but they have to know some people!

While some relationships will spontaneously develop, the friendship factor is too crucial to leave to chance. You can’t just hope members will make friends in the church. You must encourage it, plan for it, structure for it, and facilitate it.
 
Create as many opportunities as you can for people to meet and get to know each other. Since so many church meetings are simply lectures (“Sit still while I instill!”), members can walk in and out of church for a year and still never really develop any friendships. Small groups are an important element in developing relationships within your church family but they’re not the only way you build relationships. 

Here are some other ways to you can encourage friendships to develop within your church:

Try to include some kind of relational activity in every congregational meeting. It may be as simple as saying, “Turn around and introduce yourself to one person and find out something interesting about them.”

Use name tags as often as you can. Most people have a hard time remembering names, especially in a larger church—and nothing is more embarrassing than not knowing the name of someone you’ve seen at church for years.

Plan events. At Saddleback, we used all kinds of events to build relationships within our church family (supper clubs, sports, game nights, picnics, etc.). By far the most effective tool for cultivating new friendships was our use of weekend retreats. The amount of time members spend together during a single 48-hour retreat is more than what they typically spend together on Sundays throughout an entire year.

What’s keeping relationships from flourishing in your church? 

Is your church just too busy? Have cliques developed throughout the years? Or have relationships simply not been a priority?

Commit today to break down those barriers. 

Healthy churches grow, in part at least, because healthy relationships grow.

Don’t let anyone in your congregation walk alone. Your intentional efforts in relationship-building today could lead to the spontaneous, healthy growth that God desires for your church tomorrow.

It begins with relationships—so make them a priority.

This article was adapted from Chapter 17 of The Purpose Driven Church.