Well, THAT wasn't very clear, was it?

My blog post from yesterday contained this paragraph:

I know of a church in another denomination that has made a conscious decision to grow. One of their rules is that any event where at least 50% of those attending are from outside the church is cancelled or not repeated. This church has decided to be fruitful.

Let's try that again, shall we?

There is a large church in St. Catharines where I live (not a United Church) that has made a conscious, deliberate commitment to grow by reaching out to the community.

One of the ways they do this is by regularly holding events to which the community is invited -- Bible studies, BBQ's, community clean-up days, special worship services.

If it turns out that more than half of the people who attended were from the church (i.e., less than half were from outside the church), they don't repeat the event. Even if lots of people come, they have decided that the purpose is not to get a good turn-out of already-committed church people, but to connect with new people.

I'm not suggesting any other church should do this. I was simply offering an example of a congregation that has wrestled with the meaning of fruitfulness in their context and committed themselves to following through.

In my desire to be concise, I didn't explain it very well the first time.

But at least it shows that people are reading this blog!