Pastors do not grow congregations.

This is hard to admit, but I’m a bit of a sucker for the one simple method for growing your church. I have books and e-books and other materials that suggest:

Growing your church through new mover mailings. We tried these for a while, paying to send postcards to new residents every month, until we discovered that our vendor’s new mover lists were not, in fact, lists of new movers.

Growing your church through Google ads. We have some Google ads running, since we also have Google for nonprofits. Google for nonprofits provides a substantial amount in free Google ads and those ads are pretty low maintenance. We could probably do more with them, but we have at least made a start.

Growing your church through Facebook ads. No, thank you. I’m fine using Google ads for free, but I’m not going to pay for Facebook to fail to serve my ads.

Growing your church through regular big events with special guests. Again, no, thank you. We’re in a town of 5,500 people and I have trouble getting our members to show up for things. We’re not going to spend a lot of money on a special guest without a guaranteed return on that investment.

And a bunch of other stuff, too. There are a ton of companies trying to sell systems, software, coaching, community, and more to pastors and other church leaders across the country. They advertise relentlessly, they claim high success rates, and they target leaders who are desperate to bring new people into their communities.

So let’s talk about church growth.

Here’s a simple truth: the best predictor of church growth is population growth.

That doesn’t mean that every church in an area that people are moving to will grow—there are plenty of other, more difficult to measure, factors at play—but, in general, growing churches are in areas where the overall population is growing. Churches that reach out to those new people and that are good fits for those new people will probably grow. Churches that don’t reach out to those people, or that aren’t good fits for those people, or that aren’t in places where the population is growing, probably won’t.

Here’s another simple truth: most of what you do to attract new members operates at the margins of that first simple truth.

Most of the church growth materials I see are focused on retaining visitors: making sure that all of those people—or, at least, as many of those people as possible—who visit a church once come back a second, third, and fourth time; meet the pastoral staff and get to know other members; join a small group or other ministry; and, after a while, join the congregation and become committed members. And all of that is important, but it is focused on keeping those people who have already stepped into the church coming back; and I would dare to venture that most small churches are not inundated with first-time visitors.

The rest of those materials tend to be focused on attracting those visitors: making sure that people who are looking for a church discover this particular church, can easily find out whether it might be a good match for them, and can easily make a commitment to connect with the church in some way. These are the systems that promote Google ads, Facebook ads, large events, sports leagues, and other tools that can help someone who is searching for something find this church and make that initial connection (after which, of course, the systems in the first group take over). Again, all of that is important, but it is focused on attracting people who are already searching for a church like this one to this specific church; and I would dare to venture that one of the biggest challenges for church growth is that surprisingly few people are looking for a church.

This, by the way, is true for most people who are searching for most things. Once most people establish a habit of being connected to a certain thing, they will continue to be connected to that thing until there is an obstacle to being connected to that thing. As easy example here is what we often call brand loyalty, but that is often nothing more than a well-ingrained habit of buying that brand. I grew up with cars and trucks from Toyota. As an adult, I’ve owned exclusively Toyotas (a Prius, a Yaris, and two Corollas). I can present reasons—maybe even good reasons—for those choices, but the truth is that those are the kinds of cars that I’m used to buying, driving, and maintaining; and I probably won’t change makers until something shakes me out of that habit.

And the same thing is true for countless products and billions of people. People tend to do the same things, buy the same brands, hang out with the same people, and so on, until something shakes them out of those habits: taking a new job, getting married, having kids, the various milestones that come with raising kids, retiring, and, of course, moving. People stay the same until they hit an inflection point.

So here’s the point of this section: all of the stuff in those church growth resources—from attracting visitors to making an initial connection to forming a relationship to making a commitment—only make a difference if people are in an inflection point where they start looking for a church. And most of the big inflection points that common knowledge tells us cause people to look for a church—moving to a new town, getting married, having kids, and so on—are largely connected to population growth.

That means that most of what you do to attract new members operates at the margins of that first simple truth. You will be more successful at retaining visitors if there are more visitors to retain, and you will have more visitors to retain if there are more people to invite to your church, and there will be more people to invite to your church if there are more people coming into your community. That doesn’t mean that those church growth systems aren’t useful or that you shouldn’t engage in best practices in everything from placing advertisement to following up with guests, but it does mean that those practices are more effective when there is more population growth and less effective when there is less—or negative—population growth.

Another simple truth, this one from Thom Rainer’s excellent book Anatomy of a Revived Church: there are no silver bullets in church growth (or, more broadly, in church revitalization).

Rainer writes about several silver bullets that people believe exists. One of the most important, thought, is the idea that the right pastor will be the silver bullet that revives the church and brings new families into the congregation. This is a frighteningly common belief that a lot of churches—especially struggling churches—seem to hold, and one of my greatest frustrations as a pastor is the number of times that someone has told me, “If you would just… visit people more, go to more community events, call on the families who used to come here, and so on… then the sanctuary would be full again.”

Here’s some of what Rainer writes:

But I’m going to take this even further: the pastor is not only not a silver bullet for church growth; the pastor is among the worst and most ineffective tools for church growth.

That might be putting it a bit strongly, but hear me out.

Churches cannot control population growth; the most that they can do is be present when people who are not connected to this congregation are at an inflection point where they might consider becoming connected to this congregation. And pastors have two major disadvantages in making these connections.

First, pastors are almost exclusively connected to the people who are already part of their congregations or the church more broadly. As a full-time pastor serving a single congregation, almost all of my large social networks are in the church: the people who I work with on a day-to-day basis are part of my congregation, the people who I serve as a pastor are part of my congregation, the people in my professional networks are part of the wider church, and so on. Even the friends who I have who are not part of my congregation tend to be members of other congregations (and it is good for my mental health to maintain friendships that are not also pastoral relationships).

Second, pastors are motivated evangelists. Once I introduce myself as the pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ, people know that I am going to speak highly of myself, that I am going to speak well of the congregation that I lead, that I have a personal interest in attracting more visitors and new members, and so on. Being a pastor and taking on the role of evangelist for a congregation is a lot like being a salesman: the very position—and the personal motivations that come along with it—make us less trustworthy to outsiders.

Here’s how Martha Grace Reese puts it in her book Unbinding the Gospel:

Here’s the thing, and the reason that I’m writing this post:

As a pastor, I carry a lot of weight on my shoulders that is related to the health—a poorly defined metric—of the church that I serve. When worship attendance plateaus, when programs and activities fizzle out, when there aren’t enough volunteers for leadership positions, when familiar faces slowly fade away, and so on, it hurts.

And when other people get anxious about those same things, they tend to look to me to solve them. Surely, as the pastor, I could call around and find out why old friends weren’t in worship last Sunday, be having Sunday dinner with a different family every week to keep them engaged, personally ask people to volunteer for every opportunity, check in with the folks who haven’t been involved in the life of the church since the late-noughties, and so on.

Surely, as the pastor, if I were doing my job, I would be the silver bullet that would bring new life to the church.

And that adds to the weight. Because, sometimes, I believe that, too.

But the simple truth is that the church is brought to life by the Spirit. While I can do my best to cultivate the Spirit among my people—and while I can engage in best practices around Google ads and website design and hospitality on Sunday mornings—it is up to the whole congregation to abide in it, to let is move among it, and to follow it wherever it may lead. And if I cannot cultivate the Spirit among my people in a way that will bring them to follow it, then I am not the right pastor for this congregation. Someone else might be able to do what they need; or it might be time for people to let go of this instance of the church and find something else.

That’s a hard thing to admit, but it’s true. As the pastor, I cannot grow the church, only the people in the pews—empowered by the Spirit—can do that.