Doubling a Class is Possible

If doubling our classes every two years or less is all that is needed to reach our generation with the gospel, our goal must be lofty, unattainable, and unrealistic.

Wrong.

It’s tempting to think that this goal is too big for us, that it is beyond our grasp. In fact, after reading the first chapter, that’s probably what you are thinking right now. It sounds like lofty idealism. But if I communicate well in this chapter, you will not think that much longer!

You can double your class in two years or less. I want to show you how.

The question is, how fast does a class have to grow in order to double in two years? We need some benchmarks along the way to evaluate our progress. The short answer is 40 percent annual growth. Let me explain.

Church-growth experts look at growth in a special way. They are fond of talking about percentage growth, specifically, about annual percentage growth. They call this the annual growth rate. It is computed by dividing the amount of growth by the original amount of attendance. For example, if a class is averaging ten and grows by four to produce a new average of fourteen, the formula works like this:

4 ÷ 10 = .4 or 40% growth

I used this example on purpose because this is exactly what the average class needs to do to double in two years. Doubling every two years works out to about a 40 percent annual growth rate. In my experience, the average class has about ten people present each Sunday. Some have more, some a little less, but the average is about ten. Let’s assume your class has about ten in attendance each week. In order to double in two years, you will need to average fourteen by the end of the first year. This means that each quarter during the first year you will need to pick up one person. One person per quarter! That is an attainable goal. But, as I pointed out earlier, if every class would do this, it would result in phenomenal growth. It would result in the fulfilling of the Great Commission. I believe the Father would be pleased by that.

What about the next year? Same thing: 40 percent growth. Only now you have fourteen people attending class, and 40 percent growth means adding one new person every two months instead of one every three months. This is growth so gradual you will need a micrometer to measure it.

Growing by one every other month the second year should be just as easy as increasing by one per quarter the first year. This is because you will have a bigger group to work with. A bigger group means more workers and more contacts with outsiders. Research has shown that the average person in a Sunday school class has five good contacts with outsiders. This means that when you grow from ten to fourteen you increase the number of contacts with outsiders by twenty. You also have four more people who can give Friday nights to Jesus (more on this later), plan fellowships, invite prospects, and so on.

I actually challenge groups to a slightly higher goal than this because most of us don’t get around to doing everything we would like to do. So I build in a fudge factor in my goals. Here is the goal with the fudge factor: You need to thoroughly assimilate one new couple or two new people every quarter. Assimilate two people per quarter—that’s all we need to do to reach America for Christ.