A local Adventist church near Washington, D.C. is ranked as one of the healthiest congregations in America, according to Natural Church Development (NCD), a church growth organization that has built a network of partners in 70 countries and has done research on hundreds of churches. Since 2001, New Hope Seventh-day Adventist Church has seen a 40 percent increase of membership, and an attendance record increase of 44 percent—something many churches only dream of doing.

“Most churches in America take their total membership and discover only 50 percent of their membership is reflected in their attendance. New Hope is experiencing that more people are attending than we actually have members,” says Rajkumar Dixit, associate pastor there.

What is making this church experience what is being called “phenomenal growth?” What does it have that other churches don’t?

Dave Gemmell’s job is to identify rapidly growing Seventh-day Adventist churches in North America, find out why they are growing, and then share that knowledge with those churches that aren’t as healthy.

He says there are several keys to a successful church. A study he believes is very accurate is done by NCD, which has studied “almost every denomination, every church size, every continent, and discovered there’s eight characteristics in churches [that are] growing,” Gemmell says. 

They are: empowering leadership, functional structures, gift-oriented ministry, holistic small groups, inspiring worship, loving relationships, need-oriented evangelism, and passionate spirituality.

While these can be abstract, Gemmell can pinpoint at least one specific: “If a congregation doesn’t want to grow, it won’t.”

Relevancy is another very important aspect, says Michael Knect, a pastor at Crosswalk Ministries in Redlands, California. “What are people listening to, what are people watching?” he asks.

Every Sabbath Crosswalk, which in the past six years has grown from 200 to 1,500 members, assumes there are people in church who are not familiar with Adventist teachings, and some who are not even Christians. Some are atheist or agnostic. “Once you live with the expectation that there’s non-church people there, it changes everything—how people are approached at the door, the content of the sermons,” Knect explains.

“We plan services to be relevant to where people are in life,” he adds. “If a person walks into church and is transported 30 years back, it’s hard to connect. ...Our thing is you make [it] relevant for people to come.”

They also “get rid of insider language,” he says. “The moment you use insider language, there’s a wall. Adventists are the worst at this. We have the biggest lingo there is.”

While most churches that are successful are doing a “huge variety of things,” one of the keys is “just total integration in the community,” Gemmell says.

What does this mean? “In Adventist circles we’re discovering that churches that are doing well as far as worship, have a worship experience that is congruent with the culture they’re trying to reach,” he says.

For the Kelso-Longview Adventist Church in Washington state, one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, a country-western service meets the cultural needs in their region. “Traditions can be good, but I think they can also be anchors,” says Dave Livermore, pastor at Kelso-Longview.

“African-American churches that are growing are using music from an urban setting,” says Gemmell.

Being a relevant church could also mean providing programming that help people deal with everyday problems. Miracle Temple Adventist Church in Baltimore, Maryland has a once-a-month program called Perspektivz. It features an “eclectic environment,” attracting young adults, both Christian and non-Christian. It’s held once a month and is packed every time, says Frederick Russell, pastor at Miracle Temple. “It has become the main outreach for the church. About 50 percent [in attendance] are not church members,” he says.

“It works,” Gemmell explains. “People come there to connect with other young adults because they have their challenges.” And, he adds, “The solution is Jesus Christ.”

Russell says they have a clear focus in making the church a house of prayer. “We have taken very seriously what God says about it being a house of prayer. That makes the environment ripe for growth in itself.”

Delivery of the service is also important. They make sure “everything we do is really powerfully done,” Russell says. “That made it easy for members to feel comfortable bringing people to church. ...Every single Sabbath morning, with the exception of two or three, we have people coming to the Lord.”

Russell explains that, while Miracle Temple is growing, there was a time when it was attracting people that weren’t very committed to the mission of the church. Now they make it mandatory that all members be involved in some type of ministry. “We tell them before they transfer, ‘this is what we’re all about,’” he says. “You don’t just observe. You’ve gotta give back. That’s the only way to grow.” There are many ministry options in the area, and members receive this requirement very well, he says.

It’s not “church lite,” as Pastor Jay Perry of Cornerstone Adventist Church in Wichita, Kansas says of his church. This term, he explains, describes a type of church that doesn’t preach doctrine, doesn’t ask for commitment, and people are just spectators there to be entertained. “If you run church lite, you’re not growing,” Perry says.

Some churches that are growing feature a more contemporary style; Cornerstone doesn’t. “We don’t show video clips at sermon time. We don’t even have guitars and drums. The pastor always wears a suit and tie. We preach Adventist doctrines,” Perry says, noting that he’s not against variety in worship styles, but that this particular church has seen success while maintaining a traditional service.

Cornerstone also stresses commitment, and has more than 80 percent of their attendees involved in some form of ministry or outreach. “Everything we do is meant to get people to show up to church on Sabbath morning,” Perry says.

They have what are called “free market cells,” which in their church they call “next steps groups.” These groups may be started by anyone with a passion for something, such as bicycling or reading, for example, and they only last for a “semester,” or a few months. The leaders invite their friends, relatives, neighbors and colleagues. The pastors “train” the group leaders, but if the group succeeds, “it’s because of them,” Perry explains.

Another advantage to this method, Perry says, is that they can identify leaders by how the groups are run. They can “see who is able to get a group of people together and do something.”

Gemmell says that leaders at New Hope tell people, “This is not a church designed for you. It’s a church designed for you to get involved in ministry and share the good news to unchurched people. That’s where you have the greatest joy,” he says.

These churches are growing, but what are the challenges that come with that growth? Gemmell says that New Hope is seeing a lot of transfer growth; in other words, people are switching their membership from other Adventist churches to New Hope. This is not “kingdom growth,” Gemmell says. “We’re growing at the expense of other churches that aren’t growing.”

“There are dangers in growing too slowly,” Perry says. “It is very easy to get stuck at the small church phase. ...Large Adventist churches are still structured like small churches, and don’t know how to be large. They are not large because they grew large, they are large because they are associated with an institution. They aren’t structured or staffed for continued growth.”

“I believe that God will not bring more visitors to a church until we are faithful with the visitors He has already entrusted to us,” says Perry.

Church must be a safe place, Livermore adds, “where kids could walk in and wouldn’t be judged if they weren’t at the level we might be. ...If there’s one thing taking place here [at Kelso-Longview], it is mission-consciousness—why are we here?

“Sometimes I think He’s [God] waiting for us to bring in a frame of mind to accept these people and not hurt them when they come in. To be the church He wants us to be,” says Livermore.

Gemmell says that while his studies in church growth are specific to the United States, there are similarities worldwide. Some areas of the developing world are “rapidly succumbing to the influences of the first world. What is working now in the third world will fade. However, if we can figure church growth out in the first world, the knowledge will future shock-proof the third world,” he says.