How a Denomination Helped Its Churches to Break the 200 Barrier

An interview with Phil Chorlian of the Vineyard Churches.

Ed: Why did you decide to organize a group of pastors to work through Breaking the 200 Barrier in their churches?

Phil: The Vineyard has about 600 churches in the U.S. and 75 percent of them are under 200. One of the things that we’ve noticed through the years is that Breaking the 200 Barrier releases a lot of fruit.

Conversions go up, baptisms increase, first time guests, stewardship, leadership, small groups, all of the key indicators of a thriving, missional church kick into overdrive once a church breaks the 200 barrier.

So we thought, “What if we sowed into churches that were between 100-200 attenders and see if we could help some of them break through this barrier?” We did a launch meeting in Phoenix where we invited all the Vineyard churches that were between 100-200 to this 2-day event.

The conference was free, but they had to pay for travel and lodging. Given how pricey that can be, I was very pleased by the response. Some senior pastors came alone, but many came with some key leaders or even a team.

We had about 170 pastors and leaders from about 70 different churches travel to Phoenix. I think there’s something that happens when you get people together in a room who are after the same thing.

Plus, since we’re the Vineyard, we like to have the opportunity to engage in prayer ministry with folks so it’s not just about receiving more information, but hopefully about having something spiritually imparted.

We gave people options concerning the level of engagement they could choose. If they just wanted to come to a “Breaking the 200 Barrier” 2-day conference and have that be the end of it, they could just attend. For those who wanted more, they could purchase your “Breaking …

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