(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Hey everyone, it's Pastor Bruce Mejia here from First Works Baptist Church in El Monte, California. I want to make a video regarding the topic of how church membership is built. I've been saved for about 14 years and in those 14 years I've had the privilege to be a part of two church plants and with that I've observed how churches, you know, build their membership. How do they get people to come to their church? How the attendance can increase and I want to explain that to you in this video. Now, this is not an exhaustive list nor is it very detailed. I'm just gonna give you four factors that I think are very essential in every church plant, okay, in every church. And this is something that is not only unique to the new IFB but even the old IFB because, you know, I've been a part of a church plant that was planted by a new IFB pastor but I've also been a part of a church plant that was planted by an old IFB pastor and what I'm going to share with you is true all across the board for both groups. Okay, how church membership is built. Now, number one is through soul winning. Okay. Now, what is soul winning? Well, soul winning is when the church actively goes out on a weekly basis door-to-door to preach the gospel and get people saved. Now, how does that work? Well, when you get someone saved you invite them to church, you know, you invite them to church they come, they get baptized and sometimes they assimilate well, you're able to disciple them and help them to assimilate to the church and that happens. Sometimes it doesn't but sometimes it does. And if you have a church that is actively going out and preaching the gospel what's gonna happen is you're gonna have visitors from your church that live in the surrounding area in the surrounding cities because you're getting the word out. Now, sometimes you knock on doors and no one answers and you just leave an invite and just due to the fact that you know you have the law of numbers, people are gonna come to your church because they hear about it through an invite, through the internet, whatever it may be. And so that is a way that church membership is built. Now, I do give this disclaimer that you know the purpose of soul winning is not to increase your attendance, it's just the natural byproduct of soul winning is that people start coming to your church. Okay, so that's one way is through soul winning. But it's not the only way, okay. To say that your church is only built by soul winning is is unrealistic and untrue and I'm gonna explain to you why in just a bit. The second way that church membership is built is through people who just don't have a church. Okay, sometimes you'll go out there and you'll go out there to preach the gospel but you run into people who just don't have a church and they're ready to get back into church. God's been working on their heart. They're going through a difficult time in their lives and their heart is open and they're ready to come back to church and we capitalize on that by giving them an invite, you know, giving them some preaching, they get into church, they get right with God and you know the rest is history. And so some people just don't have a church to go to they move out from out of state and they come to your church. Okay, and for example in our situation our church started about a little over two years ago pastor Anderson from Faith War Baptist Church of Tempe, Arizona you know started this church here. I was ordained as the evangelist and you know, we had a group of people here that got saved through pastor Anderson and they didn't have a church to go to. Well now they do and you know, a lot of people will criticize that and they'll say well, you know you have a bunch of people who listen to pastor Anderson in your church but these are the same people who would not have those people come to their church. So, you know, they don't want these people to go to their church but they also don't want them to come to our church, you know, you can't really win with them. And so, you know, the fact is is that people come to church who are looking for a church and you know, there's people in our church who listen to pastor Anderson. They listen to other people who are in our movement but now they have a church to go to here in Los Angeles and that's why they're here and not just not just that there's people who got saved years ago and you know they came to our church because they didn't have a church to go to and now they're here and they weren't necessarily a part of the movement, you know, this is a way that a church membership is built. Okay, so it's through soloing It's through people who just don't have a church But the third way is a very common way as well and that's through family and friends You know when I first got saved the first people that I invited to church were my family and friends They came they got some of them got saved some of them did it some of them stuck around some of them didn't some of them assimilated some of them did it and That's the same all across the board for a lot of people, you know We have tons of people in our church who got saved and they invited their moms They invited their sisters and brothers Some of them got saved some of them didn't some of them stuck around some of them have it, you know And that's very common. Even when I was at my old church There's tons of people who you know, they got saved at that church, but then they invited their family and friends You know, in fact last year and here at our church We had something called the fall program and tons of people in our church were inviting their family members every single week You know, some of them got saved some of them got assimilated some of them didn't and so that's a way that a church membership Is built that's one of the ways through soloing through people who just don't have a church through inviting family and friends But the last way is through church transfers. And yes, you heard right church transfers now, what is a church transfer? Well a church transfer is when a person goes consistently to another church and For whatever reason they decide to leave that church and go to another one I know that's profound but that's what a church transfer is and it's for a variety of reasons, you know sometimes the head of the household You know has a job transfer in a different city or in a different state and you know They want to continue to go to church. They look up your church They find it they go there and they transfer their membership that happens all the time You know people who are in the military people who get a job transfer, you know, this happens all the time Sometimes it's because people just want to move on, you know, they feel like they're dying at their church spiritually speaking Maybe there's a personality conflict with the pastor or with the members there and the head of the household feels like well You know, we can't be here anymore We need to go somewhere else to you know, we need to go to a different church where we can raise our children you know in the ways that we would want them to be raised and Therefore we're transferring membership and this is okay folks, you know when people transfer churches it's not the the unpardonable sin and the reason I say that is because a lot of pastors out there try to Force membership upon their members and you know put them through a guilt trip For visiting or going to other churches and this is wrong. This is cultish. Okay Every person has the liberty to either stay at their church or just go somewhere else, you know, no pastor Myself included has the right to force the members to stay there no matter what be loyal to me be faithful unto death You can't go anywhere else. You're not right with God No, you know, that's that's a cult like mentality Every person has the right to go wherever they want as long as their authority approves You know if they're if their parents approve or you know what if they are the authority if they're the husband of the household you know, they have the right to go wherever they want and No pastor has the right to restrict them and say well you can't go anywhere else But here and you're not right with God if you go over there. This is a cult like mentality. Okay? So sometimes people leave because they just move on they're not growing spiritually where they're at and they decide to leave that Congregation to come to a different or to go to a different church to come to our church or somewhere else Sometimes it's for doctrinal reasons, you know people are under a pastor that it's preaching a hardcore repent of your sins They're not saved, you know, and they're like we don't want to deal with this We need to go to a different church where our pastor is actually saved. Okay? So this is church transfers And the reason I'm saying this is because I've been accused of having you know Oh, you know that church is built off of church transfers. Well, guess what? So is yours. In fact every single church Has church transfers in their church every single one of them Okay Every single congregation and I'm talking in particular, you know independent fundamental Baptist churches all have church transfers Especially if it's a independent fundamental Baptist Church with a Bible College, you know You think of Golden State Baptist College West Coast Baptist College you think of you know, how's Anderson College? These are the big colleges in the old IFB There they have tons of church transfers. They have students that come from different churches to come to their Bible College They stay there for four years and sometimes they even they get married and they stay at that church They transfer their membership to that church So it's hypocritical to say well your church is built off of other church people's church members So is yours, you know You know, my church is built off of all four of these It's built off of soul-winning people who just get saved, you know out here in the city of Omani It's built off of people who didn't have a church to go to It's built off of people from our church inviting their family and friends and it's built off of church transfers And you know what? I encourage other people who go to some lame watered-down Lukewarm dying church to come to our church. Why not? You know I encourage anybody who goes to some church where they just feel like they're dying Spiritually to come to our church And in fact, I encourage them to go to a church even if it's not ours where they feel like they can grow some You know, so it's ridiculous to say that all your churches build off of church transfers every churches Okay, you know, these are the four factors essential factors That are needed to build the church. Okay Now the same people will say well these people actively recruit, you know They'll say that I actively recruit people to my church from their church And what they mean by actively recruiting is that I preach sermons and I upload them That's it. You know, this is ridiculous. This is stupid. This is foolishness So this is how we build our church membership here, you know through these four elements Three of them we actively do you know, we go out so many We invite people to church who don't have a church and we encourage our church members to invite their family and friends He said what about that fourth one the fourth one just happens naturally, okay? whether we like it or not because here's the thing when you're out soul winning you're out inviting people to church who probably go to a different church and So even if you're like well We only want to build our church off of so winning the natural bite if you really do so winning consistently You're gonna talk to people who already have a church and you know what if your church looks better than the church They go to they're gonna come to that church So I just want to make that video just to show you what we do to build our church membership You know, it's through these four elements But the reality is only three of them are the ones that we actually actively do The fourth one is just naturally done because it's just the way of churches whether 50 years ago or today in 2020 there will always be church transfers That's pretty much it. Watch my sermon that I preached last night if you want to get the inside scoop, right? God bless and have a great one