Number 5 seemed like an odd reason at first, but if you are not tracking your numbers, it is impossible to tell when you are in decline.  In thinking through the rest of the list, my opinion is that if a church is not warm and friendly, showing guests (and member alike) that they are appreciated, then why would anyone come back or stick around.  In my church, we strive for genuine warmth and appreciation for all who come in our church.  I like your list, I would simply change the list around:
5.  Ineffective Attendance Tracking
4.  Ineffective Assimilation/Discipleship
3.  Lack of Guest Follow-up
2.  Poor Worship Services and Preaching
1.  Lack of Hospitality
I think you can be wonderful, but if you don’t attempt to show people you care they will not be back.  If your worship services stink and people are not nourished, why come back?  If people come, but no one cares enough to contact them, why come back?  If you care enough to love on them and contact them, but fail to do anything with them (you have got to love people into the church before you can lose them), why stick around?  If you are oblivious to who is where, how do you know what is going on.

This is an interesting thing to think about… Something churches need to track and think about.  Thank you for the insight.

I think having an elephant in the room (unresolved conflict) directly affects growth.  We had to deal with this in our church when we first came.  There were several “elephants” that weren’t talked about or dealt with and the tension was always there and took awhile for us to figure out.

Once all the conflicts were dealt with the church began to see visitors stay.

So, I think if you’ve dealt with the list of 5 but still have undealt with conflict, then you can have the friendliest people, the greatest services, etc and still not grow.

That said, the five listed there are very important.

But people will put up with lousy worship and ho hum preaching if the people are warm and accepting and living out true community.  At least, I’ve seen that in the past.

Jermayn:

“How about lack of God (love, holy spirit, compassion etc) in the church? You can have the best business skills, track everything etc but no God, no growth....”

Sadly, things like doctrine, theology, and Christ are no longer requisites for church growth.  Consider how many of the churches that have heretical, watered-down, or just plain bad teaching and how they have evolved into being wildly successful.  You can definitely run a church like a business and see it grow, completely absent the presence of God.

--
CS

OK, I don’t believe I’m saying this out loud, but I think I agree with CS.  I don’t think God calls us to be successful (at least in the human definition) but He calls us to be faithful.  I honestly believe that we have let too much of the business world into the church.  As an upper manager in the business world, I also think we have too many fads going around rather than sound business practice.  I see so many of the same things in the church.  Last year we visited some family in DFW area and went to church with them.  From what I’ve seen of modern trendy churches, we could have been in DFW, NYC, LA or any of those other initial places.  I felt that the church we were in was following a business model.  I may be completely off-base and out of touch here, but I don’t think so. 

Now in case some of you are wanting to put me in the traditional church camp, I belong to a growing, reaching church in a smaller town.  I have been here since I was a teenager (30 yrs) and I have seen our church transition from a very traditiional church to a modern worship style church that is growing and adapting to reach our community for Christ.

What is effective in Lake Forest, CA or Anderson, SC may not be effective in Marshall, TX.  I applaud what these guys are doing for the kingdom.  My point is that our focus is not on numbers, but faithfulness.  I believe that if we are faithful we will see conversions.

Remember what Paul said to Timothy about false teachers, the whole itching ears thing?  If we are faithful to teach the true gospel we will see the blessings of God on our churches.  Many times these blessings come in ways we don’t expect or even recognize.  End of rant for now.

Well said Leonard

The biggie? How about todays generation being the problem? No newcomers means no growth. There is a disconnect.

btw soz about double posting but CS the mega churches that do not follow sound doctorine may have numbers, tv audiences etc but they will NOT stand the test of time according to God and that is all that matters....

Many times these blessings come in ways we don’t expect or even recognize