This was with a ministry called Crosswalk at Temple University in Philly in 2005-2006. We went from about 100 to 150 in the first month, and then stayed at 150 the remainder of the semester. It was my third year on staff there, and we had built up an amazing leadership team that was united and shared the vision. We had gifted, passionate, energetic people in the right places. For the first time, I had other staff sharing the load with me…a fantastic worship team…as the primary speaker, I was starting to figure out what I was doing, and as a leader, getting better at equipping/empowering others. A bunch of factors converging positively for us at the same time. I'd also say an important factor was that we were really the only functional evangelical campus ministry at the time.

But most of all, with that year I remember a higher level of expectation of God working. Great faith among our team. Lots of prayer. We saw some things that year that I've never seen before or since. It was intense stuff: healings, conversions, spiritual attacks from within and without, dealing with cults, almost a defection of a key leader. The highs were higher and the lows were lower at the same time. And I am NOT the charismatic poster boy!

I haven't seen anything like that year since–all of which to say, it's the notable exception. I won't expect it this year, and will be implementing some of the ideas mentioned here.

I had never thought about it in terms of resource allocation. As both you and Tim have said, you can't run that hard the whole year. But, if you are going to run hard, this is the time of year to do it.

I do want to see growth in numbers throughout the year because that means that spiritual multiplication is happening. Benson's post helped me see that spiritual multiplication could be happening and we still might not see the large group numbers approach the size of the first meeting.

Thanks.

Thanks for your thoughts. Putting numbers to it (however geeky) helped me see the kind of growth that would be necessary. I think now, while I still am working towards that level of growth, I am more okay if we don't reach those numbers again.

Also you make good points about what metrics we are measuring. It's easy to get caught up in the size of the big meeting and miss counting what really matters (number of new believers, number of new leaders year over year)

Thanks.