I think one of the greatest lessons I learned while planting a church in Iowa was that you do NOT want everyone who comes through the doors. That might not be popular for a pastor to say but it is a valuable lesson.
When I planted our church in Iowa I wanted everyone who came through the doors to stay. As a result I tried to make our church a church that offered whatever you wanted. If you were a homeschooler, we had stuff for you. If you wanted Sunday school, we had that for you. If you wanted something we didn’t have, I was willing to start what you wanted to keep you. I ended up miserable and the church never grew beyond 150 people because we didn’t have laser focus.
BEFORE starting The Stone I determined through many hours of prayer and studying other churches the type of church Ridge Stone would be. Not that we are the only way to do church but I decided before we ever added ONE family what our vision would be and I decided before starting that I would close her down if we lost focus of that vision.
That has proven very valuable since starting. There have been many times I have been faced with changing the vision in order to keep people and to be honest I never even had to pray about it because before we started I knew we weren’t the church for everyone.
I honestly think this is one of the BIGGEST differences between a church that grows and one that doesn’t.
If you try and keep everyone you will stop your church from growing and lead yourself to an early grave.
Case in point: We recently had a family visit our church. I am convinced 99% of the church planters I know would have killed each other to have this family. They were very nice people, came from a large mega-church, brought a lot of ministry skill (just ask them 
), gave financially, and had all their teeth.
We met with them as a staff and I knew literally within 2 minutes that we were the wrong church for them. They shared how long they had lived in the area and the number of churches they had “tried out,” they shared how they thought we should be doing church, they begin to ask more questions about policies then the vision, and then they informed me that in order to grow our vision would have to change from reaching unchurched people. I checked out about 5 minutes into the meeting but I kept quiet to see how our staff would respond. Needless to say our team got that while on paper this couple looked good, they were NOT a fit for us.
I loved that while our entire staff is consumed with reaching our community and growing that they all understood that as much as we want people, we didn’t want this family.
I honestly feel that their understanding of that is one of the reasons we have grown. Jim Collins talks in Good to Great about getting the right people on the bus. In growing a church this is also a huge key. You have to get the right people on the bus because if you fill the bus with the wrong people no matter how good they are, no matter their experience, no matter how much they give, you will never build a church.
Don’t be afraid to let people go. Every healthy body needs a good bowel movement on a regular basis.
I have learned who you let go is just as important as who you reach.