Heritage Church is in a very precarious place within its lifecycle. Heritage is faced with the decision of whether to move forward, and grow, or to stay comfortable. Senior Pastor, Shawn Cossin, and the Local Board of Administration have put much effort in the last year to be prayerfully seeking and discerning where God would have Heritage go next. The result was an invitation from the community to eight different missional opportunities and a campaign for the bold move to acquire another building in the Quad Cities. Whether Heritage Church continues to grow depends on the congregation stepping into the next steps that God is leading them towards.
History of Lifecycles
Heritage Church survived one extremely short lifecycle and has since lived in a place of growth and plateau from its inception in 1964. The annual average attendance for almost every year can be seen in figure 1 below. The first lifecycle ended in 1973 when, after the pastor had already been asked to resign, there was another church split and the attendance fell from 125 to just 15 people (T. Howard, personal communication, February 1, 2017). In a moment of divine intervention, God brought John Bray, and his wife, Patty, to pastor Heritage Church to revive it and begin a new lifecycle in the summer of 1973.
Figure 1
The second life cycle began fairly slowly as much damage had been done prior to John and Patty’s arrival to Heritage Church. In an interview with Tim Howard, he stated that “John worked to stabilize the church and gain the trust of the people” for the first seven years as Senior Pastor at Heritage Church (personal communication, February 1, 2017). Both John Bray and Tim Howard attribute the accelerated growth rate that started in 1996 to the formative years from 1983 on in which a significant portion of the congregation attended John Maxwell’s church growth conferences (personal communication, January 31, 2017). Kevin Herrick took a different stand and suggested that the spike in growth that started in 1996 was because Heritage’s annual Creative Christmas program moved into the Adler Theater, a large performing arts center in town (personal communication, February 1, 2017). Darci Anderson accounts for rapid growth from 1998 on as being due to Heritage moving into their new building, a retrofitted tennis and athletic club (personal communication, February 1, 2017). The rapid rate of growth ended around 2005 after second, Spanish speaking, campus was opened in 2004 (J.Bray, personal communication, January 31, 2017).
From 2005 through 2008 there were a sea of changes and this resulted in the stagnation and eventual decrease of attendance. In 2005 Harvest Bible Chapel opened and offered a near identical service style to Heritage Church. David Dryer referred to this as a “cut in the market area” since Heritage was still one of the only contemporary churches in the area (personal communication, February 1, 2017). In 2007 through 2008 there was an abnormal amount of staff turnover. Darci Anderson believes that the most important of these was the transition of long time worship pastor, Scott Schaefer, to a relatively new college graduate, Steve Abel (personal communication, February 1, 2017). Since Heritage was known primarily for its style of worship, this greatly affected attendance. Tim Howard attributes the decline of attendance in 2007 to the launch of the Bettendorf Campus; he claims that many were not on board with the idea of simulcasting the sermon or simply did not like being asked to financially contribute and left (personal communication, February 1, 2017). Whatever the many causes of the attendance decrease, it did start to pick back up in 2009.
There are multiple factors that played into the growth from 2009 through 2013. The Bettendorf Campus permanently moved into the retrofitted building Heritage purchased which allowed for growth (D. Dryer, personal communication, February 1, 2017). Secondly, Heritage added a fourth campus in just outside of the Quad Cities in Buffalo, Iowa, which eventually moved to Blue Grass, Iowa (T. Howard, personal communication, February 1, 2017). Lastly, in 2012 Heritage heavily promoted and secularly marketed a series on forgiveness titled “The Real F-Word” (K. Herrick, personal communication, February 1, 2017). Kevin Herrick humorously reflected on this as being the single most effective strategy to make unchurched people curious about church he has ever seen (personal communication, February 1, 2017). These events caused Heritage to continue in a state of growth through the end of 2013.