Writer's Notebook: Greentree Christian Church

As part of Christian Standard's annual listing of attendance and growth statistics for Christian Churches, the editors asked me to choose from a short list of growing congregations in Missouri to do an interview and write a short ministry highlight piece.

I chose Greentree Christian Church in Rolla because I had already heard many good things about the congregation, and because the senior minister is Tim Cook, a fellow graduate of Central Christian College in Moberly. He and his brother, J Allan, were a few years ahead of me, attending at the same time as my older brother, Scott.

It was great to get in touch with Tim Cook and talk with him about the long and steady growth of Greentree Christian Church. Much of what we talked about made it into the published piece in the May 2019 issue of Christian Standard. But there were other aspects of the itnerview that didn't make the final cut. Here are a few quotes:


"Our adult ministries guy does a great job, trying to keep things going every week, running special adult education programs at all times of the week. I’m a strong believer in really good children’s ministry and youth ministry programs
. . .
We emphasize missions. This is a very generous congregation. We have an annual offering that goes to some mission endeavor someplace. With matching funds we reached up to $400,000 one year, for safe houses in the persecuted church. We do that every year. One year it will be stateside or even local here, and the next year it will be international.
. . .
We work hard on outreach we run Awana and Upward and annual programs that the community looks forward to. We host Food Bank distribution, kindergarten registration, and other community events.
. . .
A year ago we hired a women’s minister and that’s had a solid impact.

I believe the Sunday morning worship service is the driver of the church and it has to be healthy and it has to be inspiring. Pretty much steady growth.

The old building we were in had 25 parking spaces. We got up to 500 in three services. Had already purchased land before I came, with nothing done with it. We built a gymnasium and started having church functions. We added on some education space and saw an immediate 30% increase from that. When we went to our third phase and went to our big worship area on Greentree, again we saw 30% growth
. . .
We go out to Bennett Springs, which is a beautiful park, on the first Sunday of every June, a Baptism Sunday. We match it with a big church picnic and people are already putting their names on a list. We have a baptistery in the church and will baptize them at any time they desire. Most of our baptisms are private. They want a few family and friends to be there for that.
. . .
Volunteer opportunities include a hospitality team, missions committee, and bereavement ministry, to name a few.
. . .
Extracurricular activities take place seasonally, including co-ed volleyball and men’s basketball open gyms, and church league softball."