"In every case, a deep prayer life preceded their breakout to a greater level of leadership. I cannot tell how long that deep prayer life preceded their becoming the type leaders that they were but so much emerged from their own prayer lives.

"Some of the breakout scenarios that we saw really did begin with laypersons who were prayerful and desirous that their church be the church God wanted it to be rather than church as usual. However, the breakout is unlikely to continue unless the senior pastor is on board with it."

While a dramatic wake-up call in leadership was a consistent factor in breakout churches, styles of worship varied.

"There is no correlation between style of worship - liturgical or contemporary - in terms of evangelistic growth. That's counter-intuitive because most people believe that more contemporary churches have the greater evangelistic growth, But we have found the more contemporary churches have growth explained by transfer growth but not evangelistic growth," said Rainer.

Rainer sees the next trend in church growth coming in simplification of a church's focus by doing a few things well instead of trying to cover the gambit of activities. "Over commitment and busyness are killing our best people and the ministers within the church. I see churches doing less but doing what they do better."

What Rainer and his researchers saw in breakout churches makes him hopeful that any church can go from good to great. "Don't give up," Rainer urged. "God's the God of possibilities. All of these churches (profiled in Breakout Churches) were in impossible situations, but we saw what God was able to do when people were willing."

Rebekah Montgomery is the editor of Right to the Heart of Women e-zine, a publisher at Jubilant Press, and the author of numerous books on spiritual growth. She can be contacted for comments or speaking engagements at  rebekahmontgomery.com