Is Church Growth a New Testament or American Concept?
Have you ever stopped to think about how most American’s contemporary expectation of church compares with the expectations of those in other places around the world and further how they compare with most of America just a few short years ago? You do not have to be very old to recall a day when people saw church much differently. There have always been church hoppers who changed churches every few years or so, additionally we have always had those with us who were church members in name only – never seeing any need or sense of responsibility to get involved, give financially, or otherwise be a part. But what I am talking about goes beyond these usual issues.
No matter how much some resist admitting it, “church” has become “business” and a business measures itself by the bottom line most of all. The concept of “church growth,” and concern about church size, was largely non-existent until the mid-twentieth century. For approximately 1,950 years of church history, the church’s emphases were on many things besides how fast and large the church was growing. Jay Childs serves as a pastor of a church in Midland, Michigan. In an article entitled Church Growth vs. Church Seasons, in the Fall 2010 issue of Leadership Journal he writes,
Ever since eminent missiologist Donald McGavran first published his seminal thoughts on church growth, American churches have often fixated on numerical growth. The basic assumption seems to be this: all churches should be growing numerically, all the time, and something is wrong if your church isn’t.
But as I’ve searched the New Testament and read countless other books on the subject, this assumption seems to be alien to the Bible. There is simply no biblical expectation that a local congregation will continually grow in size, uninterrupted. That seems to be an American presupposition forced onto the Scriptures.
If anything, Jesus told us to expect the opposite. He did promise that the gates of hell would not stand against the church, but he also commended the church in Philadelphia for standing firm though they had ‘little power.’ He never criticizes any of the seven churches in Revelation for not accumulating numbers. He does scold, however, for moral and theological compromise.
To be quite honest, we have been told repeatedly why our churches are not growing, people are not being saved, why programs fail, why there is otherwise unrest, even in-fighting within the body, but we, by-and-large have ignored it. The issue is that our people are not right with God. We are lax in family devotions and in our overall prayer life, long-term Christians don’t know their Bible very well, only 10 percent have ever led 1 person to Christ, we are entertained by sin on our television sets, and the list goes on. These behaviors are not as much the problem as much as they are symptomatic that there is a deeper spiritual problem in our lives. And further, there is an almost iron-clad guarantee that God will not bless in a truly desirable way.
True revival or a genuine movement of God historically comes only when there has first been true repentance. As I look around today in the local church, I see scant evidence for any sort of repentance at all. There are no shortcuts to traveling to where God wants His people. We have often heard the adage “insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.” However, we have generally heard this in the context of church growth technique. How about this – let’s apply this same adage of truth to our spiritual lives. All of a sudden, the lack of God’s blessing on our personal life, the spiritual life of our family, and out church makes much more sense. God is too wise to be fooled by our hypocrisy. Do a careful study of the concept of “wisdom” in the Book of Proverbs and then consider the contemporary church in America. I’ll give you a preview – the difference is night and day!
Modern Christianity has a program for everything it seems – especially for church growth. We are not being presented the steak, but the sizzle. In tribute to George Strait, we’ve been sold some ocean front property in Arizona! While our attention has been on keeping up with “the Jones’s church” our spiritual lives (and yes that includes us pastors) have gone to pot. Instead of reading book after book on church growth, maybe we should be reading books like The Pursuit of God by Tozer, Holiness by Ryle, or Knowing God by Packer. Maybe we should be much less concerned with “church growth” and much more concerned with personal “spiritual growth.” Maybe if we get serious about that and really and truly become content with Him there, He just may bless in other albeit less important, but desirable ways, church growth potentially being one of them.
In Christ,
Pastor Allen Raynor