Church Health and Church Growth
Kevin Hendricks, over at Church Marketing Sucks blog, asks the question, "Are all healthy churches growing?" in response to a recent storm of contention over Out of Ur blog post poking fun at megachurches (see above).So let me ask you the same question: Do all healthy churches grow?
Well obviously that requires a definition of "grow." Want to know my answer?
Yes—quantitatively and qualitatively.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that if a church is not growing quantitatively, neither is it growing qualitatively. The latter is the (super)natural result of the former. This is extremely biblical. For making disciples involves (1) increasing the number of disciples, and (2) increasing the maturity/quality of disciples.
We should nuance this in a couple of ways. First, the concept of "pruning" (purging?) is also biblical. Churches go through periods where the genuineness of the faith of the "members" is tested, and the false believers fall away. The early church period underwent this in the extreme. (One might argue the Western church is undergoing something similar, if different.) Certainly, then, churches go through "cycles."
Second, when evaluating whether one's church is healthy (growing according to biblical patterns) it's important to examine at intervals (e.g., annually, biannually) rather than constantly. The latter can create an unhealthy amount of paranoia and underdependence on the Spirit, as well as an inability to see whether changes that are made actually are working. That said, if your church is not growing for a year, two, three... you need to step back and do some hard evaluation, starting with soul searching.
There is another distinction that needs to be made:
Churches that are growing according to the biblical pattern are not just "growing", but also multiplying or reproducing.
As they expand their reach, they appoint new elders and "plant" new congregations. OR, in the mega model, they continue to build bigger and better barns in which to herd the growing flock. Research indicates that churches have a numerical threshold past which the percentage of the community (from which their members commute) that church can reach decreases significantly. In other words, smaller churches have greater potential to reach the people in their communities (their neighbors) than do larger churches.
How does this rub you? What about all the small church pastors whose churches aren't growing, haven't grown for some time, or are perhaps even declining? Should we stay hush hush about all this growth business, so we don't hurt their feelings?
How does this rub you? What about all the small church pastors whose churches aren't growing, haven't grown for some time, or are perhaps even declining? Should we stay hush hush about all this growth business, so we don't hurt their feelings?
I know I've read at least one book on healthy church; offering qualitative and quantitative measues. I think most of the angst revolves around the unasked question: "Is a growing church healthy?"
ReplyDeleteI think this has led to opinions on large churches where there are some who think all large churches are good and other extremists who hold that they are all bad.
while I have almost always been part of a small church, I don't think they are the only or even the best option. One of the best things about small churches is that there is almost no option to be a spectator--every person is needed to survive and grow (in a good way). I appreciate the economy scale of larger churches especially in N. America where we building expenses is virtually nonnegotiable unfortunately.
The megachurch debate is very limited in that it only looks at American megachurches. But the biggest churches around the world are in Costa Rica, Korea, and even Ukraine. AND they all have a large church and small church component to them getting the best out of both worlds.
Healthy churches make disciples, and it is very possible to do that and not 'grow'.
And for the record I've spent some of my loneliest moments in small churches that hyped community and (unofficially) felt big churches were wrong.
How is it possible to "make disciples" and neither "grow" nor multiply? If all the original apostles did were "disciple" those who had already been born again, Christianity would have died when those people died. Plain and simple. "Making disciples" includes both making lost people into disciples, and making immature disciples into more mature disciples—quantitative and qualitative. Can't have only one or the other.
ReplyDeleteThe reason that all healthy churches must, as a general trend, grow numerically, is that a key part of what it means to be a disciple is to make other disciples (again, both adding and growing disciples), and an indispensable part of faithfulness to the Great Commission is making disciples of lost sinners. If a church is not doing this, it is not being faithful to its calling. Now just because churches are growing does not indicate that they are faithfully making disciples of lost sinners. It could mean that they offer better "services" to Christian consumers who leave other churches to attend these churches. If this is all that's happening (transfer growth), then the Great Commission is not being fulfilled.