Church Voices

There’s a couple of Christian blogs I read on a regular basis. They are explicitly non-evangelical. In addition to that they are rather contemptuous of the “church growth” movement. Of course, what they despise about the church growth movement is not really the heart of church growth. Unfortunately, many churches and church planters looking to grow miss the actual cause of church growth as well.

I believe, the key to understanding the cause of church growth is to successfully separate the cause from the effect. Unfortunately a lot of people get the two mixed. They look around and see some common threads among vibrant, growing churches and then immediately think if they can emulate those things then *boom* immediately their church will be vibrant and growing. Unfortunately I think many times we put the cart before the horse.

The first thing to understand is that if a church is truly a church then the growth of a church is an act of God. Churches can only grow by two sources: transfers from other churches, and making new Christians. In the vast majority of situations growth generated by transfers isn’t the kind of growth you want (unless all the churches in the area are flat out failing their members), and growth by creating new Christians is the work of God operating on an individual, and while God does use churches as instruments to operate on an individual that operation doesn’t happen as a result of a mechanistic formula that can be imitated from church to church. Neither God nor salvation is a controlled lab experiment.

I strongly suspect that much of the traits generally associated with a growing church are actually the effects of growth rather than the cause of growth. I group in things like a projecter/screen for powerpoint presentations, contemporary worship, and casual dress. When a church begins growing and assimmilating new christians into itself it begins to manifest these traits as a result of a bunch of new people who don’t have the same ties with the past as the long time members do. As a result the church body as a whole begins to do things differently. It is simply a far-fetched fantasy to believe that all a church needs to do to grow is to grab a worship band, slap some jeans on the preacher, and buy a projecter.

So what are the common causes of churches that grow? Much of my conclusions for this section come from Surprising Insights From the Unchurched by Dr. Rainer. In it he makes a compelling case that a church which preaches the gospel from the pulpit and disciples its members. This is an extremely crude summary of Dr. Rainer’s book, but he’s got the goods, check it out if you want some firmer evidence or just want an excellent read. From Dr. Rainer’s work I drew the conclusion that what happens is solid doctrinal preaching pulls in people who recognize their need for Christ, who are then discipled, at which point they are capable of leading either in a formal or informal capacity and are also able to competently teach the gospel in their own life. Its something of a self-perpetuating cycle, and once a church gets into it growth comes naturally. Of course its much more difficult to deliberately take these steps than it is to put together a worship band and buy a projecter.