Church Growth Movement

Center Church

/ Dennis Griffith / 7 Comments

I picked up Tim Keller‘s newest book, Center Church.  It hit the bookstore shelves this morning.  I have as yet read only a few chapters. But as expected it is an excellent expression of holistic gospel-centered ministry.  In short it is a book about forming a Theological Vision for ministry, and living out that vision faithfully in whatever context one may live and serve in such a way as to be fruitful.

In particular I appreciate how from the outset Keller explains the difference and navigates between the two common ministry measuring sticks, success & faithfulness.  It seems to me that too many act as if we should assume these are mutually exclusive  – as if either is a sufficient goal or gauge.  Keller instead prefers fruitfulness, seeing both benefits and limitations of success and faithfulness as the simple objectives.  Fruitfulness is the end result of the complex web of faithfulness, competence, and the work of God’s Spirit. Success, whatever that really is, is not eschewed, but seen in light of the components of fruitfulness within a particular social context.

Now while I have not read the entire book, I did have one criticism from the outset.  While the book is less than 400 pages, and the chapters are easily readable (in other words, one need not be a theological scholar to follow along), the size of the book has the odd dimensions of a textbook.  This will look strange among most of the other books on my shelf.  But, I guess, if that remains my chief gripe, there is not much to complain about.

Is Church Growth a Biblical Expectation?

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

I was intrigued by the insights of Jay Childs in an article he wrote for Leadership Journal.  The article, titled Church Growth vs. Church Seasons, focuses on the American fascination with large numbers.  After telling some of his own story, Jay makes three primary observations:

  1. Our Situation is Not Unusual
  2. Non-Stop Numerical Growth is NOT a Biblical Expectation
  3. Healthy Churches Go Through Life-Cycles of Growth, Pruning, Decline, Blessing

While I appreciated the whole article, it was the insights of the second point that most resonated with me:

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.

Lesslie Newbigin writes in The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, “Reviewing the teaching of the New Testament, one would have to say, on the one hand, there is joy in the rapid growth of the church in the earliest days, but on the other, there is no evidence that numerical growth of the church is a matter of primary concern. There is no shred of evidence in Paul’s letters to suggest that he judged the churches by the measure of their success in rapid numerical growth. [Nowhere is there] anxiety or an enthusiasm about the numerical growth of the church.”

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