Church Growth vs. A Church Grown

You’re Fired! Donald Trump’s final words to tell someone that they are not successful.  Disappointing because we love the feeling of success, to find that place in our life or in our career or in our family where we have arrived, accomplished something. In the world of reality shows, games shows and sports however,  there is only one winner. One successful person or team. Maybe that’s why we are constantly driven to comparison- am I better, more successful than the guy next door. “Keeping up with the Jones'” has been replaced with “Being just a little bit better than the Jones”.

Everyone wants to feel like they are successful, even in church. Many people join a church because it is big, many pastors want to pastor a church because it is big. Bigger is better. More is better. Fancier is better. We are in some ways consumed with this idea of comparison in the church as well- which is bigger, better, more successful.   Christians compare themselves against others to see how they measure up. Churches compare themselves with other churches, and are often critical of the ones they feel are more “successful” than they are.

The church world has had volumes written on church growth, enough I’m sure to have plugged the BP oil spill.  I have read a lot of these books, on methodologies, on programs, on strategies, on leadership, on organization, and for the most part they have been pretty good books filled with stories of how the authors particular idea worked in their setting.  We like that. We like neat ideas, easy to understand and implement. We like the plug and play kind of approach to things. That is how the world works today, plug it in, switch it on, and there you go, all the benefits, bells, whistles, lights and features you could want…. so that is the way the church should work as well…. right?  Just plug in the right program, organization, methodology and it works, we grow, we are successful and everyone is happy….right?

Now this is not, I repeat not, a blog blasting church growth- in fact I am all in favor of seeing a church grow!  But what is the source of our church growth? What do we believe will ultimately make a church grow? What do we trust to make the engine of church growth rev up?

Church Growth

Talk to any person in church leadership and ask them if they would like to see their church grow– and almost everyone (because we are talking church here and someone will disagree just to be disagreeable)  would say that they really want their church to grow.  Now, ask them how they expect their church to grow and your answers would be many, but the majority of them would boil down to a smaller list of a few things:

• Good children’s ministry
• A great music program
• Bible preaching
• Relevant to the culture
• Dynamic youth ministry
• Knocking on doors, being evangelistic
• Having a loving church family

All these are great things.  And for the most part, will be seen in a church that is growing. Now some churches will have several things on the list- great music and a dynamic worship service and showing love to the community.  Great! All great things.  Other churches may not have great music, but are passionately evangelistic. In Josh Hunt’s book Make Your Group Grow (which I will review in the coming weeks), he mentions a pastor who had doubled the church he was serving. When asked to describe the music, he said “yeah, it’s not only traditional, it’s bad traditional. Yeah, bad, like bad. The piano isn’t in tune….”. When asked how his church doubled, it was visitation. Visiting families, knocking on doors.

Now some would read this and argue that you can’t grow a church without contemporary, edgy, music. Some would say that pianos and organs are a death knell for a church.  Well apparently old traditional, excuse me, bad traditional music can be played and a church can still grow in El Paso, Texas.

That is something that I see when we talk about church growth, it is very focused on the how.  Read about church growth and everyone is enamored with the how- how did you do it?  How did you reach young adults?  How did you develop your children’s program?  How did you recruit workers?  How did you change your music style without splitting the church?

Here is what I am driving at, the discussion of church has for many boiled down to the kind of church you are, the kind of organization you are or the label that you wear.

• Contemporary
• Purpose Driven
• Conservative
• Attractional (event/worship service emphasis)
• Organic (still working on how to define that)
• Emergent
• Traditional
• Family Oriented
• Bible
• World outreach/Missions-driven
• Simple church
• _______________________  (fill in your own defining term)

To some extent we need to do this. We need to be able to articulate how we do things, what we believe, what we have to offer, what we consider to be important. But how far do we carry this?  Is church growth dependent on these things?  Is the growth of the church driven by these things?

As I have said in a previous post, lost people are not impressed with our church trappings, our way of doing things or our church preferences- they don’t think about it, they don’t know anything about it and aren’t swayed by it. They will come to whatever church God draws them to, whatever label we slap on it.  These things are more for the people in the church. It gives them a way to identify their church, talk about their church and understand how their church worships, what it values and how it operates.

As  a church pastor and leader I have struggled, and many church members have as well, with trying to find the right combination of ministries to have, style of worship to offer, programs to have in order to see the church experience growth and success. Many churches have split over changes in music or programming.  Many churches have experienced great difficulty as a new methodology is introduced.  Others have thrived as they have reinvented their ministries and made sacrificial changes.  The best book I have read on this topic is Ed Stetzer’s book Comeback Churches. It details the comeback trail of churches that experienced renewal and growth after times of struggle and decline. It is a highly recommended read.

From within the church there is a mindset of “build it and they will come” or “have this ministry and young people will come”.  We are saying that our trust is in what we do or how we do it. If we only played _____ kind of music we would attract those young people. We are saying that we trust in a style of music to grow the church. And subtly we are looking for credit for doing such a good job. After all we are doing this “for God” right? The logical conclusion of this way of thinking is that we are down here building something to make God proud. Look at the church we have built/grown for you Lord.  As if we have the institution of the church and the one who runs it the best wins.

What we have to come to realize is that people aren’t attracted by institutional church. By the way,  the only church that is truly institutional is the one that is no longer led by the Holy Spirit of God and God does not move in. When that happens,  the only thing that is left is the institution, the organization, the by-laws, the constitution, the way of doing things- all which can exist completely separate of the presence of God.

And that is where I want to swing the discussion to….

A Church Grown

A couple of months ago I was preparing a message and was doing some Bible study (good thing to do for a sermon!) in the Book of Acts.  And I read…

Acts 2  46 So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church  daily those who were being saved.

Acts 5  14 And believers were increasingly added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women,

Acts 8  5 Then Philip went down to the  city of Samaria and preached Christ to them. 6 And the multitudes with one accord heeded the things spoken by Philip, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.

Acts 9  31 Then the churches  throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied.

Acts 9  40 But Peter put them all out, and knelt down and prayed. And turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. 41 Then he gave her his hand and lifted her up; and when he had called the saints and widows, he presented her alive. 42 And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed on the Lord.

Acts 11 20 But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus. 21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.

A lot of this is not new to you, if you have ever read the Book of Acts you have read these passages and noticed that the church multiplied quickly as the disciples preached the resurrection of Jesus and God worked great miracles through them. But what we have to notice is that the church was grown, God being the grower.

Here is where our thinking needs some fine tuning. Often we look for the right program, style, methodology, in order to get people to the church so we can reach (and count) them. The mindset becomes, if we can devise the right mix of programs, then we can reach people. Again, there is nothing wrong with this, our heart is to see people reached, which is a good thing, but we cannot trust in these things. As the above passages tell us, God is the grower, our trust has to be that the Father, who was willing to sacrifice His Son to pay the sin debt for sinful people, is able, and willing, to draw people to His body.

A church that is grown praises God and thanks God for His movement to bring people rather than patting themselves on the back for being so cleaver or so talented to draw a crowd. There is a desire to see the power of God move in people so that they are made new again in Jesus Christ.  We cannot point to a program and say, that is what caused our church to grow. That smacks of spiritual pride, and that is a dangerous place to be.  In Matthew 16 Jesus makes a powerful statement about a church grown…

16 Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. 18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

There are three small, but key, words in verse 18. I, My and it.

I- Jesus will be the builder of the church. There is no condition here, He said I will build, not might, or could, but will. He tells us it will happen as He draws all people to Himself after His crucifixion.

John 12  32 But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.

The Father joins into the work of building as He reaches out to people to bring them into relationship with Jesus…

John 6  44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’  Therefore everyone who has heard and learned  from the Father comes to Me.

Then, amazingly, God invites us to be a part of the building process…

I Cor 3  6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. 7 So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. 8 Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building.

We are planting, watering, working, but it is still God that is giving the increase- Jesus building His church.

My- Jesus called it My church. I will build My church.

Here is something that we can never forget– there is no one who has more at stake in the growth of the church than Jesus. There is no one who has paid as high a price as He has. There is no one who will in the end do more work for the church, get more glory in the church and receive more pleasure from the church than Jesus.  It is His body, His people, the gathering of His followers who make up the church. They are His, Paul reminds us that we are not our own, but have been bought at a price.

There is no one who loves the lost who you come into contact with more that Jesus. There is no program or methodology that loves people, there is no style of music that sheds blood for the forgiveness of sin.  We are not building something for Him- it is His. We are working with the owner, the architect of the body of Christ. If it grows, it grows because it is His and He is making it so.

It- The church, the body. Jesus will grow it and all of hell will not prevail against it.

There is a beautiful picture here if we allow it to unfold.  The church will grow, Jesus promised it. But it is not growing in a vacuum, there will be opposition to its’ growth. That opposition is the forces of evil, the gates of hell. The growth of the church pushes against the gates of hell, pushes back the darkness.  Now we look at our world and we wonder if it is true.

Let me ask a question, today, where is the church growing the fastest– where it is the darkest!  China, where the evangelical church is illegal and believers are persecuted and killed. In Africa where it clashes with Muslim influence and tribal religions filled with people worshiping demons.  If the church were just a nice little place that had a membership drive, these would be the last places it would grow. But the power of God is on full display, running contrary to all that we would think reasonable.  Why?  Because the church is His and He will grow it where it will bring Him the most glory.

This is where I want to close. Could it be that the church in America is not growing because when it does we steal the glory of God?  We make celebrities out of pastors, say their growth is due to the latest, hottest program, and make them rich buying their latest book on how to get the church to grow… and we are not humbled by the powerful movement of God as much as we are envious and coveting their success.

Now again, do not misunderstand, I am not criticizing big churches or books, etc. I am all for whoever is leading people to Jesus and making disciples. I just want us to consider that we too often give credit to a person or a program, believing that it is the solution to growing the church, and forget that all growth, however big or small is because God moves, God builds, God draws, God makes new.  God will lead us to start ministries, programs and the like, but they ultimately are not the cause of our growth.

A church grown causes believers to be in awe and wonder that God is powerful enough to break through the darkness, the hardness of a heart and make a radical change in the life of a person deeply and sacrificially loved by God. That is where I want to be, not just in another latest, greatest seminar on how to add people to the church, but in the midst of God’s movement, celebrating His goodness at making people a new creation.

Each new person is the result of a supernatural act on God’s part to add to the Body of Christ. If there is no addition the church, then God is not moving in your midst and you have to ask, Why?  What is withholding God from adding to our number?  That you will have to ask God about, after all its’ His body.