Church Growth and Discipleship

While the Wikipedia article on the Church Growth Movement makes it seem like it was just within Evangelical Christianity, the reality is that it has impacted the more traditional protestant denominations as well. The idea of “Church Growth” is that church leaders should try to bring as many people into church as possible. Just getting people in the door is the first step in saving souls, and we can catch more fish if we use bigger and better nets. The idea is that church should become appealing to people. It needs to compete in the market of people’s attention, and therefore, it needs to be equipped for the task. Some churches have excellent music with either professional organists leading expert choirs or well-trained musicians making up a praise band that plays the music people hear on Christian radio. Rather than singing hymns to chant settings from a hundred years ago, we should draw people in with the kind of music that touches their hearts here and now.

In addition to excellent quality music production, some churches will also move toward an increasingly programmatic model. The church hosts Bible studies, classes, after school programs, and more to get people in the door and interacting with the church staff. Other churches will focus on training and equipping the average parishioner to bear witness to the Gospel regularly in their daily lives, so that they will bring anyone in their lives who shows interest to church. 

These are all good things. I am certainly in favor of good music and engaging programs at church. However, there is a potential dark side to this way of doing church. Some have described it as rather shallow. The people in church become numbers in a ledger, a means to an end. The church is run like a business, which under the best circumstances is involved in the work of saving souls, but too often seems like it is involved in making money without really helping people. But there is also a potential theological problem with trying to make the church appeal to people in modern society.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting the church should be abhorrent to people. The church should not seek to make people miserable, and it shouldn’t be boring and stuffy just for the sake of driving people away, but when church focuses too much on appealing to the interests of people, it drifts away from its mission. We aren’t in the business of entertaining, and though we should certainly comfort people, the way we are called to comfort is very particular.

Joel Osteen is a megachurch pastor whose message is built more upon self-help than the Gospel. Though he is an attractive target for ridicule because of his fame, he is certainly not alone. There are many pastors who focus more on helping people feel good about themselves or driving them to believe in and achieve their own destiny than repent and cling to Christ for grace. I understand why. Telling people that they are wrong and need to repent is something that will drive many people away. And we want them in our church. Not only does their money keep the bills paid, but if they just stick around a little longer, maybe they will get the real message without us even preaching it.

Of course, I think the people who are focusing on building a large, healthy church would see things differently. It isn’t that they are avoiding the Gospel, it’s that they are translating the Gospel into modern contexts. In our world, isolation and shame are bigger problems than guilt over sin. The Gospel needs to be applied to the problems of the day. The church needs to tackle the issues the contemporary world faces by thinking creatively about theology. We can’t stick to the same scripts we have run for the past two thousand years. We are living in the modern world, perhaps the post-modern world according to some, the church needs to meet people where they are with the problems of the day.

There certainly sounds like there is wisdom in this. If people are feeling like the technological interconnectedness of the world is interfering with their actual sense of community, leaving them lonely and misunderstood, the church should say something about that. If people are feeling too ashamed of themselves to truly express themselves, overshadowed by a world in which a goal of endlessly increasing efficient productivity so often labels our simple interests “wastes of time,” maybe the church should liberate people to rest and resist the forces that drive them to despise the things that bring them joy. However, the church isn’t really here to be a support group for people having problems. The church is here, first and foremost, to proclaim the Gospel. If we are going to respond to these problems as the church, the answer must be rooted in the Gospel.

Unfortunately, sometimes the problems of the world aren’t even things the church should be solving. For military-minded politicians, the problem is the existence of their enemies. The church should not be in the business of advocating for the destruction of perceived enemies, but rather should always call for peace and an opportunity for all to come to Christ. For business people who strive for endless growth, the problem is any lapse or delay in productivity. The church should not be driving people and the world to exhaustion with needless production. 

In his book The Gospel in a Pluralist Society theologian Lesslie Newbigin touches on this topic:

“In discussions about the contemporary mission of the Church it is often said that the Church ought to address itself to the real questions which people are asking. That is to misunderstand the mission of Jesus and the mission of the Church. The world’s questions are not the questions which lead to life. What really needs to be said is that where the Church is faithful to its Lord, there the powers of the kingdom are present and people begin to ask the question to which the gospel is the answer.”

There is certainly value in going out to bring people into church. Mission is as important to the life of the church today as it has been throughout its history. And of course there is value in meeting people where they are to an extent. However, when meeting people where they are replaces our identity as faithful servants of God and stewards of the Gospel, then our mission is no longer aligned with God’s no matter how good we are at doing it. 

The Church is not merely a support group for people with problems. It isn’t a self-help stage, where people give money to be inspired to fulfill their destinies. The Church is the community of faithful people gathered by the Holy Spirit and enlightened by the Gospel to carry on the mission of Jesus, calling people to repentance and proclaiming that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.