Church Growth is not Trading Members
The
Bible makes clear God’s concern for people lost to the gospel, “The Lord is not
slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not
wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”[1]
God’s desire is that all people should have a personal relationship with Him.
Today’s church has equated the transfer of members from church to church with
the fulfillment of this command to grow through the sharing of the gospel. This
erroneous notion of growth has resulted in numerous volumes of church growth
books that miss the point of the great commission.
The church must
be in the business of seeing people find new life. We are an emergency center
for sick and dying lost souls not a retirement home for cranky discontent
Christians. “For the most part, the institutional church has spawned a large
subculture where most of its ministries are designed to provide service and
fulfillment to those who are already related to the Church’s founder.”[2]
We must be more interested in expanding Christ’s Kingdom than we are in
enlarging our personal castle, less concerned with competing with the church
down the street for the loyalty of baby saints and more concerned with
competing with Satan for the souls of men. It is my contention that pastors and
leaders today are partly responsible for the hopping and shopping clearly
mistaken for legitimate church growth. When someone visits from another church
in town we are excited at the possibility of having a trained, contributing,
and sometimes even working addition to our little realm so we spend a great
deal of time trying to woo suspect Christians and much less time trying to impact
our communities. Many problems we will face later can be traced to these
unhappy Christians.
This emphasis on
growing a church by transferring members leads to an attractional based ministry instead of the more biblical
missional ministry. Though church growth is a priority, growing one church at
the expense of others does not fulfill the commission of our Lord.
The prevailing approach to
evangelism and Christian mission is for churches to develop programs, services,
and events for the purpose of attracting unbelievers. There is nothing wrong
with wanting to be attractive, and we certainly wouldn’t want our churches to
be unattractive. The problem is that we rely on the gathered services to do the
mission and evangelism—as well as the discipleship, education, and worship.[3]
This leads to come and see mentality instead of a
great commission go and tell. If it
is true that “God has been at work weaving together Spirit-led thought, dreams,
and kingdom innovations in a city, in a neighborhood, and in the life of every
person you’ll meet” then we must be in the community to encounter them. [4]
To remain cloistered in our churches complaining about the decline of morals
and mores in the society around us is the opposite of what Jesus commanded in
all of His commissions to the church.
At Fellowship we
must be radical enough to say that our target group is not the Christian who
has become unhappy with their present church and has joined the throngs of
people who are shopping and hopping from one church to another, but is instead,
two main groups of people: (1)
Those who do not have a personal relationship with Jesus, seeking new life in Christ; (2) Those who have
had a relationship in the past and have allowed it to grow cold, seeking renewed life with Christ. Personally, I
must not just talk about sharing the gospel but find ways to focus on this
command being my life purpose and the ultimate goal of my calling as a
Christian. “It is impossible to legitimately follow the biblical Jesus and not
end up being molded by the mission of God and a growing reflection of Jesus’
character. When our hearts and minds are truly seized by the Lord, we cannot
but help see people, the world, even the church, differently.”[5]
Jesus said “Behold,
I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for
harvest. “[6]
There is not a shortage of souls to harvest but a profound shortage of
harvesters. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore
beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”[7] The
development of leaders to the point that they are themselves developing leaders
is a vital part of fulfilling the command of Christ to make disciples and train
those disciples. We will address what this means at Fellowship in our next
article.
[1] 2
Pet. 3:9
[2] Borden,
38.
[3] Allen
Hirsch and Lance Ford, Right Here Right
Now, Everyday Mission for Everyday People (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker
Books, 2011), 216.
[4] Hugh
Halter and Matt Smay, AND, the Gathered
and Scattered Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan, 2010), 55.
[5]
Hirsch and Ford, 103.
[6] John
4:35
[7] Luke
10:2
